"Cassandra"

• The brand new "mintInstall" and the "Linux Mint Software Portal": http://www.linuxmint.com/software
• Gnome 2.18 (speed improvements)
• Kernel 2.6.20 (better hardware support)
• Ubuntu Feisty innovations (restricted-manager, desktop-effects, windows migration assistant, avahi)
• OpenOffice 2.2 (complete suite)
• Thunderbird replaces Evolution as the default email reader
• Pidgin replaces Gaim as the default messenger
• Sunbird is now installed by default
• The Gimp is installed by default
• Gnome-control-center replaces mintConfig as the default control center application
• Both mintDisk (for internal drives) and NTFS-Config (for external drives) are present for NTFS support
• Support for Gnome Templates in mintDesktop
• mintInstall replaces gnome-app-install and the upcoming Click'n Run. 
• Drag & Drop support in mintMenu with many other improvements
• Sun Java 6 replaces Sun Java 5
• Compiz, Beryl and Emerald installed by default
• New artwork

What makes Cassandra ideal for the desktop

• Out of the box multimedia support 
• Microsoft Windows Integration (Dual-boot, NTFS read/write support, Migration Assistant)
• One-Click install system (Linux Mint Software Portal, mintInstall)
• Desktop features, Control Center, mintMenu
• 3D Effects (Compiz and Beryl on top of AIGLX)
• Great configuration tools
• Great selection of default applications (OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird, Gimp, Pidgin, XChat, Amarok..etc)
• Solid package base (Google Earth, Picasa, Skype.. a lot of important software present in the repositories or in the Linux Mint Software Portal, compatibility with all Ubuntu Feisty repositories and most Debian packages)
• Solid code base (Debian distribution built on top of Ubuntu Edgy. Inherits all innovations put into Bianca and default configurations from Bea)

"Cassandra Light Edition"

June 15, 2007

• proprietary software
• patented technologies
• support for restricted formats

• Macromedia Flash 
• Support for encrypted DVDs
• Windows codecs
• Support for restricted multimedia formats
• Unrar
• Sun Java (replaced by GIJ)

• The Linux Mint Software Portal [ http://www.linuxmint.com/software ] will soon contain .mint files for Light Edition users to be able to add codecs and multimedia support in one simple click.

"Cassandra" XFCE Community Edition

July 8, 2007

This is the first XFCE release of Linux Mint. It is made by and for the Linux Mint Community and it is maintained by Merlwiz79.  

This edition is based on Cassandra and comes with the following mint tools:

• mintInstall
• mintDisk
• mintWifi 
• xfcemintConfig
• xfcemintDesktop

Although similar to the Main edition, the XFCE Community Edition runs faster and takes less resources. It is ideal for older computers.

The default software selection includes:

• OpenOffice 2.2.0, Firefox 2.0.0.6, Thunderbird 2.0.0.5 and Sunbird 0.6a1
• Exaile 0.2.10, Xfmdeia 0.9.1, Gmplayer(mozilla-mplayer)
• Brasero 0.6.0
• Chestnut Dialer GTK 0.3.3, Deluge 0.5.2, Fusesmbtool 0.2, Pidgin 2.1.0, X-Chat, Wicd 1.3.1
• Gnormalize 0.52
• Catfish 0.2.4
• Evince 0.5.2, Gimp 2.2.13, GQview 2.0.4

Notable differences with the Main Edition are:

• The presence of Exaile which replaces Amarok
• The XFCE desktop replaces Gnome
• Wicd replaces Network Manager

"Cassandra KDE Community Edition"

July 24, 2007

• OpenOffice 2.2.0, Firefox 2.0.0.4, Thunderbird 1.5.0.12 (version 2.0 is available in the Software Portal) and Sunbird 0.6a1
• Dolphin 0.8.1 and Tasty Menu 0.8.2
• Amarok 1.4.6
• K3B 1.0 and K9Copy 1.1.0
• Scribus 1.2.5
• KMyMoney 0.8.5
• Sun Java 6
• DigiKam, Gimp, Gwenview, Kooka, Krita, KGet, KFTPGrabber, KNetworkManager, Kopete, Konversation, Inkscape, Hugin...etc
• mintInstall 2.4

Release Notes by Jamie "Boo" Birse:

Thanks go to Clem for his assistance in getting me started, answering my dumb questions and fixing BETA bugs. I started out asking Clem about doing a Mint CE DVD and look where that got me. Thanks also go to the people who tested the BETA and put their findings up on the forums.

This release is not as minty as the main edition but it is mintier than Bianca KDE. More Mint applications will be ported to KDE for the Celena KDE edition. This desktop-ready KDE Mint has all the usual Minty goodness for the web and media applications. I have made the choice to make the Mint KDE CE edition more pro-desktop and to mirror the main edition closer with respect to the main applications. So what does this mean? Some applications have been swapped for their more mainstream counterparts.

Packages that got swapped:

• Koffice was replaced with OpenOffice.org.
• Kmail and Kontact were replaced with Thunderbird/Sunbird Calendar.

The packages are very up to date with the exception of the kernel which is the original feisty fawn kernel 2.6.20-15. The kernel has not been updated due to development and compatibility reasons.

For those of you out there who only have a CD burner or only a CD-ROM there is the Cassandra miniKDE CE. Quite a few large packages were removed in order to fit onto a CD. After installation of miniKDE you are encouraged to install these packages from the web:

• Support for other languages (only English is supported by the liveCD, other languages can be added once the system is installed)
• Inkscape
• Hugin
• Scribus
• KMymoney
• K9Copy
• The Gimp
• libicu34
• kde-icons-mono
• ttf-arabeyes
• diveintopython
• a lot of KDE documentation was also removed to make space.

