LMDE vs. Debian

[mikhou]

I was curious what your thoughts were on LMDE vs. just a straight Debian install. Don't get me wrong. I really love LMDE. But since LMDE came out and I started playing with it, I wanted to try a straight Debian install. So I did, in a virtual machine. I installed Debian with an XFCE DE, and, "Wow!" Debian's footprint is SO small, and it's so fast! I'm not sure if I don't like it better. And you can make it anything that you want! I've been such a diehard Mint user for such a long time that I haven't been able to make myself move away from Mint as my main OS, but if I ever do, Debian is definitely going to be an option. Thoughts?

mikhou

[Matt3223]

yep, straight up Debian is a nice way to run. And perfectly acceptable. As for whether to run LMDE or straight-Debian, for me, it's more based on community perspective and the viewpoint either Debian itself or the Linux Mint team are working from.

Now that I've a little experience under my belt, straight-debian vs mint would basically be the same usability experience...based on how I use my computer. I choose to run Mint for the above reasons though.

I like what Clem et al are trying to achieve, so I support them...is about what it boils down to. LMDE just brings that back a little closer to Debian.

[homework]

Stay with LMDE it's Debian in Mint's clothes but there's nothing to compare because they should be considered as two different systems. Mint Debian is young new power, I will definitely wait what it will bring to us. For me as a newbie to linux, I would really appreciate some tested, stable distro with pre-installed drivers so everything would work immediately after installation, everything else is just good for me. Personally, I've choosed Linux Mint Debian after trying few other distros and I think I will stay with it even though I had some problems and had to reinstall 3x. But still.. speed of this distro talks for everything and when they make some bugfixes, pre-installed drivers and so on.. it will be the best distro. It's definitely faster than Ubuntu or even Gentoo and I can't wait to see some progress in better support for beginners

[tdockery97]

Now that I've seen the differences between Debian and Ubuntu as bases for Mint, I will definitely stick with the Debian base. As far as LMDE or Debian proper, I choose LMDE because I've made myself at home in this community and I like it a lot. I check out the Debian forums too because there is valuable information there, but the Mint community and the Mint Devs are tops in my book.

[mikhou]

Don't get me wrong. I'm certainly not talking about leaving the Mint community. I think that just about ANY question that you have about straight-up Debian could be posted on the Linux Mint forums and be answered with clarity and experience. I also agree that I love the Mint devs and the Mint community. I'm just saying that straight-up Debian XFCE is so fast that it has made me think about switching, and you can make it ANYTHING that you want. (I realize that you could also do that with LMDE.) I'm just saying that from a pure resources/speed standpoint, there's not much that holds a candle to Debian.

mikhou

[gotjazz]

hrm well as soon as lmde gets a more fleshed-out installer, there is basically no reason at all to choose debian testing over lmde that I can see - I mean if you enjoy the smaller footprint of straight-debian just disable mintupdate. It's not like mint was adding a lot of blunder or anything
It is basically a naked debian with a lot of stuff preconfigured that you'd have to do yourself on debian (which isn't that much of a hassle either though)
I mean if you don't like the subtle changes there's nothing that speaks against pure debian either....

Shortly before lmde came out I started playing around with minimal debian testing installations and just a quick apt-get install xorg gnome-base (or was it core) afterwards and I really liked what I saw. Now that I have lmde I have to say it isn't really a lot more bloated. I mean sure the memory-footprint is a bit bigger but so would it be on debian after you've installed all that you need. The main difference are the mint tools which admittetly I don't really use much.

[mfdemicco]

I installed Debian with an XFCE DE, and, "Wow!" Debian's footprint is SO small, and it's so fast! I'm not sure if I don't like it better.

I think what you're seeing is the difference between XFCE and Gnome. I doubt there is any difference between Debian Testing and LMDE as far as speed and memory usage goes, but will probably be more frustrating to install and configure as Mint seems to get things right out of the box.

[MALsPa]

The main difference are the mint tools which admittetly I don't really use much.

