Linux Mint Founder Calls for Better Developer Support
Usually cheerful Clement ‘Clem’ Lefebvre says he "hasn't enjoyed" this development cycle.
Linux Mint is among the most popular and seemingly most easy to use Linux distributions. The Ubuntu-based distribution has built its loyal user base and has been growing ever since. However, the founder of Linux Mint seems to be burning out.
In the latest blog post, Linux Mint founder Clement ‘Clem’ Lefebvre wrote that he didn’t enjoy the latest development cycle as two of the most talented developers have been away. The project couldn’t make the performance improvements it expected.
“Boosting performance in the Muffin window manager hasn’t been, and still isn’t, straight forward,” he wrote.
Some frustration also seems to stem from the new logo and website design, “Feedback on the new website and logo brought a huge amount of incertitude,” Lefebvre said.
It seems he is also sensing the developer community of Linux Mint is not as energized as it once used to be. “For a team to work, developers need to feel like heroes. They want the same things as users, they are users, they were “only” users to start with. At some stage they decide to get involved and they start investing time, efforts and emotions into improving our project. What they’re looking for the most is support and happiness. They need feedback and information to understand bugs or feature requests and when they’re done implementing something, they need to feel like heroes, they literally do, that’s part of the reason they’re here really,” said Lefebvre.
It’s not certain if Lefebvre is tired of the project or it’s a momentary frustration with some core team members not showing up and negative feedback on some changes.
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