What if Linux Mint moved away from Ubuntu?

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Reorx
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Re: What if Linux Mint moved away from Ubuntu?

Post by Reorx »

I think that if Mint moved away from Ubuntu, it would be a good thing.

I think LMDE is already a step in the direction of having a distro directly based on Debian. As progress is made the Mint developers will need Ubuntu less and less... While Ubuntu is drifting farther and farther in the wrong direction.

In the near future I see 2 incarnations of Mint - both Debian based. One incarnation has actual version numbers and is based on Debian stable. Numbered versions only come out when there is a new version of Debian stable. This incarnation is designed for folks who actually want to use their computers for productivity. Its primary goal is stability not being cutting edge. I know that that is uninteresting to many but it is what attracted me to Mint in the first place (LTS editions)... The support life is whatever support life Debian gives its stable versions.

The other incarnation will be called Linux Mint Rolling edition and LMR will be essentially the same as LMDE today. It is for the adventurous & cutting edge crowds. Its primary goals are using & developing cutting edge technology, and working out problems/bugs before incorporating improvements into the next numbered (stable) version.

Both incarnations will be available in the usual flavors of 32 & 64 bit, with and without codecs, various DEs (although the flagship will use Cinnamon), etc.

I think that this will become a reality on release of one of the upcoming LTS editions - either 17 or 21. I would love for it to be 17... the determining factor is probably going to be how quickly and radically Ubuntu deviates from the path that Mint wants to take... From my perspective, Mir is just another reason to make the transition to Debian based sooner rather than later...

And if the Mint team does a really good job of producing a Debian based distro that produces 1 new version number every 2 years (or so) instead of every 6 months, maybe we will see the number of Mint base distros grow! :D

Go Team Mint!
Last edited by Reorx on Sun Jun 30, 2013 10:49 am, edited 2 times in total.
Full time Linux Mint user since 2011 - Currently running LM21C on multiple Dell laptops - mostly Vostro models.

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samriggs

Re: What if Linux Mint moved away from Ubuntu?

Post by samriggs »

I can only hope that if/when the graphics drivers from AMD and Nvidia come out, that they support both Mir and Wayland. So far though, not a peep has been spoken from their camps about any of this...
and therein lies the rub.
RavenLX

Re: What if Linux Mint moved away from Ubuntu?

Post by RavenLX »

What's Mir? What's Wayland? Never heard of these before.
Nilla Wafer

Re: Linux Mint drops Ubuntu forever !!!!!!!!

Post by Nilla Wafer »

eanfrid wrote: A smart move could be for Linux Mint to focus and use only Ubuntu LTS releases as a working base, ditching the interim Ubuntu releases.

During the 2 years interval between Ubuntu LTS, LM could then work on its own brand and custom tools. So the dev team could deliver a rolling release based on Ubuntu LTS backports and/or deliver its own branded "point" releases with the new versions of its own custom tools and layers like Cinnamon, MATE and Mint-specific features. Kind of a LMULE - Linux Mint Ubuntu-LTS Edition - with a better support cycle than LMDE has today.
That would be AWESOME for 'fraidycat newbies like me, but also awesome for desktop users who need stability and reliablity more than all the latest cutting-edge bling. And it would surely lighten the Mint Team's workload I suppose.

~Nilla Wafer
exploder
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Re: What if Linux Mint moved away from Ubuntu?

Post by exploder »

I love what Clem is doing with Cinnamon and Mate but I just do not see Mint moving away from a Ubuntu base. Ubuntu based systems nearly never work with my hardware and I find myself looking elsewhere for distros that will run on my computers. I do have Mint running on my kid's computer and they really like Cinnamon. Ubuntu decreasing the length of support for their non LTS releases makes them a poor choice in my opinion.

I really like Cinnamon myself and I really like how Clem has taken his own direction with things rather than just following Ubuntu. Ubuntu's hardware support is just so hit and miss and updates that should be safe always seem to break my installs. I used to think the LTS versions were a pretty safe bet but after my ATI graphics were trashed on my laptop I no longer trust the LTS releases.

