There may be some more changes. I'll update here if those happen. We're hoping these changes make the forums more effective and easier to navigate.
1 - Main Edition Support
- Newbie Questions renamed to Beginner Questions. Changed the forum description to make more clear this is for quick to answer questions.
- Virtualization subforum renamed to Virtual Machines and moved out of the Software & Applications forum.
- Networking subforums collapsed into the Networking forum; we think the subdivision didn't help much.
- The KDE and Others forums under Desktops & Window Managers were removed (topics moved into Software & Applications). While some users still want to run KDE, and that's fine, over the past 12 months there were just 5 topics here. The Others forum had become to be mostly about things other than other desktop & window managers.
Rename of Newbie Questions forum was also done here.
3 - Interests
This is a new forums section. The Gaming forum from the Chat forums and the Scripts & Bash forum from the Personalize and Customize Linux Mint were moved here. The Community Projects forum from the Development forums was broadened in purpose and renamed to Programming & Development and moved here. Its purpose is now for general programming topics and for getting involved with Linux Mint development.
4 - Customization (renamed from Personalize and Customize Linux Mint)
- Screenshots forum was moved out of the Themes, Icons & Wallpaper forum.
- Artwork forum from the Development forums was renamed to Your Artwork and moved here.
- About Mint Editions subforum was merged into the Chat about Linux Mint forum.
- Suggestions & New Ideas forum and Promotion forum from the Development forums were merged into the Suggestions & Feedback forum and moved here. Broadened in purpose to be about giving suggestions and feedback on Linux Mint and the forums. Feature requests for Linux Mint developed software are best made on GitHub, I added a sticky topic to clarify that.
- Translations forum from the Development forums was moved here.
- Dutch, Finnish, Portuguese and Russian were originally subforums under Other Languages but are now full forums.
- Due to very low activity and very few replies on topics the Norwegian and Polish subforums have been removed. I'm sorry to those that did make use of these.
- All the forums have an updated and localized description. (If anybody spots a translation mistake please PM me.)
- With the Other Languages forum no longer having any subforums it is repurposed and now links to the list of local communities on the main website. Those that don't speak English well or any of the languages listed here can hopefully find a local community where they can speak their language to get help with Linux Mint.
7 - We're considering what would be most efficient for the Hardware Support forums under Main Edition Support. Currently this is subdivided into subforums (and sound hardware problems end up under Sound, Multimedia, & Codecs). Should we keep it like that? Collapse it like was done for the Networking subforums. Or promote Hardware Support to a top level forums, next after Main Edition Support, with the subforums being more clearly navigatable as forums there.
8 - Similarly considering what would be most efficient for the Cinnamon, MATE and Xfce subforums under Desktops & Window Managers. I have the impression "desktops & window managers" is Linux technobabble for many new users but at the same time having a place to ask for help with configuring or problems specifically about the the desktop manager one is using can be useful. Should we rename them to Cinnamon Desktop, MATE Desktop and Xfce Desktop and moved them one level up to be forums directly in Main Edition Support?
Feedback and thoughts are welcome. Here or you can PM me, as several members have already done (thanks!). About the changes done, about the changes we're considering or about forums I didn't touch upon in above.