Short interview with Clement Lefebvre

[widux]

Quelle: Scholars.de - Short interview with Clement Lefebvre


Name: Clement Lefebvre

Birth: 1978
Family: 2 children, 1 wife
Live in: Ireland
Home Country: France
Website: http://www.linuxmint.com
Favourite Band/Writer/Club: David Lynch movies, Techno/Hard_rock/A bit of everything really, historical books (I don't like novels)... but hey does this have anything to do with Mint?
Hobbies: IT, Games, Movies, Geo-Strategy, Socializing, Useless & passionate talks

- LinuxMint uses Ubuntu as it's base, so why should I use LinuxMint instead of *buntu?

Well you shouldn't. You should understand their difference and make your
 mind on which is better for you. Ubuntu can be a better alternative for
 some, and Linux Mint for others.

The main reasons why most Mint users actually run Linux Mint is because
 they like its desktop more than others and find it easier to use. Also
 the Linux Mint community is smaller and maybe more convivial and it's
 easier for people to get in touch with the team.

- Is it possible that LinuxMint will change it's base from Ubuntu to
 Debian, Mandriva or some other distribution?

Not in the near future. However we've experimented with a Debian base
 and the results were very satisfying. It's hard to predict what is going
 to happen in 3 or 4 years. Will our project be big enough to actually
 maintain its own package base? Will we be based on Debian and act as a
 rolling distribution? Who knows? At the moment Ubuntu gives us an easy
 base to work on so we can focus mostly on what matters to us: the
 desktop. We're planning on making a community edition based on Debian
 but Ubuntu remains our base and there are no plans for this change.


You’re from France, right?

Yes.

- So, why do you live in Ireland and why do you named your distribution LinuxMint and not f. ex. Linux Tricolore?  

The name came before the distribution. At the time it was mainly a
website with articles and tutorials on Linux. “Mint” was fresh, short,
intelligible and I liked the analogy with the “vanilla” kernels, the
north pole… I probably had a few other silly reasons at the time, I
can’t really remember. When the distribution started I gave it the same
name and I eventually stopped writing articles  

My wife and kids are Irish and I find life here much easier than it was
in Paris. So they’re happy here and I’m happy as well. I love to go back
to France now and then but I’m here in Ireland for good now. I should
soon have dual-citizenship.

- What are the future plans of Mint?

Our main focus is on making Linux Mint 5 Elyssa which will be based on a
long term support release from Ubuntu. We’re consolidating the project
and putting emphasis on improving what’s already in Linux Mint. In
particular mintMenu, mintUpdate and mintInstall have been hugely
improved. We’re also putting efforts in localization and making sure
mint tools support as many languages as possible. A road-map is
available here: Elyssa Roadmap

- Do you think it’s possible that LinuxMint would became a “real” company like Red Hat, Mandriva, Canonical…?

An Ireland-based company is already being formed. It’s called SYSLIN. At
the moment it’s only meant to register the income generated by Linux
Mint with the Irish taxation system but it should start to employ people
in the future to work full time on the distribution, when and if the
income allows us to do this.

If we’re successful on the business market with an upcoming enterprise
desktop we might also expand our support activities and create other
sources of income. Whether this is directly related to SYSLIN, to Linux
Mint or to some other company is hard to say at the moment, but if it is
successful it will definitely make it easier for us to achieve the same
thing: hire people to work full time on the distribution.

So I’d say, yes, hopefully we will grow into a company. Whether that
company is called Linux Mint or whether Linux Mint is the community
project sponsored by this company, it’s too soon for us to know  

- Could You tell us, why you’re using GNOME as the default desktop?

Gnome looks very much like a finished product. It’s polished and easy to
use. It’s simple for novice users to understand and it integrates well
with most popular applications.

- Please tell us about the plans of LinuxMint for 2008!

Wait, didn’t you just ask me that?  Right. So basically we want to
release Linux Mint 5 in May and have people use it for the next 3 years.
We want to start supporting x64, we want to put more focus and efforts
into our KDE edition and in November we want to be more adventurous and
push innovations into Linux Mint 6.

We’re looking into the LTS (Long Term Support) aspects of the upcoming
release and we don’t only want to support security updates for it but
also new releases of Mint tools and new releases of popular desktop
applications, so that at anytime in the next 3 years people wouldn’t
feel like they’re running something obsolete by running Linux Mint 5,
even compared to Linux Mint 6, 7, and so on.

- There were some troubles with the E17 CE maintainer and some of your team - so, would you say, there will never be an E17 CE of Mint? Or are you looking for a new maintainer?


We never got any ISO to test from that maintainer and the troubles
simply came from the fact that he was making public announcements about
the release and we were insisting on testing it and releasing it
ourselves. We never had anything to do with any ISO and it’s better now
that his project is completely separate from us. I wish him luck with
this and as for us we’re still at the same point: We do not have any E17
edition. We’re not looking for one. Community editions are by and for
the community. If somebody steps up and wants to take on an E17 edition
we’ll help out but at present we don’t have any plans on this.

- What’s most important for you?

“Fun” of course, it’s all about fun  There are new challenges every
day and some of the tasks are not always exciting but overall it’s a lot
of fun to develop new products, look after the distribution and interact
with the community. The project grows and changes over time, but it’s
still extremely interesting. I hope our users are having as much fun
with Linux Mint as we are making it and that no matter how busy we are
and how numerous they get we can still interact one with another and
learn from each others.

-  Thank You!

Thanks to you!

[wanda-r]

Jetzt noch im Deutsch sprache , sicher was betrift das teil uber LTS und ich ware sehr happy.
Ja ich weis es ist viel arbeidt und alles freiwillig.
Grussie Tom.

[neo67]

Jetzt noch im Deutsch sprache , sicher was betrift das teil uber LTS und ich ware sehr happy.
Ja ich weis es ist viel arbeidt und alles freiwillig.
Grussie Tom.

Wir arbeiten daran.

neo67

[wanda-r]

Danke warste ein frau ...........machte ich ein heiratsantrag.
Grtz Tom