Mint lmde cinnamon and debian Jessie repositories

[pieri70]

Hello all I'm new to mint I was using Ubuntu for many years before (not really a super skilled user.)
I installed mint lmde cinnamon 201403 on my laptop and it all works great.
Then I wanted to install a full Gis environment with qgis testing repository for debian testing.
Apt tells me there are missing dependencies so I added debian testing official repositories to my sources . list.
Apt now tells me there are more than 1000 packages to be upgraded, is it possible to upgrade by debian Jessie repositories?
Excuse me if this is the 10.000th time this question is made
bye
pietro

[xenopeek]

Well, you should make a choice. Do you want to:
- Use LMDE?
- Use Debian testing?

You can't do both as you are now doing; that will break stuff. The way you have set this up (not set apt priority for Debian testing lower) will basically convert your system to Debian testing--while keeping bits of LMDE around. This will eventually break your installation.

[pieri70]

Thanks xenopeek
that was my impression, so I didn't upgrade anything...
I thought that LMDE was fully based on debian testing, and I didn't think there were many differencies..
I need packages that are in jessie, so I think I'll go for it.
It's a pity because I really liked the UI of mint LMDE.

Bye
Pietro

[Monsta]

Apt tells me there are missing dependencies so I added debian testing official repositories to my sources . list.
Apt now tells me there are more than 1000 packages to be upgraded, is it possible to upgrade by debian Jessie repositories?

No need to upgrade (it will break your Cinnamon), just install what you need, then remove Testing repos.

[pieri70]

Hello monsta
That's a good solution..
On the other hand, do you think that if I Install cinnamon /Nemo on top of Jessie I can get some user experience similar to mint lmde?
Bye

Inviato dal mio GT-N7100 utilizzando Tapatalk

[turtlebay777]

Well, you should make a choice. Do you want to:
- Use LMDE?
- Use Debian testing?

You can't do both as you are now doing; that will break stuff. The way you have set this up (not set apt priority for Debian testing lower) will basically convert your system to Debian testing--while keeping bits of LMDE around. This will eventually break your installation.

Er, excuse me!

On the introduction to LMDE it says " Clement Lefebvre has announced the release of Linux Mint 201403 "Debian", the distribution's rolling-release variant based on Debian's "Testing" branch " - http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=08323

Above you have just said LMDE is not based on Testing whilst Clem says it is.

Who is right, Clem or Xenopeek? It sure as heck isn't based on Ubuntu!

[millpond]

Well, you should make a choice. Do you want to:
- Use LMDE?
- Use Debian testing?

You can't do both as you are now doing; that will break stuff. The way you have set this up (not set apt priority for Debian testing lower) will basically convert your system to Debian testing--while keeping bits of LMDE around. This will eventually break your installation.

Thank you for clarifying this issue, as it has always benn clear as mud.

As my system is essentially a hybrid, and I use KDE/XFCE most of the time, i guess the main question should be whether I should dump LMDE altogether, and stay pure Debian Testing.

I assume that jesse has the more frequent update cycle. I am certainly getting frequent updates here.

With around 13,000 packages migrated/migrating from Wheezy to Jesse the main problems I have run across were libnfs4 driving the system nuts as it is the exact same as libnfs1. And emacs24 problems only fixable by yanking it out of the status file.

Has anyone ever enumerated the main differences between the two distros?
Or expected problems between the packages?

[xenopeek]

Perhaps with KDE and Xfce you would get away with it, but with Cinnamon and MATE not I think. Any packages you've installed from the LMDE repository (please actually have a look: http://packages.linuxmint.com/list.php?release=Debian) are compatible with the LMDE updates pack only. Update packs are snapshots at a certain time of Debian testing, with changes applied where needed to fix issues. As you move on in time with Debian testing you are increasing the gap between your package base (Debian testing) and the LMDE package base (latest update pack)--eventually differences in libraries and other dependencies will cause your system to break.

Now I hear you thinking, "but okay I wanted to use it with KDE or Xfce anyway"--to which my question then would be, have a look again in the LMDE repository (what Linux Mint adds on top of the snapshot from Debian testing). Do you install any packages from there? If not, you're basically using the LMDE installer to install Debian testing in a complicated way

But let's be clear I don't want to drive you away from using LMDE if that is what you want to use. But stop and think if you're using the best tool for the job.

[millpond]

Hmmm....
Things are finally starting to make sense.

Let me explain.

A while back a colleague recommended LMDE and I installed it.
I was so impressed by it with its options for multiple window managers, and the idea of a rolling release (avter never being able to do a successful version update with Ubuntu) that i scrapped my Ubuntu and Fedora installs and added the drives to LMDE.

All was well as i created a rather large development system. (Though I am not a programmer!).

