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Okay, I've had LMDE installed for about 3 months now and I've never had any type of update (aside from google chrome)

Here is my /etc/apt/sources.list

You're not aware that Debian Testing is now frozen since the end of June. That means nothing new is coming into Testing from Sid until after Debian 7.0 "Wheezy" is released. Once that happens, a torrent of updated packages will flood into Testing as the development cycle begins anew. Another complicating factor is that LMDE intercepts updates to Testing, ensures they're safe, perhaps patches where appropriate and then releases them in bundles called Update Packs. This policy ensures that Mint users enjoy a consistent, stable experience and Mint can maintain a modicum of control over breakages due to troublesome updates, which can happen when using Debian's Testing repository. I have it on good authority that update Pack 5 for LMDE is imminent and will probably contain the latest Gnome 3.4.x and an updated Cinnamon version. While you're perfectly free to change your sources to track Debian Testing directly, or even to Sid (Unstable) and thus receive updates more quickly, this will likely break your system if you don't know what you're doing. For example, the version of Cinnamon for LMDE is currently incompatible with Gnome 3.4, which was released to Debian Testing a few weeks ago. Furthermore, if you want to track Debian Sid, then there are distributions that are designed for exactly that (Siduction, Aptosid) and their communities will be in a better position to help you should things go awry. Note that most distributions who track Sid favor KDE supporting Gnome as an afterthought if at all. If you're going to switch to a Sid based distro, may I recommend Siduction as it's community is much friendlier than Aptosid's where many users act like arrogant pricks who like to condescend to users and bristle at questions from newbies. Steer clear!

venom104 wrote:Okay, I've had LMDE installed for about 3 months now and I've never had any type of update (aside from google chrome)

Here is my /etc/apt/sources.list

Code: Select all

deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import backport romeo
deb-src http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import backport romeo #Added by software-properties
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest testing main contrib non-free
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest/security testing/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest/multimedia testing main non-free
#firefox
#deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian experimental main
#deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org wheezy main

There are not daily or weekly updates for the LMDE users (as would happen if you used other distros), there are update packages, they were supposed to be released every month (similar to windows update), but they are actually released every two or three months. The reason why this update package system was implemented is really well explained in the Zorazero's FAQ (http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=197&t=91405) , to sum up I would say that this system makes your system more stable, but from my point of view the price you pay for this stability might be pretty high as far as security is concerned.

Anyway a new update package is supposed to be released in the next weeks, and of course you are free to switch to debian repos (I would never advise a newbie to point to Debian sid repos)

Can we stop referring to it as a rolling release ? There wasn't many updates before the freeze.

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notty wrote:Can we stop referring to it as a rolling release ? There wasn't many updates before the freeze.

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Technically, it still is a rolling release.

notty wrote:Can we stop referring to it as a rolling release ? There wasn't many updates before the freeze.

Sent from my Nexus S using Tapatalk 2

It was referred to as a rolling release early on but after the project matured a bit and the developers got a grasp on how they wanted to handle updates its description was changed to that of a semi rolling release. It was all posted to the blog if memory serves. Enjoy