LMDE a sleeping distro?

[twa]

Hi to everyone,
to those of U questioning/complaining .... have U ever contributed to help Clem and devs in any way ??
we all need to stay calm and wait, when the baby is ready to come out we will get it.
@yaye

I was thinking the same thing. I hope Clem and the devs don't waste anymore time responding. I won't.

perfect answer +1

have a good day

[Davarish]

Well to all of you who say we are wrong demanding things I have to say this. I am not demanding anything here. If I had paid for Mint I would demand to have my money back. Now I am just complaining. Complaining because the advertising of LMDE mislead me to faulse expectations

[edgarkls]

These kinds of posts never end as long as people respond to them. Enjoy

This kind of reply is not helping, either.All it does is showing disregard for the legitimate concerns of others.

To make matters clear: I do like Mint LMDE, and I do as much appreciate the work of the developers as I admire their dedication to it. I had no idea that this threat would turn into a little monster when I started it nor was that my intention in the first place. All I was concerned with was the lack of updates/upgrades although it had been stated clearly that there would be monthly upgrade packs. Which is a legitimate concern, I might point out. Especially since some upgrades fix security issues while others fix rather annoying bugs and/or add features which might be useful in my daily work. I am especially referring to Firefox and, even more so, LibreOffice. With respect to the latter, what has prompted my post was the lack of communication. All I knew until then was that there were monthly upgrades. Only, there weren't. And no hint of when to expect the next one, either. Therefore the question I faced was: What to do about Firefox and LibreOffice? The more time passed the less sense it made to wait for an upgrade of which I had no idea when it finally might be due. From my perspective it could have been tomorrow or maybe as late as June 2012.

I have now solved the problem by installing up to date Debian packages of both provided elsewhere.

Finally: The wish for stability is certainly understandable, and I do share it. However, the fact that I have decided for LMDE, based on testing(!) rather than Debian stable, in itself also indicates that I am willing and prepared to take some occasional risk. Like everybody else who has willingly chosen LMDE.

[Davarish]

edgarkis I completely agree 100% percent with you. If I wanted a stable system with relatevely outdated versions of programs I would use Debian. If I wanted the latest and greatest I would use Fedora with enabled testing repos (which is much newer than sid). So...I am using LMDE after reading "LMDE continuously changes as it receives updates and new software. Compared to a frozen version of Linux Mint which changes very little once it’s publicly released, it’s not as stable. Things are likely to break more often but fixes can also come quicker." from here http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1818 .
I liked what I read two months ago and decided to go with that. Not sid repos, not testing repos, not frozen distro with no updates at all. Many people came here and accused me of demanding things. I am not demanding anything. People are still reading this http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1818 and go on and install LMDE with false expectations. Even today this is still up and unchanged. Now Lisa is done finaly, and now I am waiting for things to clear up for us. What will be the new policy? I think we will know soon

[maxibuntu]

I'm new here and I come from Ubuntu. I'm trying out LMDE in a VM to see if it's nice enough for me to migrate.

To me the Mint Debian Edition is interesting because it can potentially save you from breakage that could happen if you used Debian Testing proper. Rolling distro's can break more easily, so focusing on stability should be a main concern. Thats why I don't care if the updates are taking longer than expected, and in this case it has partly to do with the Gnome transition, so its an understandable delay anyway. So, If you want fast updates, go for Debian Testing, if you want more stability, go for Mint.

Bandwith for big updates will not be an issue with me, but of course it could be for others, for instance in third-world countries, where many people use OSS. A thing that should be looked into is sufficient harddrive space: the installer should warn if you are creating a root partition that's less than 10GB or so, because after the install all this new data has to be downloaded. This will be especially important if update packs are getting bigger. So, in that respect it would be wise to release the updates more frequent. On the other hand, if you don't have enough bandwith, you can always just use Mint Ubuntu flavor... There are so many options.