Yeah, I don't use them much either. I kinda figured that the main difference was the Mint tools and that it's quicker and easier to install and set up LMDE than Squeeze.

[monkeyboy]

I was curious what your thoughts were on LMDE vs. just a straight Debian install. Don't get me wrong. I really love LMDE. But since LMDE came out and I started playing with it, I wanted to try a straight Debian install. So I did, in a virtual machine. I installed Debian with an XFCE DE, and, "Wow!" Debian's footprint is SO small, and it's so fast! I'm not sure if I don't like it better. And you can make it anything that you want! I've been such a diehard Mint user for such a long time that I haven't been able to make myself move away from Mint as my main OS, but if I ever do, Debian is definitely going to be an option. Thoughts?

mikhou

Thoughts, OK LMD is a new derivate of Debian and as they say the fruit seldom fall far from the tree. However as LMD matures it will likley move away from the parent a bit and take on more of its own flavor. I would be interesting to revisit this question a year or two from now.
Having said that I really don't know what to say about a Vbox install running a DE that LMD has yet to released with. I can't make a relevant compassion unless I reproduce your setup. Enjoy.

[azathoth]

LMDE doesn't seem to add much fat and it tears it up pretty good. It's a convenient setup but I couldn't say it's any better or worse than Debian proper. Sometimes I like to roll my own, sometimes not. In any case LMDE is a nice presentation of Debian with a great community behind it. Of course you can still hang out even if you switch. So from what I can see, you can't lose either way.

[anamnesis]

I'm just saying that straight-up Debian XFCE is so fast that it has made me think about switching, and you can make it ANYTHING that you want.
mikhou

Yes you can if you can. If you are a command line-prove geek, you can. Kudos. But if not, Mint give you a mighty *helping hand* to manage a proper Debian. And that's a lot!
Cheers

[craigevil]

I'm just saying that straight-up Debian XFCE is so fast that it has made me think about switching, and you can make it ANYTHING that you want.
mikhou

Yes you can if you can. If you are a command line-prove geek, you can. Kudos. But if not, Mint give you a mighty *helping hand* to manage a proper Debian. And that's a lot!
Cheers

CLI geek? I am a lazy GUI user, I have ran Debian for almost seven years now and the only things I do in CLI are run apt-get/apt-cache, smxi, inxi and shell-fm. I have used nano exactly one time when my xorg.conf got messed up, never used vim.

Never installed or ran 'screen' or any of the other nifty thing the uber gurus in #debian know how to do.

Installing and running Debian is no more difficult than LMDE. Although LMDE does have some nifty apps that aren't in the Debian repos.

[MALsPa]

Installing and running Debian is no more difficult than LMDE. Although LMDE does have some nifty apps that aren't in the Debian repos.

Really? I haven't installed LMDE, but my Debian installations have been Etch, Lenny, and then Squeeze. Not nearly as difficult as I expected, it turned out. The only thing was that installing Debian takes a lot more time than the so-called "easy" distros I've installed. Maybe I've been using the wrong approach? (I install from CDs.)

Anyway, how does an LMDE installation compare to a Debian installation with regards to the time it takes?

And, @craigevil, do you prefer LMDE over Debian? Just wondering. I have Squeeze installed, and except for my curiosity, I haven't been able to come up with any reasons to try LMDE. Seems like I'd be getting about the same thing, except for with Mint tools (which I rarely use, anyway).

[mikhou]

Malspa,

That's actually what I am wondering as well. It's not that I don't like LMDE. I have just found that Debian XFCE is faster that LMDE Gnome. I should probably setup a dual boot and really find out which one I like better.

mikhou

[thomasmc]

Having gone through a few upgrade/reinstall cycles with both Ubuntu and Mint, I was tired of having to reconfigure everything every 6 months, and tried out Debian in a spare partition. It was ok, but I didn't want to give up the Mint stuff I'd gotten so used to. When I heard that there would be a rolling-release Debian edition, I was stoked. The install was a breeze, and I haven't had a single problem with it. I am completely sold.