Clem does amazing work and Cinnamon has progressed in development so rapidly. I really wish I could run Mint on my desktop and laptop. Unfortunately for me the Ubuntu base just will not run decent on my machines. I have noticed a decline in people testing development releases in the Ubuntu forum. Ubuntu is doing more behind closed doors these days and with such a short length of support on non LTS releases many of us do not feel it is worth the time to participate in development anymore.
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Re: What if Linux Mint moved away from Ubuntu?

Post by rustguard »

I not long ago installed mint(mate) on my netbook. could not get the broadcom to work for some reason, although also have a broadcom in GF's laptop but it was no prolem to sort out with that. I decided to try LMDE :shock: it had been droped :shock: . but found my way to solydx. I was very impressed wireless worked out of the box; well had to enable it in the DDM, which poped up on the welcome screen. brillant.
I maybe could be a mint fanboy :( slightly. I think mint13 really ended any doubts I had about just how good mint is.
Anyway back to the net book- I decided to go on a mini crusade and just see what else is happening. Well Pclinuxos, solydxk, and Manjaro xfce, these really stood out. I did alot of installs for weeks sometime 2 in a day. All on the netbook, which was a Hp mini 210 with broadcom (no the most compatable) In the end I settled on Manjaro xfce, blistering fast, everything works out of the box and very asthetically pleasing.(or maybe it was the green?)
Anyway I upgraded from mint 14 to 15 cinnammon on my main PC this week. boot times are alot slower with 15? also I have had some problems logging on yesterday, seemed video related. But it just feels slightly clunky, just a first impression. I havnt installed software. but I been messing heeps with settings. love the logon windows. Maybe it's phycological as ubuntu has been going down and down in my opinion books. I loved unity when it first appeared, but it was impossible to use, when I hear people say they like unity (or gome3) I'm like wow, if I gave you an abacas instead of a tablet you would like that too!

Anyway ubuntu IS based in debian so mint should loose nothing by making LMDE the main distro, also I have seen what is happening away from ubuntu, xfce is getting pretty polished. Manjaro is Arch based but they are aiming at linux newbs and doing a cracker of a job.
LM is making LMDE cinnamon and mate and LM cinnamon and mate. and I cant find anyone, no matter how many newbs post on here who can tell them what the difference between the 4 is? other than mate might be slightly faster and cinnamon has a little more eye candy. Is the team speading themselves too thin for very little choice?
I think 15 is a briilant os but for the loss of speed is it worth the gain? What really puts me off is the fact that 14 has a longer life yet it is not even Lts. This is huge for Mint because it dosnt update like ubuntu.
Anyway I am going to test Soldyk back office as I want to setup something like that for a non profit organization. Then I am going to install LMDE cinnamon and check out the software installer. maybe it will have Atomix in it? then I will stay with that or try 13 again and see how it compares to 15.

Manjaro did temp me I must say but Mint just rocks!
Hate fanboys, face palm shaking my head. :P
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MALsPa
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Re: What if Linux Mint moved away from Ubuntu?

Post by MALsPa »

exploder wrote:Ubuntu based systems nearly never work with my hardware and I find myself looking elsewhere for distros that will run on my computers. [...] Ubuntu's hardware support is just so hit and miss and updates that should be safe always seem to break my installs. I used to think the LTS versions were a pretty safe bet but after my ATI graphics were trashed on my laptop I no longer trust the LTS releases.
Makes me wonder what kind of hardware you've got, and what to avoid. Haven't had any hardware-related issues using Ubuntu on any of my computers. Any other (non-Ubuntu) distros giving you similar problems? Maybe you'd be better off with hardware that is generally more Linux-friendly? I don't find myself having to search "for distros that will run on my computers" -- I run various distros here, and have owned various computers since I started with Linux, but it's been years since any distro I've tried hasn't been fine with my hardware.