It defaulted to KDE, Oxygen, and I was happy ith it, though I would boot into Cinnamon (which it complained in the background about) or XFCE, especially when I was specially busy, and needed to boot as root.

Then one day it hit.
A massive wave of upgrades, that wouldnt let me come up for air.
After a few days of the hurricane I noticed that somehow I was in something called Wheezy on some screens, and Mint on others. Hells bells, I figured, it was *Debian* Mint, so all was well.

As time went by I added a collection of repos, especially for programming type utils.

Now and then there would be a truculent package that would not install, and that I would need to eviscerate from the system.

Last year i was hit by another tidal wave.
But things kept breaking, and I was too busy working on a Java project, so I switched to Win until I got a round tuit.
It arrived in early spring, and I was off and running again in Linux, with a new wave of updates that seemed to fix the old.
It was a joyous, frabjous day.

But something strange happened.
Cinnamon disappeared, and I couldn't boot into anything resembling Gnome.

Win some, lose some. Everything that I wanted to, worked. Only a couple recalcitrant packages needed eradication.
Out of 18,000.

I normally update out of the command line or Synaptic, and typically ignore the Update Manager. Today i took a look, and under a tab I never went defore it is complaining about having both Debian and Mint repos. it said I was on Update pack 8. Is that jesse? I take it that Mint is a special subset of Jesse/testing.

If forced to choose between them, I would have to go with Debian, simply becuase it is around twice the size and some programs do seem like they need updates to get back to fully working, like gnome-commander.

HOWEVER... isnt there a way to prioritize repos, so that I can have Debian take precedence over Mint?
Ideally i would like to have the option of even booting into Mint\Gnome as multi window managers was one of the key selling points of LMDE, to me at least.

I took a look at Cinnamon today in a Mint17 DVD and I dont particularly see anything extra in thaere that I dont use already in XFCE, but I do hope that the KDE and Gnome forks do not diverge enough to cause problems with apps that are normally interoperative.

Perhaps one reason I may be a bit fortunate as to have an unbroken frankensystem as such, is that I never delete *any* orphans. I compile a bunch of stuff and dont dare delete anything because a mere package manager doesnt know about it...

I dont know if this is relevant: But currently on sysnatic I do not see duplicates like I used to, apparently the same files from dissferent sditros. Also Girl used to give me problems, but doesnt seem to anymore.

Off to bed....

[killer de bug]

On the introduction to LMDE it says " Clement Lefebvre has announced the release of Linux Mint 201403 "Debian", the distribution's rolling-release variant based on Debian's "Testing" branch " - http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=08323

Above you have just said LMDE is not based on Testing whilst Clem says it is.

Who is right, Clem or Xenopeek? It sure as heck isn't based on Ubuntu!

'Based on' is not the same as 'is exactly'... So both Clem and xenopeek are right.

[xenopeek]

I normally update out of the command line or Synaptic, and typically ignore the Update Manager. Today i took a look, and under a tab I never went defore it is complaining about having both Debian and Mint repos. it said I was on Update pack 8. Is that jesse? I take it that Mint is a special subset of Jesse/testing.

As I think I explained already, update packs are what Linux Mint uses. Take a snapshot of the entire Debian testing repository, do integration testing with the Linux Mint added software (Cinnamon, MATE), fix any issues that come up by downgrading/upgrading packages as needed from the Debian testing base, then freeze that entire set and call it an "update pack". The update manager lets you go from one update pack to the next for all the packages that originally come from Debian testing. Any others, like the Linux Mint added software repository that I linked you to, or any other repositories that you add, can update at any time and are not included in the update pack.

If forced to choose between them, I would have to go with Debian, simply becuase it is around twice the size and some programs do seem like they need updates to get back to fully working, like gnome-commander.

This is not true--the update packs are a snapshot of the entire Debian testing repository. Perhaps you should educate yourself about the life-cycle of a Debian release: http://debian-handbook.info/browse/stab ... cycle.html. Update packs being a snapshot means that some packages might not be included in it if they hadn't been available in Debian testing at the time the snapshot was taken. That happens somewhat frequently--packages get kicked out of Debian testing for various reasons, and once their maintainers fix whatever was wrong with them those packages eventually get included in Debian testing again. That would not be visible in LMDE until a next update pack, of course.

HOWEVER... isnt there a way to prioritize repos, so that I can have Debian take precedence over Mint?

Then you have missed what I tried to convene to you. If you do that, you break LMDE and in any case it then is largely pointless to use LMDE as --again-- you are using the LMDE installer to in a very convoluted and risky process install Debian testing...

If you want to mix them, you should set apt preferences for Debian testing repositories lower than LMDE repositories. So that the only way you can install a package from Debian testing is when you explicitly tell your package manager to install that one, instead of the LMDE one. That would be a way around any packages missing from LMDE that have since the last update pack founds its way back into Debian testing. There are probably others here doing just that, who can advise you on it.