[Gerd50]

maxibuntu wrote:

Bandwith for big updates will not be an issue with me, but of course it could be for others, for instance in third-world countries

Well, i live in the third-world countrie Germany 47 kb/s max dl speed here. That's why i run testing and sid with
daily updates, if the Debian weather - http://edos.debian.net/weather/ - shows sun.

I'm running testing for over one year now. Breakages were very seldom. Mostly there was the possibility of a fix. And if not,
qt4-fsarchiver - http://qt4-fsarchiver.sourceforge.net/ - is my friend. I think, some people are overanxiously with breakages
in testing. We have the breakage thread - viewtopic.php?f=198&t=67502 - in our forums. There
are always warnings, if the Debian weather is stormy and it's better to wait for some days with a dist-upgrade or to set critical
packages on hold.

[maxibuntu]

maxibuntu wrote:

Bandwith for big updates will not be an issue with me, but of course it could be for others, for instance in third-world countries

Well, i live in the third-world countrie Germany 47 kb/s max dl speed here. That's why i run testing and sid with
daily updates, if the Debian weather - http://edos.debian.net/weather/ - shows sun.

Man you have slow bandwith! I guess you took care to keep that out of your signature

I'm running testing for over one year now. Breakages were very seldom. Mostly there was the possibility of a fix. And if not,
qt4-fsarchiver - http://qt4-fsarchiver.sourceforge.net/ - is my friend. I think, some people are overanxiously with breakages
in testing. We have the breakage thread - viewtopic.php?f=198&t=67502 - in our forums. There
are always warnings, if the Debian weather is stormy and it's better to wait some days with a dist-upgrade or to set critical
packages on hold.

OK thanx very much for the info. If Debian Testing is stable enough I will consider going Debian. I'll keep my VM's with Debian CUT and LMDE running for a few months and see if LMDE has enoug added value (I don't care for the cosmetic customizations of Mint, purely interested in something that is stable and up to date).

[asymmetros]

To Gerd50
Debian weather? Very nice, many thanks !!! Had not idea about it!
My first rolling distro was LMDE, since it's very first days. Upgrading via terminal (the splendid mintupdate was no ready). Never experienced a single glitch. So, i agree that Testing is a much more stable and secure choice that many people think. Do not be afraid, go that way guys!!!

Now, to the people accussing everyone who complains etc:
Sincerely and no offence, i doubt if you know what is all about. So i recommend you to read carefully the posts already mentioned in this topic:
http://blog.linuxmint.com/?m=201107&paged=4 http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1818
Then please show me a recent blog post announcing the newest change to LMDE' s upgrading scheme -you won 't find any.
That's why i said “The real "problem" (imho) was that LMDE was following for the last months an unknown upgrading scheme". No one can deny this. That 's what many people here talked about no information or not communicating what's going on. See eg wormtown's example with debian, a page before. When you, (as users and not as project devs) are speaking of stability etc you are expressing your preferences, not LMDE' s officialy announced updating scheme. If i had changed to Sid or to Sith, it is irrelevant.
When a distro does not follow the officialy stated updating scheme, without officially announcing why, you ll have frustration and users wondering (and worried) about distro 's/edition's state and future. So clear.
If you not understand this, i cannot help you any more.

[gsmanners]

You understand if the devs are a little too busy to make pedantic little tweaks to their official policies? Maybe in another month or two...

[viking777]

You understand if the devs are a little too busy to make pedantic little tweaks to their official policies? Maybe in another month or two...

If they were too busy to deal with LMDE update packs then they shouldn't have started the project in the first place, the workload was predictable and predicted at the time. If they hadn't started it then nobody would have been misled into installing something that doesn't deliver on what was promised. The arguments that davarish and edgarkls have put forward in this thread have been completely reasonable and justified and Clem's "nothing wrong here" reply doesn't answer their concerns one little bit.