I use only LTS releases. I thought the non-LTS releases were a waste of my time even before they switched to the 9-month support period.

Whether or not Mint stays with the Ubuntu base doesn't matter much to me. If Mint ever released something based on Debian Stable, that might be something I'd look into, but these days I have only Debian, Ubuntu, and Kubuntu running here, as far as .deb distros. None of the other Debian or Ubuntu spin-offs really interest me anymore. I can imagine myself going with only Debian Stable along with maybe a couple of non-.deb distros, like Sabayon and Arch. Maybe Mint should go independent; that would stir things up!
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MALsPa
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Re: What if Linux Mint moved away from Ubuntu?

Post by MALsPa »

rustguard wrote:Hate fanboys, face palm shaking my head. :P
+1
Condorman
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Re: What if Linux Mint moved away from Ubuntu?

Post by Condorman »

MALsPa wrote:...Maybe Mint should go independent; that would stir things up!
Yeah, Mint is already becoming more and more independent. A lot of people thought that when they forked the Gnome Shell into Cinnamon, and then Nautilus into Nemo, that the Mint team was taking on too much. They've clearly proved otherwise, and seem to be relishing these challenges. And now Cinnamon is to do away completely with the Gnome backend for 2.0. It's clear the idea is more independence, and this seems to be coming with a lot of benefits for the wider Linux community. A lot of distros already choose either Cinnamon or MATE (whereas who is using Unity?), and this is going to become an easier option for distro creators as that independence within Mint and their desktops spreads further.

There's a Mir/Wayland shaped bump or two coming up in the road, and I'm extremely curious to see how Mint handles them, but I have a great feeling about Mint's future.
exploder
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Re: What if Linux Mint moved away from Ubuntu?

Post by exploder »

MALsPa, I wrote a post about my laptop yesterday and what it took to get it working. :) I did end up going with Ubuntu 12.04 x64 LTS and it seems just fine now. I stayed with the 3.2 kernel and the open source ATI drivers. Maybe I am just too picky about some things though. :) What I mean by that is I want things like Plymouth to display properly and most people do not seem to be bothered by it.

I agree with what you are saying about LTS releases. I like a long length of support weather it is an LTS or rolling release. I have had a lot of trouble with Ubuntu and graphics drivers. My hardware on my desktop is pretty common, NVidea GT 220, realtec NIC, NVidea onboard sound, etc. The laptop is fairly new and I kind of expected some problems with it, I did not pick it out it was a Christmas present my wife bought me.

Like I said, maybe I am just too picky about how things should work. My wife says I am a perfectionist when it comes to software. :D I certainly respect your opinions and I always enjoy reading your posts. I honestly think that Ubuntu is going to do their best with the next LTS release. With Steam coming to Linux along with others providing high end games for Linux I think that graphics drivers are going to improve rapidly. NVidea, AMD and Intel all seem to be on-board as far as working to build better drivers for Linux users. Lately I have read a lot about improvements in the open source drivers too.

I still remember the speech Mark Shuttleworth made about the fly in the ice cream and I think he was referring to the next LTS release because Canonical has hired more programmers and made huge strides in the appearance of Ubuntu. The way graphics drivers are being worked on I honestly think the next LTS release will be the best we have ever seen.
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Re: What if Linux Mint moved away from Ubuntu?

Post by Condorman »

I agree with you about Plymouth, exploder. It ought to be the most attractive boot up and shut down, but it ends up most times looking like crap. This was why Clem removed it from the last releases of mint, but I'd still rather have something than a black screen.

I'm borked from the outset because I use Nvidia. I only get a 1024x768 Plymouth screen no matter what I tweak, because I use the Nvidia proprietary driver (though to be fair this is the same resolution as my Windows 7 boot up). The missus has an AMD card and openSUSE and the boot looks lovely. However, both Mint and openSUSE tend to be sporadic on whether you get a boot screen or not at shutdown. I'd get fussy about it, but as long as things work well otherwise I'm fine with it, but for such a fundamental first impression I agree it ought to be better. Funny how Pulseadio gets a lot of bad press, but it's always been fine for me, yet Plymouth seems to get away with it. Is it still in active development? You honestly wouldn't know it. It's been the same since day one.

