Migrating from Mint 10 to LMDE

[bradfrank]

Been mulling over moving to LMDE. I'm not afraid of the "rough edges" per se, but I did have some questions that hopefully you guys could answer.

a) I have a RAID5 that I built with mdadm. It's three 1TB SATA drives that gets mounted to /mnt (i.e. it is not part of the OS). I've read that I should create a conf file, but will this alone recognize the RAID once I wipe out Mint 10 and install LMDE? I ask with the understanding I would need to have a copy of the conf file as /etc sits on the OS drive.

b) Does LMDE detect non-free video drivers? I would still like my 3D video drivers installed, and Mint (like Ubuntu) finds and installs those drivers for me. By no means a deal-breaker but I'm curious. (It's an nVidia card.)

c) I would like to compare versions of packages I currently use with those in LMDE. As it is based on Debian Testing, would this be the correct place to look up package versions?

Thanks everyone!

[Rifester]

A and B I cannot answer for certain, C is yes! I have found that I really don't miss having the latest version of everything since I switched to LMDE. Stability has more then made up for any "missing" features... I would suggest searching for your video card and debian on google. Debian documentation is very good. I set up my card with Debian Squeeze & Compiz very easily (using debian documentation). With LMDE it all just worked...

[Gerd50]

Hi bradfrank,

B. should work too

but the LMDE Installer till now doesn't recognize Raid.

[zerozero]

Hi,

B- i think you are referring to jockey-gtk, the GUI application that installs the needed drivers in the system;
been that the case, no, LMDE doesn't have such a tool, is *buntu-specific and isn't ported upstream.

[pghjake]

For LMDE and proprietary video drivers I would recommend using either smxi or sgfxi script from smxi.org
wget smxi.org/smxi.zip will get them for you. Unzip to /usr/local/bin and run smxi for the full experience or sgfxi for video drivers only.
Follow the on screen instructions carefully when replacing nouveau driver with Nvidia proprietary as you will probably need to reboot and rerun sgfxi from non-X terminal to complete the install successfully.

[bradfrank]

Stability has more then made up for any "missing" features...

I would agree, but there's a couple instances where versions matter. For example, VLC didn't get audioscrobbling until 0.9.

Debian documentation is very good. I set up my card with Debian Squeeze & Compiz very easily (using debian documentation). With LMDE it all just worked...

Good news indeed!

the LMDE Installer till now doesn't recognize Raid.

That's okay, all I need is for LMDE to recognize the software RAID somehow. Because I built it from within Mint 10, I'm unsure how to make another system see the drives as RAID5.

i think you are referring to jockey-gtk, the GUI application that installs the needed drivers in the system;
been that the case, no, LMDE doesn't have such a tool, is *buntu-specific and isn't ported upstream.

That's it! I didn't know it had a name - thank you. Based on the other comments I'm getting, it sounds like even without jockey-gtk, installing non-free drivers shouldn't be an issue. I'm interested because I hope to run a couple games in Wine.

For LMDE and proprietary video drivers I would recommend using either smxi or sgfxi script from smxi.org
wget smxi.org/smxi.zip will get them for you. Unzip to /usr/local/bin and run smxi for the full experience or sgfxi for video drivers only.
Follow the on screen instructions carefully when replacing nouveau driver with Nvidia proprietary as you will probably need to reboot and rerun sgfxi from non-X terminal to complete the install successfully.

Thanks for the tip!

[zerozero]

Stability has more then made up for any "missing" features...

I would agree, but there's a couple instances where versions matter. For example, VLC didn't get audioscrobbling until 0.9.

At the moment VLC in Testing (the Debian suite LMDE is based upon) is 1.1.3.
Testing may not have the latest but isn't not far beyond.
And in the following link you can check the version numbers available in every Debian suite

http://packages.debian.org/search?suite ... ywords=vlc