LMDE: A Great Disappointment <Decision Time>

[Dr.m0x]

Sorry to hear. No distro is perfect and if one suited all tastes there would only be one.

I've had mostly positive experiences with debian testing. Sure there has been the odd hiccup but by and large its been no worse and probably actually quite a bit better than the usual problems and associated work arounds which seem to eventuate every time I update to a new version of ubuntu or one if its derivatives. Seriously ubuntu just release broken unicorns just to stay on schedule. I've spent less time fixing debian than ubuntu that's for sure.

At least you know everything in debian testing has undergone at least a modicum of, well, testing since it has to filter down from experimental and then unstable first. Broken things can still end up here, packages filter down after no bug reports have been logged for several days, but a package can still be bugged even if it hadn't been reported.

I don't use samba printing so can't comment in that but I have found in general testing is at least as compatible with my hardware on my three systems.

Good luck with ubuntu based mint and the six monthly installs and new breakages though. Hour you enjoy them.

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Sent by my Cyanogenmod 7 phone.

[caris_mere]

It's too bad that you've had such a tough time. I personally have had everything work better on my laptop with LMDE than with LM 10. I'm very pleased with my choice to switch. It runs faster, too. I'm using a ThinkPad SL510.

[varonbondumb]

I'm in the same boat with the OP. I gave LMDE a real try and jumped into it with enough Mint experience to know what I was doing or where to look for help. My video card, an older one, wouldn't work no matter any of the drivers, updates, suggestions or solutions tried. I installed every applicable Nvidia driver available and nothing worked. I wanted to use LMDE for its amazing low RAM usage (not that I have a RAM problem), but the lack of proper video drivers was a dealbreaker.

I've not tried 11 yet, still happy with 10. I'll try LMDE again and I can only hope they get it working out of the box like they have with the normal Mints.

[malligt]

@ Dr. m0x

Good luck with ubuntu based mint and the six monthly installs and new breakages though. Hour you enjoy them.

6 months installs? Enjoy breakages? Huh?

I've got Mint 10 Julia 32 bit on a desktop, with LO 3.4, and Chromium 12 running just fine. Hasn't borked since installation last year. I still have Mint 9 LTS 32 bit running on a older desktop machine with no borkage. 6 month re-installs? Not my experience.

The Dell laptop that use to have the LMDE 32 bit on it, now has Mint 11 katya 32 bit with LO 3.3, FF5, and Chromium 12...soon to have LO 3.4.

For me, it's not about the speed of LMDE, or the rolling release feature. It's about the very low daily maintenance positives of Mint 9,10, and (hopefully 11) vs LMDE.

[wil]

Long time UNIX and Linux admin here, used OSX for years and a new job at a startup didn't allow for a nice new shiny MacBook pro. They handed me a Dell and said good luck, I did a bit of research and decided on LMDE for a couple of reasons.

The first was the rolling releases, I can deal with small issues that come up occasionally but I cannot deal with having to re-install my OS every 6 months. I go 100 MPH all day long, having a day of downtime followed by a week of setting up my environment just doesn't work for me.

The second was because I haven't used Debian much, seemed like a great opportunity to expand my knowledge and having some of the Mint tools is nice.

Have I had some issues? Sure, nothing that's been a huge deal though. Also nothing I can directly attribute to Mint. In my view there are the Ubuntu versions that are probably going to be easier for the typical desktop user, then there's the Debian version that is going to be geared more toward the power user. Far be it for me to say which one is "better", for me if it weren't for LMDE I wouldn't be using Mint at all.

[NewDisciple]

Just wanted to say several things.
1. It does not take an advanced computer, linux superuser to run this system. I believe it to be newbie friendly. See how many new entries are listed in the forum during a four hour period as compared to Ubuntu for the same amount of time.
2. I have not seen any attitude towards LMDE users. Responses have been quick, well thought out, friendly and concise.
3. Not all machines will work in a like manner for a given operating system. That's why all of these choices are so nice.
4. Use apt-listbugs, it is a great tool that will show you what packages are broken.
5. If it were me I would complain about Dell (I'm a former owner so I do have experience and knowledge in this area) rather than a system and developers.
I'm not trying to start anything here. It's just from my point of view.

[malligt]

@NewDisciple

Your math analysis is somewhat skewed in that there are probably 100 fold (1000 fold?) more ubuntu users than LMDE users, hence the larger # of ubuntu posts collected in a 4 hr.window.