PS. I know the political reasons why my Nvidia boot looks crap. I don't need your lessons! :D

Off topic, sorry all.
exploder
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Re: What if Linux Mint moved away from Ubuntu?

Post by exploder »

Condorman, I know what you mean about Plymouth and the NVidea drivers. I have a 25" wide screen monitor so you can just imagine how bad Plymouth looks on my screen. Plymouth displays just fine with PCLinuxOS on my desktop though, I think it is because it uses legacy grub. I have had the same experience as you with Pulse Audio, never have had any problems with it.

When I was trying OpenSuse Plymouth always displayed on my laptop, even on shutdown. On the desktop once in a while Plymouth did not display on shutdown just like you described but at least the text that showed was in the right resolution and it really did not look all that bad. If it was not for a problem with my WiFi I would have kept OpenSuse on the laptop.

I agree completely that after all this time Plymouth should look and work great. I have no idea if Plymouth is still being actively developed and I agree that it does give people a bad first impression. No lessons here my friend! :) You and I are on the same page!
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Re: What if Linux Mint moved away from Ubuntu?

Post by Condorman »

:D

I didn't mean you personally, but I didn't want someone coming in and giving me a lecture about why it looks rubbish on Nvidia. I think most people understand the reasons why, and I'm sure you and I do. :)
js3915

Re: Linux Mint drops Ubuntu forever !!!!!!!!

Post by js3915 »

jonny_smith3 wrote: Are you serious? What do you do? You don't have any logical and business thought. I think there have to be only a few distros. Do you think if Windows has 20 different versions released at the same time it would be the most used operating system?
In my opinion Linux Mint must stop supporting KDE, Debian, Mate, etc. Mint developers should concentrate into Cinnammon and to make it rock-solid and to improve its very poor functionality.
If Linux Mint drops the Ubuntu I would stop using Linux for desktop at all.
You do realize that ubuntu is actually based on Debian unstable "sid" branch? If Mint dropped Ubuntu its still ubuntu because ubuntu is debian...

If Linux mint were to drop "Ubuntu" the most logical would be do what they do base off Debian Unstable branch like ubuntu does... LMDE is based on Debian "testing" branch. Best decision might do the LTS off the testing like LMDE currently.. and base the normal releases off of Debian unstable branch like Ubuntu so the ones that want the latest and greatest software can get it... Adding support for PPA's and other things is trivial porting them in etc
js3915

Re: What if Linux Mint moved away from Ubuntu?

Post by js3915 »

Condorman wrote: There's a Mir/Wayland shaped bump or two coming up in the road, and I'm extremely curious to see how Mint handles them, but I have a great feeling about Mint's future.
Hopefully they go with Wayland over Mir.. I think ubuntu is shooting themselves in the foot again like they did with Unity.. I know Kbuntu and think the LXDE Ubuntu version decided to stick with Wayland further isolating Ubuntu.. I know Red-Hat particularity Fedora is going with Wayland im sure Mageia is too.. Debian will incorporate Wayland too ive heard... Those are the top 5 distros on distrowatch... But time will tell.. Im running LMDE so im curious as well
deSilva

Re: What if Linux Mint moved away from Ubuntu?

Post by deSilva »

I don't think, Mint would go away from the Ubuntu base, as that base is huge and up to date than Debian Sid, which Ubuntu is based on. Mint got its popularity by using the Ubuntu base from the beginning, and it would be hard to become less than bleeding edge. The Debian repos are too conservative, and not up to date. The easy use of the ppas make all the difference. :)
drewdlekins

Re: What if Linux Mint moved away from Ubuntu?

Post by drewdlekins »

Gonna jump on the bandwagon and say let's do it.

