LMDE SpinX3 Wishlist

[CiaW]

So what I'm seeing is 2 trains of thought--
1. Stable Squeeze LMDE--non-rolling. All the Debian goodness with the ease of Mint installing.
2. Unstable LMDE--rolling release with the liquirix kernel & fairly frequent updates. Maybe further customizing as to Testing or Sid with a proper warning.

I was thinking more along the lines of a (3rd?) train of thought, that being the status quo -- which is what I'm doing and I suspect most lmde users are doing? That is, rolling release with the testing repo and using the liquirix kernel as an add-on or personal option as it is now.

[rivenathos]

Time for me to be contrary, I suppose.

I know quite a few Debian users run with the Liquorix kernel and have no issues. Though, would LMDE not be better served by continuing to track the official Debian kernel? Just my take, but I thought the main reason for LMDE was to be 100% Debian-compatible. Yes, I know Liquorix works fine, but it is not the default.

While still in the formative stages, I think LMDE should stick as close to Debian as possible. This is going to be important when Testing starts to get a flood of new packages. Imagine the troubleshooting when there are issues such as not updating the kernel with Level 4-5 packages, as well as neglecting to update Level 3 packages. Then, toss in a completely different kernel to make it even more interesting. It may become a disaster with too many people on different pages.

Not meaning to start any flames, but just tossing out something for consideration. I want every user of LMDE to have the same great experience.

[autocrosser]

So what I'm seeing is 2 trains of thought--
1. Stable Squeeze LMDE--non-rolling. All the Debian goodness with the ease of Mint installing.
2. Unstable LMDE--rolling release with the liquirix kernel & fairly frequent updates. Maybe further customizing as to Testing or Sid with a proper warning.

I was thinking more along the lines of a (3rd?) train of thought, that being the status quo -- which is what I'm doing and I suspect most lmde users are doing? That is, rolling release with the testing repo and using the liquirix kernel as an add-on or personal option as it is now.

True---maybe as per the post above we "should" base on the safe side, but could offer several "options"---I'm the adventurous type that will enable "interesting" things---I was a tester for Ubuntu & like being on the unstable side allows all kinds of bug reports

I'm seeing that this spin has ALL kinds of interesting possibilities---but I'm not saying to just enable the wild side---let the end user name his/her poison......

******THOUGHT: there ought to be a poll as to how the user base is using this spin......********

[zerozero]

Yes, i think rivenathos is right in being cautious in this approach.
The foolish things i do with my systems are not very recommended to a every-day user

But i think autocrosser has a point when he's talking about customizing the installation, maybe only in a more conservative way: most certainly when this spinX3 comes out, squeeze will be out aswell, so why not offer the option to stay with testing or go stable? (we've seen though the Forum that question been asked several times).
If this could be done easily would be great.

[jam666]

Hi! How about option in installer that will allow users to choose different DE than Gnome? For example XFCE whith some basic Gnome stuff?

[gosa]

Hi! How about option in installer that will allow users to choose different DE than Gnome? For example XFCE whith some basic Gnome stuff?

I second that... During the little time I spent with Mint so far I've grown quite fond of the XFCE version of Mint 9, and would really welcome a nice minty-fied xfce in LMDE.

[SkipJack]

i was having an odd issue with my wireless (would randomly disconnect but say its still connected in network manager) and i looked around on google and lots of cards have this issue with network-manager, and the reccomended fix is to switch to wicd, maybe building wicd in by default instead of NM would give people an easier time (I think its also lighter)

[gorillaki]

lvm2 and dm-crypt in the installer, so we won't have to install initially from Debian's netinstall CD to get these two things (IMO both are absolutely necessary, especially for laptop users).
And I think the only LMDE flavour should be based on testing. Sid is, errr, unstable, and is already partly covered by Aptosid, while stable would be non-rolling, sort-of regular Mint with just a different package base. It does not sound that interesting...

[spsf64]

I missed the option to select " USA Alternative international (former us_intl)" keyboard during installation...
Hope you can fix this!
TIA

[SkipJack]

i was having an odd issue with my wireless (would randomly disconnect but say its still connected in network manager) and i looked around on google and lots of cards have this issue with network-manager, and the reccomended fix is to switch to wicd, maybe building wicd in by default instead of NM would give people an easier time (I think its also lighter)

The problem actually is with dhclient.

[hasuin]

I think another issue should be clarified asap : upgrades.

Mint-update with its default settings is not appropriate in LMD, imho. We won't want to keep the same kernel forever.

LMD should probably be kept uptodate with an "apt update && apt dist-upgrade" command, debian way.

If so, a read-me-first-howto would be very useful to new users. Should they dist-upgrade in a terminal console or in another tty? sidux way or plain debian way? How often and with what precautions, etc. Users should also be encouraged to clone their / partition before dist-upgrading. Then a separate /home partition should become default in the installer. It would be a good thing also to add apt-listbugs and a pre-configured apt-listchanges to the distro. Or do we go for a kind of mintified smxi script?

Thank you to the dev team for coming out with the best distro in a long long time. And I'm very happy to belong modestly to this great community.

[cpatrick08]

you should do a iso based on the current stable and one based on testing like you do now or you should make the user able to pick which one they want with a description on stable vs testing

[elav]

Greetings to all:
I must say that I find very interesting ideas Ikey, in fact, Clem would be very foolish if he does not take into consideration (without intention of offense).

