Mint Debian

[Intio]

I've noticed it to be 50% faster opening and closing windows and apps than Isadora did on my laptop, and cpu down about 20% on the average.

Is this based on subjective estimation, or have you actually timed it?

[Joylove]

Compared with Linux Mint 9 Main Edition, the Mint Menu tends to have a delay before appearing. In LMDE its much more responsive.

Also tried to play a couple of videos. Under LM9 and 8, I was unable to switch to XV decoding whereas it was possible in LMDE, Tried to disable Frame Dropping and Hard Frame Dropping (both were necessary switches for playing 720p videos on my laptop) and was surprised to be able to play a 1280x780 video fluidly (Eclipse' encoded Kaichou wa Maidsama's OP which tend to put a strain during the petals animation scene)

Also the temp when playing a video is now 58 degrees Celsius compared to 64 degrees C during LM9 while the idle temp is now 47 degrees Celsius (was 50 C).

[Intio]

@JoyLove: Sounds good. The Mint 9 menu delay has annoyed me too, but I'm too used to MintMenu to switch now

[craig10x]

There is often a debate around font rendering and I've always found it a fairly subjective experience. I quite dislike the font rendering in Ubuntu.

interesting...you think direct debian looks BETTER then ubuntu? I don't think most people would agree with that...As someone mentioned in the debian forum thread i linked, debian looks like an old fashioned typewriter type the way it renders web pages...no "flare" no "style" at all to the look.
Although ultimately i majored in business in college, i had originally gone to a graphic arts high school (printing trade) so i know types, looks etc..have a very sharp eye for those type of things because i was trained early...

for me,if the mint team, can't make it look at least as good as ubuntu, i won't switch to the debian version, ever....and ultimately i would really love to, but that would unfortunately be a major "deal breaker" for me...
to my eye, debian looks horrible...

many others here have mentioned the same thing, so i don't think i am in the minority on this one...

even ubuntu renders different the microsoft windows and mac osx, but i still find it pretty attractive to look at...

[deibu76]

Doing the work involved in this link improved the rendering in Firefox immensely for me in Debian:

http://lovingthepenguin.blogspot.com/2010/07/firefox-36-with-pretty-fonts-in-debian_15.html

[shayney]

I believe it's because ubuntu icludes a libfreetype patch and debian does not.
In fact I notice most distros have iffy fonts compared to ubuntu and openSUSE.

Though since I switched to my smaller screen laptop full-time it isn't so noticeable so no longer a big deal for me.

[kmb42vt]

After using LMDE for most of the day now, there is only one complaint. No matter how hard I tried I couldn't break it. I thought Mint 9 was stable. LMDE is well beyond my expections. It looks like LMDE will be my main desktop.

Same experience here. Well, okay. I can break if I really want to but deliberately deleting configuration files is cheating.

[msuggs]

interesting...you think direct debian looks BETTER then ubuntu?

Yes I do

to my eye, debian looks horrible...

Like I said, these things are subjectve.

[bug67]

I did a full install on my laptop.

Man, it's quick! Everything, including wireless worked right out of the box.

The installer was a bit confusing. I had to select a mount point and it took me a while to figure out how to do that but I got it. Installation took 8 minutes! I had backed up my entire home folder, including hidden files so, it was just a matter of drag and drop. All my Firefox and Thunderbird settings were just like I had left them.

It's nice to be using a recent release of an OS.

Issues I was having with Isadora (Lucid) that kept me using Helena:

1. Custom cursors weren't working

2. My home made screen savers weren't working

3. None of my Custom window placement settings in Compiz were sticking.

Now:

1. Custom cursors work!

2. Home made screensavers work!

3. Custom window placement settings in Compiz still aren't working.

A few other things I noticed:

I don't like the Software Center. I liked the way the Linux Mint Main edition does it better. The one in the Main edition works like the old Add/Remove Software did. The new one works like, well, Software Center. Just some catagory icons to choose from with limited information. Plus, it's based on Debian's repositories and not Ubuntu's so, it's going to take me some time to get used to that.

Speaking of software, one of the first things I did was install gnome games. When I went to launch Solitaire, nothing happened. I need to investigate further. Also, I had to install GDM2 Login Setup via a downloaded .deb (couldn't install PPA like Ubuntu based). It also would not launch.

Screenlets do not appear to support transparancy like they do in Main. The Weather Channel screenlet is buggy and crashed a couple of times. Also they are not as crisp/anti-aliased as they are in Main.

Fonts are a lot rougher in appearance as well. From what I understand, this is a known issue with Debian itself.