A move of the magnitude we're talking here takes years. Ubuntu started as little more than a tweaked, colorful version of Debian, and then slowly moved to their own base, using the raw basics Debian puts out to underpin the system. If you compare the two today, however, there are huge differences in how the two operate.

As long as that's understood, I see no reason to cut the middleman and move Mint to Debian. Moreover, with the increasingly hostile approach to community that Canonical seems to be taking, can we afford to stay based on Ubuntu? A couple of examples. Nine months of support for a release is complete BS. I get it, interim releases are not an LTS, and you can now have five years of support with your LTS, but this is still utter crap. As has been pointed out by people aghast, Mint 14 has support up to the release of the next LTS, while 15 expires five months before that. This obsession with pumping out versions confuses me, especially with such a short time to develop them, only to throw them away in nine months.

Another example is the display driver issue. The communities have all stood up and said "Wayland, ho!" but Ubuntu is going to insist on pulling an Apple and building it's own display driver. Fine, let them. However, will being attached to Ubuntu's code base start to cause issues with substituting Mir with Wayland or X?

I think the safest route would be to move to Debian. Or alternatively, one thing that could be considered is dropping interim releases entirely. Ship Mint 13 with backports turned on, and issue all new desktop and application developments through the BPO. When 14.04 is released, that's the next Mint, keep the BPO, etc. Wash, rinse, repeat. More time spent ironing out bugs and adding new software where appropriate, and less time spent jumping through interim release hoops.

Having this conversation is making me consider moving to LMDE, actually.

PS & full disclosure: I have never run a non-Debian based system aside from Fedora 15 for a brief period of time before running back to what was familliar. I wouldn't be against Mint being based on something non-Debian, but practically speaking, because all of Mint's awesome goodies are built for a Debian base (Ubuntu), it would take a much more modest effort to move mainstream Mint to Debian than it would to take it elsewhere. Or so it seems. Feel free to challenge if I'm wrong.
js3915

Re: What if Linux Mint moved away from Ubuntu?

Post by js3915 »

drewdlekins wrote: Having this conversation is making me consider moving to LMDE, actually.

PS & full disclosure: I have never run a non-Debian based system aside from Fedora 15 for a brief period of time before running back to what was familliar. I wouldn't be against Mint being based on something non-Debian, but practically speaking, because all of Mint's awesome goodies are built for a Debian base (Ubuntu), it would take a much more modest effort to move mainstream Mint to Debian than it would to take it elsewhere. Or so it seems. Feel free to challenge if I'm wrong.
I really like Debian for servers. Might not be the Latest Software but the difference between versions typically is minor in terms of goodies you get but there are exceptions. In terms of desktop im kinda in the same boat.. LMDE vs normal Mint 15. Im back and forth on this Both in the End are essentially Debian but I'm sure Ubuntu does things enhancements etc but in terms of useability i can do anything i could do in ubuntu based or Mint 15 and i know in the lastest LMDE they added a utility to get propriatiatory drivers. But Im actually thinking switching back to the open source Nvidia ive heard good things on it and not much performance loss over the propriatory
Lin Jones

Re: What if Linux Mint moved away from Ubuntu?

Post by Lin Jones »

I would probably move on if Mint left the Ubuntu base. I feel like it's the best base in Linux right now. I really don't care for Debian proper. It takes Ubuntu to get Debian right and then Mint to get Ubuntu right.
samriggs

Re: What if Linux Mint moved away from Ubuntu?

Post by samriggs »

interesting all these different opinions on what folks want.
I like LMDE and it gives me the stability of debian stable and allows me to dig into jessie or sid to grab anything I want, without having to hope ubuntu gets it right by fooling around in unstable to bring bleeding edge to us. It gives me control over it instead and allows me to grab only what I want and need.
Mir or Wayland? I hope LMDE goes Wayland as it seems most are heading that way.
If Mint moves away from ubuntu it doesn't effect me at all since I don't use it anyhow and rather not, but I know a lot of folks like it and want to continue to use it, should be interesting how this all plays out in the end.
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