Known Problems - Linux Mint Debian Gnome and XFCE

[Beardedragon]

1) Is this still true? "The Update Manager used in LMDE is the same as the one in other editions of Linux Mint. No adaptation or changes were made yet to accomodate it to the rolling nature of LMDE."
2) If it is true then why are there so many problems with updates?
3) If true then why isn't it fixed yet?
4) If not true then why hasn't the warnings been updated?

[malligt]

The nicest answer I can offer you is to go through and read the LMDE Breakages thread....yes, I know its 26+ pages. Contained throughout the thread are bits and pieces of a "Work-In-Progress" with regards to Mint Update.

Somewhere within that 26 pages are some advice from Clem to activate levels 1 thru 5 when using mint update in LMDE. Personally, I've done that. And, yes there is a breakage today (xchat). But, there has been noticeable progress in the efficiency of MU, and hopefully more to come this month.

I would not recommend levels 1-5 on the ubuntu based releases (ie Mint 9, Mint 10, Mint 11).

Hope this helps.

[Beardedragon]

The nicest answer I can offer you is to go through and read the LMDE Breakages thread....yes, I know its 26+ pages. Contained throughout the thread are bits and pieces of a "Work-In-Progress" with regards to Mint Update.

Somewhere within that 26 pages are some advice from Clem to activate levels 1 thru 5 when using mint update in LMDE. Personally, I've done that. And, yes there is a breakage today (xchat). But, there has been noticeable progress in the efficiency of MU, and hopefully more to come this month.

I would not recommend levels 1-5 on the ubuntu based releases (ie Mint 9, Mint 10, Mint 11).

Hope this helps.

I've kept up with that thread and many others, Activating anything past 3 is tantamount to asking for problems. Even though I am up to the task of waiting out fixes and working with cli, I appreciate your trying to be nice about this. I have LMDX running in a separate partition and it is never up to par. Even running

Code: Select all

sudo aptitude update && aptitude dist-upgrade

has not fully brought things up to date. I have to wonder if this is a true rolling release?

[Dr G]

It is a rolling release. However, it may not be rolling as fast as you might prefer.

As the user, you need to decide what you want. Do you want the slower release schedule that characterizes distributions based on debian-testing, or do you want something faster (e.g., Arch). Faster may sound interesting, but it's also closer to the bleeding edge (it requires, at a minimum, a much greater willingness to get dirty).

Those (like me) who are better suited to LMDE, recognize that we have only limited time to maintain our systems (I am not in an IT related field), and therefore are willing to trade off rapid development in favor of system stability. For those apps that I need/prefer to keep more current, I dip into sid. Risky? Of course. Especially if you don't take extreme care (my sid dipping is limited to Chromium). In fact, I've been so pleased that I've moved multiple personal systems to LMDE (one fairly dated HP laptop, one somewhat newer Samsung netbook, and my year old ASUS laptop). All have proven rock-solid stable, despite their very disparate nature.

Please note, the above is not meant to imply that LMDE is an install it and forget it tool. . . but, it certainly seems to be approaching that level of stability.

By the way, with LMDE I've also set my updates to levels 1 - 5 on all 3 systems and not been appreciably bitten. If that sounds risky to you, I suggest you consider Mint 11. It's not a rolling release, but the concept of a rolling release is still fairly young. I'm not aware of any rolling release that does not require some maintenance. Still, it's more convenient than the 12 or 6 month reinstallation path, and far less hassle than the daily virus/malware update (that never really secures your system anyway).

[Beardedragon]

If that sounds risky to you, I suggest you consider Mint 11. It's not a rolling release, but the concept of a rolling release is still fairly young. I'm not aware of any rolling release that does not require some maintenance. Still, it's more convenient than the 12 or 6 month reinstallation path, and far less hassle than the daily virus/malware update (that never really secures your system anyway).

Thanks, I have Linux Mint 11 on a DVD Live, It did not impress me. I think they are leaning towards Debian and have more or less given up on Ubuntu, I don't blame them for that. I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty, but. some distros are hard to install. I'm currently getting used to working with Gparted for this future need. In fact I have used it to do the partitioning for all three of my current systems.