I have a drawer in the pannel that I keep links to my most frequently used web sites in. In Helena, when I closed this drawer, it would leave a shadow of itself until a browser window opened to cover/draw over it. This no longer happens.

Overall, things feel a lot faster. I am looking forward to a lot of these bugs getting worked out with rolling releases. One of the things mentioned on Mint's web site in "known issues" was the omission of the of the Simple Compiz settings. It was mentioned this would be made available in a future rolling release. I like this model of updating. I have no doubt that the Mint team will make this the best Debian based OS they possibly can. I for one am looking forward to the future of Linux Mint Debian Edition.

[craig10x]

I believe it's because ubuntu icludes a libfreetype patch and debian does not.
In fact I notice most distros have iffy fonts compared to ubuntu and openSUSE.

Though since I switched to my smaller screen laptop full-time it isn't so noticeable so no longer a big deal for me.

Interesting If that is what makes the difference, i hope the Mint Team reads this and makes note to look into that
So that maybe they can add some of the magic "ubuntu" look to the Mint debian side

[Intio]

So it's on the homepage now... yay!

[tdockery97]

Speaking of software, one of the first things I did was install gnome games. When I went to launch Solitaire, nothing happened. I need to investigate further.

Same thing happened to me with the Aisleriot Solitaire. Please post if you figure it out.

[HaTeMe]

I think it is more useful if you tell us what the Terminal say to you when u start Solitair or something like that.
Just tested Open Arena for the Drivers and that works fine.

Sounds like a GDM issue?

[bug67]

I think it is more useful if you tell us what the Terminal say to you when u start Solitair or something like that.
Just tested Open Arena for the Drivers and that works fine.

Sounds like a GDM issue?

You know, you're right. I've become so GUI dependent, I didn't even think about trying to run it in terminal. Will do when I get home from work and post results.

[kmb42vt]

Speaking of software, one of the first things I did was install gnome games. When I went to launch Solitaire, nothing happened. I need to investigate further.

Same thing happened to me with the Aisleriot Solitaire. Please post if you figure it out.

I just installed Gnome Games to see if I can duplicate the problem. Unfortunately, all the games start fine for me--no problem. Sorry about that. Only thing I can think of is that there is a fair amount of dependencies that install along with Gnome Games. Perhaps reinstalling might help?

[colyn]

Has anyone else tried importing bookmarks from firefox in LM9 to firefox in LMDE? When I tried importing "bookmarks.html" from a thumb drive exported from LM9 it only imports a small part of the file. No indication of an error, it just doesn't copy the whole file. It looks like the file on the thumb drive is being locked after starting the import transfer of data. Could this be a bug??

I imported my bookmarks.html file from my Mint 9 with no problems. They all are in place..

[lakehousetech]

Has anyone else tried importing bookmarks from firefox in LM9 to firefox in LMDE? When I tried importing "bookmarks.html" from a thumb drive exported from LM9 it only imports a small part of the file. No indication of an error, it just doesn't copy the whole file. It looks like the file on the thumb drive is being locked after starting the import transfer of data. Could this be a bug??

I imported my bookmarks.html file from my Mint 9 with no problems. They all are in place..

Why not just import the json backup file rather than the exported html file?

[robert-e]

Hi,
I have a couple of questions:
the most important (to my software uses)..does Mint Debian use PulseAudio, and if so, can it be removed without taking a lot of important stuff with it?

of secondary importance: does it use PackageKit or the same by some other name, as a software management tool?

I recently started a migration from Fedora to Mint, because of these issues, and if Mint Debian promises to minimize or eliminate those, I would be very interested in it.

Regards,
Bob

[shayney]

Mint's equivalent of packagekit is synaptic.
It is much more fully featured than packagekit.

Mint debian also uses mint update manager to keep everything up to date.
Mint (ubuntu) has it's own software centre also with ratings etc. I haven't actually checked if it's in the debian edition but I would assume so.
Software management wise, debian and it's variants have always been far ahead of any other distro (in my opinion).

[bug67]

Speaking of software, one of the first things I did was install gnome games. When I went to launch Solitaire, nothing happened. I need to investigate further.

Same thing happened to me with the Aisleriot Solitaire. Please post if you figure it out.

I just installed Gnome Games to see if I can duplicate the problem. Unfortunately, all the games start fine for me--no problem. Sorry about that. Only thing I can think of is that there is a fair amount of dependencies that install along with Gnome Games. Perhaps reinstalling might help?

I think my n00bness is showing. I tried launching in terminal by typing (without quotes) "aisleriot-solitaire", just "aisleriot" and just "solitaire." All were met with "command not found." some of the other games like chess launched just fine. seems to just be the aisleriot games. Tried a complete removal and reinstall to no avail.