I've never had a use for Linux Mint myself, but I'm still happy to see them cut out the middle man and base it directly off of Debian. Hopefully being closer to the source will result in even more upstream contributions.
Oh, no. They consider Ubuntu the best APT base out there, and even after some trouble with Canonical, they insist on basing Mint on Ubuntu. This is a plan B, it came precisely after the differences between Mint and Ubuntu were public, but I can't find any source of that episode between Canonical and Clemente Lefebvre.
EDIT: Found one.
Big thing about being based on Ubuntu is that the community support is the biggest. Any issue you find, you can google, and there's a 99% chance there'll be an answer for Ubuntu which can be applied as-is to Mint.
Ah, my bad. I thought LM was going all in on Debian. Well, I'm glad they're at least providing the option then.
They want to be able to provide the option should Ubuntu go off the reservation
Copypasting: (source)
The cautious approach for LMDE5 users: If your system is working fine and there are no especially must-have features in LMDE6, there is almost certainly no rush to upgrade. Take your time.
Make backups. Test backups. Play games. Work. Do things entirely unrelated to the distro.
You could even almost (aaalmost) completely forget about LMDE6 (but do keep an eye on the LM blog).
The Mint team haven't announced an EOL date for LMDE5 yet, but if past dates are anything to go by, it'll be at least 18 months before they pull the plug. Even then, LTS updates might still filter through from Debian proper.
[How many people will actually see this message and how many it actually applies to out of them might well include me and literally one other guy somewhere else on the planet, but if you're that one guy, breathe friend. No rush.]
Been using mint for a while on my main machine and I'm not keen on doing a reinstall, but the next time I do I'll definitely be looking at Debian edition.
If you don't have Nvidia gpu, then LMDE is better. It is slightly snappier and boots slightly faster.
Oh dang. It sucks to hear that my 10 year old GPU is still poorly supported.
I have a very old Nvidia GPU and am on LMDE5. The official legacy driver works fine for me. Can't speak for the open-source one.
Going to assume that LMDE6 will be similar when I get around to upgrading.
Oh boy, here I go distro-hopping again.
Just kidding - you can pry Slackware from my cold, dead hands.
Why do you use slackware?
It's more stable than Debian and more simple in design than Arch.
It basically doesn't do anything, except run your hardware and software, and that's all an OS should do.
Very excited to see this. After having been through the last few Ubuntu versions, they have made some very frustrating decisions that have made the system management side a real pain.
Can anyone tell me if the Debian Testing branch has been stable? I like Debian, and I like rolling release to be more up to date, so I was considering swapping from Fedora.
Either use Stable or Unstable. Testing is actually the most unstable of the three branches, due to how Debian works:
Updated packages are first introduced into Experimental, then into Unstable when they actually build and run. So Unstable is equivalent to Arch's main branch.
Then they automatically enter Testing after a few weeks without anyone reporting a critical bug.
What this means: Testing is the only branch where the decision over what enters isn't made by a human.
If someone notices critical bugs in Testing, the packages may be kicked out of Testing again until the bugs are fixed. So Testing is the only branch where packages can simply disappear when you run an update.
It's also the most insecure branch: When a vulnerability is discovered, the packages in Stable are patched to close it. The packages in Unstable are updated to a new version that closes it. In Testing, the vulnerability stays until the new version eventually migrates down the line again after spending a while in Unstable.
I've run Unstable for years. IMO it's a great rolling release distro with horrible branding.
Thanks for the info! I know what you mean that unstable is similar to Arch, but I know Arch has like a 3 day period or something like that before it hits the default "stable" repo. Is Unstable similar to that, or do they just raw dog it?
I've only been running Debian testing for a few weeks (hopped from Ubuntu dev), but I believe testing also has a 2 to 10 day period before pulling packages from unstable. Like after 10 days in unstable with no issues it automatically gets moved into testing, with more important updates getting a human moving it earlier.
So I’m showi my my extreme age but I remember when Mint was born as a sort of windows-like Ubuntu for easy migration. Has it carved out a reason for existing for folks that don’t want a windows like experience?
Their interface is familiar to Windows users but so is KDE and many things that aren’t GNOME. Primarily it is the flagship distro for Cinnamon, they put a lot of work into making the user experience seamless and their implementation of Cinnamon especially is much better than other distros that ship it as an option. They also co-founded MATE when GNOME 3 came out and have supported that forever.
Main thing for me is extremely sane defaults, just enough automation to simplify some things without it getting in the way, just enough customization without it being overwhelming or an eyesore (I hate KDE context menus). It’s been very good for getting out of the way so I can focus, I appreciate that it doesn’t have a ton of flying, shiny objects all over the place but still looks good, and I don’t have to add a ton of extensions to get it the way I like.
This. Mint is the only distro I've found where I've truly never needed the CLI if I didn't feel like using it.
It’s just a generally solid, stable, and easy to use distro. I use EndeavourOS nowadays, but when I was first getting started Mint was what I always returned to after spats of distro hopping. As far as it’s primary DE, Cinnamon, it’s less “windows like” and more “not gnome like”. Every DE that isn’t gnome could be called “windows like” in my experience.
More like Cinnamon being GNOME 2.5
Since GNOME 3 changed everything for better or worse.
Mostly worse.
I just installed it in a VM to check it out, as I'm not a Cinnamon guy usually, and I really like it! I need to try it out on metal and see how it handles games, but so far I'm really happy.
I wonder if they'll ever ditch Ubuntu and release a version based on Debian Sid.
Not Sid, but that's exactly that Mint LMDE is. Rather than being built on top of Ubuntu, it's built on top of Debian
Would this be analogous to Endeavor OS for Arch?
Yes. The Mint team have done all the work that you normally would have to with Debian, to give you a nice stable, fast and full featured desktop system.
Plus they keep Cinnamon up to date over the years. Even though the Debian base will remain the same (apart from any security patches/important updates) you'll always have the latest Cinnamon desktop and utilities from Mint like Timeshift, Warpinator etc
Btw Warpinator works like Airdrop. Install the app on your Android, pair to LMDE and you can easily send and receive files and photos between phone and desktop.
I would say Mint adds more to Debian than EndeavourOS adds to Arch.
For one thing, Mint has its own DE ( Cinnamon ). You can install this on other distros but it was made for Mint and it is the DE experience out-of-the-box on LMDE.
and also that being based on Debian LMDE is 100% community based.
At first I read it as "completely based" and wondered whether LMDE is also red pilled.
I'm excited to give it a try.
Well, time to try it. Hopefully XFCE runs well; Cinnamon is not to my liking at all.
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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