We hope you all like the new Cassandra Mint KDE CE. So now it is onwards and upwards to the next exciting adventure of Celena Mint KDE CE.

• First: let me make it clear that a fresh install is better than an upgrade.
• Second: see the first point.
• Third: even following these upgrade procedures you will not end up with the same system as doing a fresh install. Alot of the the artwork will be missing.
• Forth: backup your home directories and any important config files.

Upgrade from Cassandra KDE CE BETA013:

Not much changed between BETA013 and the stable so there maybe not much point in downloading and installing the stable release. The main thing you will miss is some firefox artwork.

what to do:

• sudo apt-get - -purge remove koffice-data 
• sudo apt-get - -purge remove koffice-libs
• sudo apt-get update
• sudo apt-get upgrade (warning this will also upgrade your kernel)
• the gtk applications with kde styling can be done at the user level using “system settings”, appearance & themes, GTK styles and fonts.

Upgrade from Bianca KDE:

I do not recommend this. Please avoid the headaches and install fresh. You will also not get any of the Cassandra artwork.

use sudo to do the following tasks.

• edit /etc/apt/sources.list 
• remove Kubuntu repos
• change all occurrences of edgy with feisty
• you should have Ubuntu repos, canonical, medibuntu (deb http://packages.medibuntu.org/ feisty free non-free), cassandra , and romeo is commented out.
• apt-get update
• apt-get dist-upgrade
• apt-get install beryl-kubuntu beryl-manager
• apt-get install avahi-autoipd avahi-utils
• apt-get install mintinstall-kde
• apt-get - - install mozilla-thunderbird sunbird-mint
• apt-get install ntfs-config
• apt-get install openoffice.org
• apt-get - -purge remove koffice koffice-libs koffice-data kmail
• apt-get - -purge remove kontact

"Celena"

MintAssistant acts as a first-run wizard and lets the user fine-tune his system. Throught mintAssistant the user can enable the root account, enable kernel updates, choose whether he wants fortunes to appear in the terminal and which of fstab or mintDisk is to be used for NTFS/FAT partitions.

2. mintUpload



MintUpload allows the user to upload any file smaller than 10MB on the Internet. The user doesn't have to worry about getting an FTP client or finding Web-space to store his files. It's never been easier to share files with friends. MintUpload is also compatible with the mint-space service which allows files to be as big as 1GB.

3. New Artwork



If you've spent a bit of time on the Linux Mint's forum you probably recognized Agust's style in the new Celena. We've got a new artist, Agustin J. Verdegal T. and as you can see we're very proud of him. In Celena, not only did we build the whole theme around his work but we also introduced a new graphical Grub menu using Gfxboot.

Notifications and power-management icons were also tweaked to integrate better with the new artwork.

4. Print to PDF



Whether it's an email in Thunderbird, a Web page in Firefox or even a text-file in Gedit, no matter what it is or which application you view it from, Celena will let you print it as a PDF document. The resulting PDF file will automatically be saved within your Home/Documents folder.

5. Improved Stability

The Update Manager and Update Notifier were removed from Celena so users would not perform un-educated upgrades. With more than 2 releases a year and many modules affected by upgrades, stability was preferred to security in Celena. No more pop-ups telling you a new version of Ubuntu became available, no more pop-ups telling you to download the latest kernel... your system is stable, tested and it should stay that way.

For more information about this read the following blog entry: http://www.linuxmint.com/blog/?p=54

6. Improved Performance

Beagle is gone. A recent survey showed that a vast majority of Linux Mint users never actually used it. The search engine was resource-hungry and its indexation methods made Linux Mint extremely slow on older hardware specs. This should come as a very good news to people with slower machines and make Linux Mint installable on computers with 256MB of RAM.

7. New tools and upgrades

• Firefox was upgraded to version 2.0.0.6 and is now maintained by us (it was maintained by Ubuntu before and upgrades caused the start page to change).
• Pidgin was upgraded to version 2.1.1
• MintMenu and mintInstall were upgraded to the latest version
• Tomboy Notes was fixed in order not to show the start note the first time Linux Mint is run
• AptOnCD is now installed by default to let the user backup his selection of packages
• Command-not-Found was also added to improve the Terminal experience
• A new apt command which provides all main features from apt-get, apt-cache and aptitude

• Out of the box multimedia support 
• Microsoft Windows Integration (Dual-boot, NTFS read/write support, Migration Assistant)
• One-Click install system (Linux Mint Software Portal, mintInstall)
• Easy file-sharing (mintUpload)
• Desktop features, Control Center, mintMenu
• 3D Effects (Compiz and Beryl on top of AIGLX)
• Great configuration tools
• Great selection of default applications (OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird, Gimp, Pidgin, XChat, Amarok..etc)
• Solid package base (Google Earth, Picasa, Skype.. a lot of important software present in the repositories or in the Linux Mint Software Portal, compatibility with all Ubuntu Feisty repositories and most Debian packages)
• Solid code base (Debian distribution built on top of Ubuntu Edgy. Inherits all innovations put into Cassandra and Bianca and default configurations from Bea)

"Celena Light Edition"

October 1, 2007

• proprietary software
• patented technologies
• support for restricted formats

• Macromedia Flash 
• Support for encrypted DVDs
• Windows codecs
• Support for restricted multimedia formats
• Unrar
• Sun Java (replaced by GIJ)

Note: You can transform Linux Mint "Light Edition" into Linux Mint "Main Edition" by installing "Multimedia Support [ http://linuxmint.com/software/?sec=item&id=50 ]" once the system is installed on your computer.

Copyright 2007 http://linuxmint.com/