Newbie friendly? Depends on the newbie. Everyone has varying skill-set levels, but from Mint's LMDE main page...."Debian is a less user-friendly/desktop-ready base than Ubuntu... expect some rough edges."

Hardware of a given pc and any linux distro can produce different user experiences. Agreed.

The daily grind of the updates of the LMDE rolling release finally took its toll on me. Not because I have a Dell computer. At one point recently on the LMDE forums.... I counted 50% of the postings on LMDE forum (not including "stickies") on page 1 dealt with LMDE breakages, and/or things not working after updating LMDE.

Mint Update continues to be a W-I-P (work-in-progress) according to the forums. The most current version of MU, now present in Mint 11, is supposed to be coming into LMDE. Good.

I have not experienced any "attitude" from other LMDE users on this forum. I was grateful for all the people who took their time to try to help me.

A minimum level suggestion for the Mint Dev team, if not too late, would be to suggest/request a LMDE respin coordinated to come out at the time the newest main edition is released. That would really help out new users, and those struggling to keep their systems current, if not to just "keep up with the Jones" (pclinux os and others).

I think I shall return to LMDE eventually. I learned a huge amount from the 8 months I tried it. Now, for me personally, I just want something less stressful, less daily upkeep. Like other LMDE users, I've run Mint 9, and 10 in the background...so if LMDE broke, I'd have a computer to use. So, I'm not leaving Mint, just shifting into a different Mint version for the time being.

And for all the bashing and trashing about ubuntu...the Mint 9 and 10 (and hopefully 11?) versions have been rock solid (for me) while I struggled with LMDE rolling from 9-10-11. Just my own user experience here.

YMMV (your mileage may vary).

Regards!

[mikebravo]

LMDE has been a disappointment to me also. I won't repeat it here but see my posts on page 3 of the sticky note HOW TO: Solve your LMDE audio issues ( viewtopic.php?f=141&t=58616&start=40 ) started by Blowtorch 10/2010. NO SOUND does not give one a warm fuzzy out of box experience.

[Dr.m0x]

@ Dr. m0x

Good luck with ubuntu based mint and the six monthly installs and new breakages though. Hour you enjoy them.

6 months installs? Enjoy breakages? Huh?

I've got Mint 10 Julia 32 bit on a desktop, with LO 3.4, and Chromium 12 running just fine. Hasn't borked since installation last year. I still have Mint 9 LTS 32 bit running on a older desktop machine with no borkage. 6 month re-installs? Not my experience.

The Dell laptop that use to have the LMDE 32 bit on it, now has Mint 11 katya 32 bit with LO 3.3, FF5, and Chromium 12...soon to have LO 3.4.

For me, it's not about the speed of LMDE, or the rolling release feature. It's about the very low daily maintenance positives of Mint 9,10, and (hopefully 11) vs LMDE.

Was referring to the fact that ubuntu release on schedule every six months regardless if its ready or not. In my experience every new addition of ubuntu or mint main comes with new bugs, breakages and required workarounds. You aren't really avoiding issues as it may well seem but more postponing having to deal with them.

I've found lmde to be no less stable than main. You get breakages and bugs either way the key thing is lmde issues could occur at any time and main edition problems occur mostly around the time of release of a new edition.

For me its much more work to deal with a full reinstall every six months than the occasional breakage every now and then. I've yet to suffer a lmde problem which required any significant time or effort to resolve and none of them have been system breaking our show stopping. Mostly just annoying things like compiz getting stuck with four horizontal desktops.

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Sent by an Htc Desire HD with Leedroid love.

[mad2]

I have tried many many distros and LMDE is the one i settled on for many reasons.

LOW ram usage...very low
Debian is very responsive and i swear it seems to get faster the longer its been since a reboot lol
the module assistant basically saved my life for alsa problems and nvidia drivers
the community is geared more towards moving forward in my opinion and trying to make things more simple which i like better than regular debian (personal opinion)
the community has helped so much..especially in irc chats..its amazing the amount of knowledgeable help u can get

[ds2992]

One word "squeeze"
it have been on squeeze for about 2 months and dont really have any issues.
i have lmde testing on another partition that i use to follow upgrades in testing and see the difference between the 2.
my main os is squeeze. when i need a computer that works i use squeeze. when i want to play around or learn something or test an idea i use testing.
i break testing sometimes but never squeeze.
this seemed like the best idea for me as fixing something can take quite a bit of time.