[flygon250]

I like LMDE a lot, but I switched away from LMDE because Youtube videos were stuttering and taking all of my CPU.

However, I didn't switch to Debian main, but to AntiX, the lightweight Mepis derivative. Like LMDE, AntiX is based off Debian's Testing branch and includes a control centre to make configuration easier. The performance is pretty impressive too. Conky shows that around 65-75% cpu is used when playing Youtube videos. i would be lucky to get 95% when using LMDE.

The installation process was fairly easy for me. I didn't even have to repartition manually, I just told AntiX to install on top of LMDE's root partition and to keep the home partition.

As for software: the Debian Multimedia repository is enabled by default and it comes with GNOME Mplayer (AntiX does have some gtk libraries installed, despite it's lightweight base) and Adobe Flash pre-installed. It uses
Iceape (a Debian rebranded version of Mozilla Seamonkey) by default, with Dillo (an ultra-lightweight browser with only basic HTML support) and Links 2 (A cli-based browser) also installed. If you don't like those options, you can always use Debian's vast repositories to install Firefox Iceweasel or Chromium instead, with Opera waiting to be uncommented in /apt/sources.list.

Other installed applications include Abiword for word processing, Gnumeric for spreadsheets, Epdf for pdf files, Transmission for torrents and, wait for it, DOSBox for running any DOS programs and games you might have had installed on your archaic hardware (AntiX is meant for old hardware, remember).

However, I wouldn't say it is as newbie-friendly as LMDE. It uses either IceWM (standard) or Fluxbox (also installed) with Rox running on top as its desktop, so is lighter than even Debian XFCE, but they doesn't have the same GUI-based configuration tools the the heavier enviroments have, so you have to play with text files to change startup applications, menus (although they update automatically) etc. If you don't like the idea of that, install LXDE (or any other DE you wish, but that's missing the point of AntiX) on top of it and you have a proper desktop which is also lightweight.

Also, netbook support doesn't seem quite as good. While all of the hardware worked well enough to go online through wireless (after manually typing "wlan0" into wicd), the tap and scroll for the touchpad are disabled by default, which I fixed by making a shell script and making Fluxbox load that script on startup.

On top of that, the keymap is set to a US layout (I'm British), which I will have to get sorted out at some point. On the plus side, the "Fn" key seems to work properly when it didn't in LMDE, but I would rather have my British keymap.

Overall, if you want something lighter than LMDE and don't mind some lessons in manual hardware and desktop configuration, I recommend AntiX. Newbies should stick to LMDE, though.

[craigevil]

I like LMDE a lot, but I switched away from LMDE because Youtube videos were stuttering and taking all of my CPU.

However, I didn't switch to Debian main, but to AntiX, the lightweight Mepis derivative. Like LMDE, AntiX is based off Debian's Testing branch and includes a control centre to make configuration easier. The performance is pretty impressive too. Conky shows that around 65-75% cpu is used when playing Youtube videos. i would be lucky to get 95% when using LMDE.

That was probably more the kernel, version of flash, or browser. AntiX is based on Mepis which is based on Debian Stable, so yeah it is going to have fewer bugs, than LMDE or even straight Debian testing. It is called "Testing" for a reason.


The Debian GNU/Linux FAQ - The Debian FTP archives

What does the testing distribution contain?

Packages are installed into the `testing' directory after they have undergone some degree of testing in unstable.

They must be in sync on all architectures where they have been built and mustn't have dependencies that make them uninstallable; they also have to have fewer release-critical bugs than the versions currently in testing. This way, we hope that `testing' is always close to being a release candidate.

More information about the status of "testing" in general and the individual packages is available at http://www.debian.org/devel/testing.

Having said that most people that I know have few problems running Testing or sid for that matter.

Jumping to another distro rather than trying to figure out what the problem is doesn't really make sense. Take a minute or whatever to trace the problem and fix it. The 30k+ packages in the repos help as well. I still haven't had to install a package that I couldn't install by doing apt-get install foo.

