Any info for an LMDE newbie?

[Fred Barclay]

I've now got Cinnamon 2.6.7 in LMDE, but in Jessie it's Cinnamon 2.2.16-5, and that won't be changing in Jessie.

And that, in my opinion, is more than enough reason to choose Betsy over Jessie for my main system.

[MALsPa]

I've now got Cinnamon 2.6.7 in LMDE, but in Jessie it's Cinnamon 2.2.16-5, and that won't be changing in Jessie.

And that, in my opinion, is more than enough reason to choose Betsy over Jessie for my main system.

I can see how that would be a good reason for some to make that choice.

I have Jessie w/ KDE and Openbox on my main system, though.

"The latest and greatest" is not a priority for me, especially for my "primary" computer.

[killer de bug]

I can see how that would be a good reason for some to make that choice.
[...]
"The latest and greatest" is not a priority for me, especially for my "primary" computer.

Cinnamon is still young. The differences between 2.2 and 2.6 are huge. In terms of stability, memory consumption, features...
2.2 was released before the shift to the LTS version of Ubuntu. Therefore the development is now moving fast for Cinnamon.

So in this case, latest and greatest applies. The gap is huge between 2.2 and 2.6.

[MALsPa]

Good info, killer de bug. Maybe I'll check back after Cinnamon has matured for a couple more years, then. Can't see myself switching from Debian to LMDE (or to anything else) on my main computer, although I'm kinda enjoying playing around with LMDE 2 and Cinnamon on one of the other machines. I'm not one of those who's likely to change distros because of a particular desktop environment.

The huge gap that you mentioned would be a big factor for those who actually prefer Cinnamon over other environments, no doubt. I can't say that I've noticed much difference between Cinnamon in Jessie and Cinnamon in LMDE 2. But I haven't spent a great deal of time using Cinnamon, in either case.

I think the OP was looking for comments about the differences between LMDE and the "main" Mint version, and I kinda hijacked the thread (and, my apologies to the OP) to discuss the "What can I expect to be different about LMDE?" question from the perspective of "an LMDE newbie" visiting from Debian. The way the repos are set up, the process for updating the system, the up-to-date Mint packages, those are the main things I'm seeing. Seems to me that LMDE would certainly be a nice alternative to Debian Stable for many users. I'm always interested in anything based on the current Stable; Clem & Company have done an excellent job with this (no surprise here).

Thanks for the informative replies, but perhaps Mint users would appreciate a return to the intended topic.

[te7]

Thanks you guys for the very informative posts. Yes, the post I originally made was for the main differences between the regular Cinnamon edition and the LMDE edition. But with your posts I learned a lot about Debian and LMDE. Like I said I'm a seasoned intermediate Linux user. I've tried many Linux distros in VirtualBox, mainly to test the Qt software I develop in Linux (I do that on my VirtualBox Cinnamon machines), but also to check out the other distros. I've never tried straight Debian, but I think I might try it out in VirtualBox to see what I like and don't like about it. I have the Debian Administrator's Handbook. Should that be sufficient enough to read before installing it in VirtualBox? Any caveats for the VirtualBox install? Can I download a live-cd ISO for the install? Again, thanks for the posts. Much appreciated.

Thanks,
Best Regards,
Tom

[MALsPa]

Can I download a live-cd ISO for the install?

Yes, the you can do an installation with the live image -- I've done it here a few times. I didn't see any "Install" icon within the live session, though -- had to reboot and choose the installation option from the boot menu. After that it's just a normal Debian install.

[te7]

Thanks.

[MALsPa]

@ te7:

I'm kinda embarrassed to say that although I've been using various Linux distros for almost 10 years now, I have absolutely no experience with VirtualBox! Hard drive installations or live sessions, that's been about it for me. I suspect that web searches might provided better info to answer your questions than The Debian Administrator's Handbook (which hasn't been updated for Debian 8 yet, I don't think), but I could be totally wrong about that. Excuse my ignorance, but is the article linked below along the lines of what you'd be trying to do?

https://mralphaville.wordpress.com/2015 ... l-machine/

[te7]

Thanks for the link. I already installed Debian in VirtualBox. I used the Graphical Interface. It was pretty easy.