The creator of Linux Mint, Clement Lefebvre, made some very interesting statements

Mar 24, 2014 10:07 GMT  ·  By

The new Linux Mint 17 “Qiana” was announced by its creator, Clement Lefebvre, just a few days ago, but the developer also made a series of comments regarding the future of the distribution.

Linux Mint is a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu, but that wasn't always the case. Now, the creator of Linux Mint has just announced Linux Mint 17 “Qiana,” which will be released almost a couple of months after Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) is made available.

The community has been wondering what the plans for the next versions of Linux Mint are, given the fact that the version of Ubuntu that is about to launch is an LTS one. The main concern was that six months from now, when the new Ubuntu 14.10 is released, Linux Mint will follow soon with a new version based on the new Ubuntu.

This would have been a rather strange decision for the developers of Linux Mint, because Qiana” is an LTS release, and the next versions would not be as attractive. Clement Lefebvre put those concerns to rest by announcing that the next three Linux Mint releases would be also based, most likely, on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.

One of the members of the community asked Clem in a comment if he intended “to pass by Ubuntu’s next three normal releases, i.e. to drop their base because they are far too short to be supported effectively?”

“The decision wasn’t made yet, and after/if it is made we can always adapt it based on how things go. The length of the support is an element but it’s not the most important one at play. There’s also an element of quality and a wish to run mature and proven software rather than to jump on brand new frameworks, techs and toolkits every 6 months.”

“So the idea is to boost all that by only adapting to new bases once every 2 years, to better commit to that one base shared by all releases and to better support it, and to have our hands freed to do exciting stuff. Note that all will become important post-Qiana though, around November 2014,” responded Clement Lefebvre.

Linux Mint is the next most used distribution after Ubuntu, and its developers are also responsible for the Cinnamon desktop environment, one of the many replacements for GNOME2. It the developers of Mint are able to keep their promise, it's very likely that we'll see some very interesting developments on the Mint front in the next couple of years.