Take a few minute/hours to read :
Linux Mint Forums • View topic - Grokking Debian GNU/Linux
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=141&t=57144

Once you get the hang of it nothing beats Debian , especially the simple fact that it never needs to be installed again unless the user does something extraordinarily stupid.

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.2.10) Gecko/20100914 Firefox/3.6.10
Firefox playing a youtube video + 9 other tabs open including the new Twitter page, plus okular, lastfm app, lxterminal, in LXDE.

Code: Select all

inxi -t cm5
Processes: CPU - % used - top  5 active 
           1 - cpu: 9.9% command: firefox-bin pid: 25349
           2 - cpu: 3.9% command: X pid: 5500
           3 - cpu: 3.3% command: last.fm pid: 19582
           4 - cpu: 0.9% command: libflashplayer.so (started by: plugin-container) pid: 25390
           5 - cpu: 0.7% command: lxterminal pid: 26489
           Memory - MB / % used - top  5 active
           1 - mem: 98.18MB (4.8%) command: firefox-bin pid: 25349
           2 - mem: 50.88MB (2.5%) command: okular pid: 17648
           3 - mem: 42.21MB (2.0%) command: X pid: 5500
           4 - mem: 40.55MB (2.0%) command: libflashplayer.so (started by: plugin-container) pid: 25390
           5 - mem: 29.46MB (1.4%) command: knotify4 pid: 16242

As you can see Firefox is not using anything close to 90% of cpu and its using less than 98mb of ram, and I have had it open for the past 7 hours.

To sum it all up, don't install a different distro over problems, you will never learn anything going that route. Peace.

[flygon250]

@craigevil;

I suspect that at least part of the performance improvement is because conky uses fewer resources than the GNOME system monitor (and probably fewer than the panel app as well). I am also using Chromiium, which I didn't test for Flash performance. Also, html5 video seemed to use more resources than Flash when I tested Epiphany, so it wasn't Flash-related, that's for sure.

However, if you what you are saying is true, then I am getting the enhanced performance for the opposite reason. .

This is because I merely used the AntiX install as a base for a sid-based install using the Liquorix kernel (which might be the reason for the performance improvement, seeing as I didn't touch it in LMDE and its desktop-optimized), so I'm using a bleeding-edge install. Yes, I know that means that parts of the system are more likely to break after updates, but this sin't my main PC, so I don't mind that. Also, I'm used to some things being broken for a while, and then fixed.

My main box runs PCLinuxOS, another rolling-release distribution. The sound was broken in Flash when I first installed it, but a fix was released after a couple of weeks. More recently, the initial update to the new version of GNOME (2.32, even sid is only on 2.30 at this point apart from gwibber and maybe some other non-core applications) broke gnome-terminal, but a fix to make it run again was released on the next day, with a further update coming a couple of days later..

The reasons I chose AntiX over LMDE as the base for this system is because AntiX is quite a bit smaller than LMDE, so things were less likely to go wrong during the initial upgrade, and everything went fine.

The only thing that even resembles a problem is that apt keeps saying that wicd isn't configured properly, even though i'm using it just fine. I even upgraded to GRUB 2 from the legacy version installed without a problem.

Once I get my keyboard layout sorted (I will check the resources mentioned in grokking Debian to see if they can help) and can get my conkyrc alterations to stick, I think I will be on my ideal system.

[vrkalak]

I was just thinking . . .

You know the adage, that we always use here . . . "What works for Ubuntu, works with Mint"

Well, with LMDE that doesn't apply.

While Ubuntu is loosely based on Debian, the Ubuntu Devs have changed the Debian kernel, and the Debian Core/Base to make it totally Ubuntu. Debian and Ubuntu are NOT compatible or interchangeable.

So, the many versions of Mint that are based on Ubuntu -- work/play well together.
The version of Mint (LMDE) that is based on Debian, works well with Debian but is no longer compatible with Ubuntu.

That's one of the cool things about Linux . . . choice.

I prefer Debian . . . so LMDE works for me. You need to play around with both, or several, different versions of Mint and decide what works for you.