Particularly support the idea of creating a custom Artwork LMDE. In fact, I have thought about doing something about it, maybe some icon theme or a series of wallpapers. LMDE is for me, a better alternative to Linux Mint. Not only the consumption is much lower, but the level of renovation to get the testing branch of Debian is better than every 6 months out of Ubuntu.

Bravo for your ideas Ikey, hopefully to be carried out.

[psych1610]

Hi, I installed LMDE a couple of days ago and run across some little things that, while not difficult to solve, would greatly benefit the user experience (I think) if they were done ahead of time.

The first is including "apt-xapian-index" in the ISO by default. Without this package which is already included in the repository I was unable to get the Synaptic quick search box to work by default. I understand Mint provides the software center and mintUpdate so one really doesn't need to venture into Synaptic at all but for people like me whose first front end to apt-get was Synaptic this would be a nice touch. Personally, I find it preferable to the Software Center.

The second is some sort of geolocation included in the installer to assist the users in selecting repositories closer to him, and therefore, those most likely to have a good connection/faster speeds. 'Netselect-apt'
was mentioned as a way to accomplish this in a recent thread I started. Without the advice to choose a more local mirror I would have most likely ended up leaving ( ) because I was only able to get a paltry 45-70 kB/s on most updates and even slower on others. After switching to a U.S. mirror I was able to get better speeds. In this case it could be done automatically or, at the very least, have a prompt for the user to specify.

If it came down to it a users time zone information could also be used to garner a more correct repository. For example, I selected "US/New York" for my time zone information therefore I'm most likely to live/be located in the U.S. primarily, so it makes sense to set a U.S. mirror rather than one across the pond.

For reference, my thread on this is here: viewtopic.php?f=141&t=64966

As always I'm not sure of the technical hurdles of all this but they should be doable and possibly even with minor modifications! I hope you consider these as possible candidates for a respin as I feel they could greatly enhance the users experience.

[jumbli]

I could convert my friend(he uses ubuntu exclusively now), primarily because of his interest in the "glchess" game. So my request is - please include that game in the default installation.
Also, a minimal install cd if possible, because the list of updates just after installation might become very long in any case.

[gotjazz]

well in the past no mint release had any games at all - if games are to be included now I'd allso like to nominate gnubg and pokerth

[Henrik K Kristensen]

Just curious as I am totally new to both Linux and this forum:

Why would you want this stuff (games, extra apps etc.) with possible dependencies included from the default installation? I'm just thinking that it is SO easy to install from repos, so why "bloat it" from the get-go?

No offense meant, I like a lot of these ideas, I was just wondering...

[gotjazz]

because a linux distro usually brings quote a set of applications as opposed to windows - but yeah, games are not really needed. on the other hand as long as there's just a handful of card or boardgames the dependencies don't really pile up either.
just a little something to help procrastinating when there's work to do

[Henrik K Kristensen]

because a linux distro usually brings quote a set of applications as opposed to windows - but yeah, games are not really needed. on the other hand as long as there's just a handful of card or boardgames the dependencies don't really pile up either.
just a little something to help procrastinating when there's work to do

Thank you for your answer.

Personally I prefer as little extra applications as possible... a fresh start and do the installations of preferred programs myself.

[gazza]

I got a pm-email today from dawgdoc about my problems http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=141&t=64419&start=0#p370556

My basic issues were

gazza wrote:
also a note, when compiz is enabled , alt f2 and alt tab are not available.

I do have an issue with mintupdates, if it fails to fetch... ...it mixes up the icons,

dawgdoc suggested I go to the compiz settings and enable Gnome Compatibility this got my alt f2 back, thanks dawgdoc. He also suggested Workarounds enabled, but this doesn't seem to do anything for me, but then again, when it comes to compiz I know very little as I only ever use two effects, desktop cube (so I can use scrollwheel tilt to switch workspaces) and zoom.

My second issue was with mintupdates mixing up my icons. But I think I wasn't very clear on exactly what the issue is, maybe I should describe it again.
As described before, manually updating the mint updates, it finishes and closes.
my Xchat icon is now mint update. click it and mint update pops up. (right click menu is a mint update menu)
my Transmission icon is now Xchat, clicking the Transmission icon will minimize Xchat, etc (right click menu is an Xchat menu)
my Mintupdate icon is either a disappeared 'blank space' or an empty shield, clicking it brings up Transmission, (right click is transmission menu)

That is generally what happens, 80% of the time. My solve as described before, right click panel, properties, expand, then unexpand panel. Icons get their applications back and mintupdate gets it's icon with tick.

dawgdoc suggested I put separators between these.... I think my previous explanation led people to believe the actual icons moved, I did try to add separators, but could not figure out how :/ as it's the 'notification area'

P.S. this morning as I write this my icons were xchat, transmission, and a failed mintupdate check (router did not connect first thing) , I expanded my panel to see if I could add suggested separators, (no luck). Whilst panel expanded, I checked mintupdates manually, I was up to date. When done, the order of my icons changed , Mint updates is first now , then xchat and transmission. This is fine, I don't care that the icons moved, as long as the icons are associated with the application which they are. Maybe this only happens when the panel is Not expanded....

late edit, thought I'd add an image, note cursor is on xchat

missingshield.jpg (11.38 KiB) Viewed 1428 times