[05/09/2007] "Celena BETA 017"

Introduction

This is the first BETA release for Linux Mint 3.1, codename Celena, based on Cassandra and compatible with Ubuntu Feisty and its repositories.

Celena is using Cassandra's base (kernel 2.6.20-15, Gnome 2.18).

What's new in Celena

1. mintAssistant

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

What makes Celena 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)
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 Bianca and default configurations from Bea)


	[05/09/2007] "Celena BETA 017" Introduction This is the first BETA release for Linux Mint 3.1, codename Celena, based on Cassandra and compatible with Ubuntu Feisty and its repositories. Celena is using Cassandra's base (kernel 2.6.20-15, Gnome 2.18). What's new in Celena 1. mintAssistant 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 What makes Celena 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) 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 Bianca and default configurations from Bea)