BTW you can track the current status of a package in Debian using PTS: https://packages.qa.debian.org/common/index.html

[Monsta]

the update packs are a snapshot of the entire Debian testing repository

I'll tell you more than that: they are the snapshots of the whole Debian package repository. When doing a snapshot, you can't just cherry-pick only "testing" packages from there: in pool subdirectory there are the packages from all currently supported Debian releases. What release each package belongs to is determined in the files in dists subdirectory. Therefore picking the packages only from Testing would require quite a lot of work I think.

For example, you can find Debian Squeeze's libssl0.9.8 right there at debian.linuxmint.com - even though this package isn't in Testing or Stable repos. And you can even change "testing" to "squeeze" or "wheezy" or something else in your sources list while still pointing them to debian.linuxmint.com - though it's pointless in LMDE.

[millpond]

OK Its starting to become clear now.

LMDE is not a *subset* of Debian - it is a *superset* that includes the LMDE extra Window Managers.

Why is Debian 'hostile' to them?
Why is there no option to choose between GDM and KDM based WMs?

I just did an apt update|upgrade with Mint repos commented out.

I am in the process of seeing if that fixes some Emacs24 problems I was having.
If it doesnt I'll try the obverse!

I like the idea of LMDE being all inclusive. I DONT like the idea of perfectly functioning software being deprecated becuase they are not 'maintained' or regualrly updated.

So here are my concerns:
If I keep to pure LMDE repos during upgrades and go about installing the Mate/Cinnamon/lMDE packs - will i lose access to my KDE WMs? Will it affect multi-system options at the login screen?

When I am in scripting mode, most of the system is rooted, so i am naturally concerend about security updates. May I assume that any exploit patches will get *quickly* thorugh the LMDE update process as it *appears* to do on Debian Testing?

Once again: the two PRIMARY attractions to LMDE were 1)multiple choice at login *and* 2)rolling updates.
The Window managers are a secondary consideration.

If LMDE is more copmprehensive in software I would definitely choose it, as i do not mind being a few months behind. But it is not clear how FAR LMDE lags Testing...

Is the multi-WM options still there in full LMDE?

I understand that the Jesse based version of LMDE isnt out yet. Is this correct? Or is this UP8?

Another importand consideration is the update cycle in regards to Perl and Java. (Though i have scripts to update Perl directly from CPAN...).

[kurotsugi]

please allow me to answer some of your questions

If I keep to pure LMDE repos during upgrades and go about installing the Mate/Cinnamon/lMDE packs - will i lose access to my KDE WMs? Will it affect multi-system options at the login screen?

as long as MDM is alive you can access all DE installed in your system. no worry about it :3

When I am in scripting mode, most of the system is rooted, so i am naturally concerend about security updates. May I assume that any exploit patches will get *quickly* thorugh the LMDE update process as it *appears* to do on Debian Testing?

at this time. no. LMDE's security patch generally comes along with UP. it means you didn't got security patch until next UP comes.

Once again: the two PRIMARY attractions to LMDE were 1)multiple choice at login *and* 2)rolling updates.
If LMDE is more copmprehensive in software I would definitely choose it, as i do not mind being a few months behind. But it is not clear how FAR LMDE lags Testing...

you can count the lag from the latest UP. if I'm not mistaken the previous UP was on february/april so that we have 4/5 month lags from testing. the additional software was firefox, thunderbird, and mint specific tools. if you didn't really care about the lags LMDE is a good choice for you.

Is the multi-WM options still there in full LMDE?
I understand that the Jesse based version of LMDE isnt out yet. Is this correct? Or is this UP8?

yes it is. it also true for most DM. jessie is the current testing. we already using jessy as our LMDE base.

Another importand consideration is the update cycle in regards to Perl and Java.

updates only comes along with UP. the package on the repo generally didn't got updated until next UP.

these questions needs longer answer but I'll try to make it short.

Why is Debian 'hostile' to them?
Why is there no option to choose between GDM and KDM based WMs?

debian wasn't hostile to LMDE. the only thing killed by debian's updates is cinnamon. you can use LMDE along with debian testing as long as you have another DE like XFCE, KDE, or MATE.
you can choose the DM used in your system by sudo dpkg-configure <once of your DM name> for an instance, if you want to switch from MDM to GDM you'll use sudo dpgk-configure gdm. you can also use update-alternatives.

anyway, I'd like to clear some stuffs. GDM and KDM are Display Manager (DM), not a Windows Manager (WM). AFAIK the DM isn't strictly tied with WM. for an instance, if you have lightdm you can easily switch between gnome, mate, cinnamon, XFCE and KDE. it generally doesn't really matter what DM used in your system.