rolling release

[stolennomenclature]

I have started using the Debian Edition of Linux Mint, and so far has proved to be the best Linux experience I have ever had, and I have converted almost all my PC's over to it. There is one thing about LMDE that surprises me though, and that concerns it's status as a rolling distribution based on Debian. So far there have been very few updates to the software, and the few that have occurred have only involved a few applications, and then most of them have been Mint specific applications. I cannot believe that in this time frame there has not been literally thousands of updates made to the Debian repositories. The low number of updates seems particularly odd since the many other distros I have tried, none described as rolling distributions, including Fedora and Ubuntu, have had literally hundreds of updates in the same time frame. I had expected a rolling distro to have at least as many if not more than a non-rolling distro. LMDE has had the fewest updates of any distro I have ever used.

My question then is is the current situation with LMDE typical and just how many Debian updates will ever make there way into LMDE?

[zerozero]

welcome to the forums and to lmde
some if not all of those questions are probably answered here >> viewtopic.php?f=197&t=91405
if you still have any question after that, please do ask

[cwwgateway]

I don't know if its said in the thread zerozero posted (I read it, but it was a while ago), but Update Pack 5, which will be the newest UP once it's released, should be released shortly (I think there's only one update that's holding it back).

[zerozero]

cww, no, there's no specific mention to UP5 and good point because i have to make there some updates: this new mint-debian-mirrors makes obsolete the info about mirrors.

[millpond]

Having gone through this issue recently with LMDE perhaps it can be summed up better than that link above:

LMDE is really *Debian* as opposed to Ubuntu.

Check /etc/os-release. Also your /etc/apt/sources.list.
If it says Squeeze, you are on the stable release, so dont expect much in the realm of updates.

Rolling releases mean a permanent state of *Testing* which should display as Wheezy/Sid until Wheezy is officially released.
In short, Beta.

If you are on a production (read business) machine, stick to stable releases.
If you are on a personal machine the 'beta' rolling releases will be quite satisfactory but be prepared to do some tweaking from time to time.

Even testing right now is sparse on updates until the coming release date.
I accidentally 'upgraded to Wheezy/Sid, and am glad I did.
However, being Beta the video driver nearly blew up my monitor with the 'default' refresh rate.