Having said that I also have to say to davarish and edgarkls that this sort of thing is pretty commonplace in the Linux world particularly with projects from small development teams. I know I use Mint Fluxbox! (Or at least I did until the arrival of Gnome 3 now I am not so sure.)

But hang in there and Clem will get round to LMDE latest in time, but don't hold your breath

[mockturtl]

We want a stable and tested system ... Staying without updates at all for another 3 months is not the solution either.

You have to understand there's a fundamental conflict of interest there. Every distro's release schedule is a strategy to manage that tradeoff between features (patches) and stability (QA).

If they were too busy to deal with LMDE update packs then they shouldn't have started the project in the first place, the workload was predictable

The workload is impossible to predict. That's why they call it the "testing" repository.

If they hadn't started it then nobody would have been misled into installing something that doesn't deliver on what was promised.

They'd also have no desktop.

The arguments that davarish and edgarkls have put forward in this thread have been completely reasonable and justified and Clem's "nothing wrong here" reply doesn't answer their concerns one little bit.

From what I see, the concrete suggestions are for updates to Firefox and LibreOffice. They've been discussed elsewhere:

[SOLVED] how to update the repository's firefox package? (track)
LMDE Libreoffice severely outdated even with Update Pack (track)

Wanting to have the latest software is reasonable. (Mozilla's move to 6-week releases seems a tad frivolous, to me.) Complaining about it, regardless of extenuating circumstances -- like a sea change in the GUI, and the Oneiric release -- is probably not.

[Davarish]

After all these posts...you still think our problem is the latest Firefox and the latest Libre Office...

[wormtown]

After all these posts...you still think our problem is the latest Firefox and the latest Libre Office...

Couldn't agree more.

All it would take is editing the installation notes to:

'monthly update packs (if the creeks don't rise)...'

Or just making a sticky out of any post that has to do with delay in updates.

Our only info directly from clem has been buried in the replies in this thread. Put it where people can see it. Doesn't seem too much to ask.

[monkeyboy]

Ok this does not answer the big question which is "when are we going to get updates?". I am not a hacker or a cracker but I know that outdated software has security issues. We have a heavily outdated system by now. Do you believe it is as safe as fedora 16 for example?

Come on, unless you can site the security issues you are concerned about no one can answer your questions.

[Davarish]

[quote='' Come on, unless you can site the security issues you are concerned about no one can answer your questions.[/quote]

I talked about security issues, bugs, misleading advertisment, lack of official answers, lack of community answers that point to the real problem. You people think that the problem here is me and that I need to take a chill pill. lol! At least many came here and understood my points, so I know that Mint community does not consist of complete Cartmans (''Whatever! I'll read what I want")

[asymmetros]

@mockturtl, monkeyboy, any objection for this?

Sincerely and no offence, i doubt if you know what is all about. So i recommend you to read carefully the posts already mentioned in this topic:
http://blog.linuxmint.com/?m=201107&paged=4 http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1818
Then please show me a recent blog post announcing the newest change to LMDE' s upgrading scheme -you won 't find any.
That's why i said “The real "problem" (imho) was that LMDE was following for the last months an unknown upgrading scheme". No one can deny this. That 's what many people here talked about no information or not communicating what's going on. See eg wormtown's example with debian, a page before. When you, (as users and not as project devs) are speaking of stability etc you are expressing your preferences, not LMDE' s officialy announced updating scheme. If i had changed to Sid or to Sith, it is irrelevant.
When a distro does not follow the officialy stated updating scheme, without officially announcing why, you ll have frustration and users wondering (and worried) about distro 's/edition's state and future. So clear.

BTW, your "answer" to viking777 is hardly an answer. If you doubt you can deliver, you do not advertise monthly upgrades.

[doktordave]

Davarish,

While you perhaps have some valid points, your presentation of those points seems a bit strong. For example, what constitutes these "Official" users you mentioned earlier? Are they limited to the folks that agree with you? And are all that do not Cartmans?

When LMDE started out, the testing repos were in use, and the warning was given that users should "expect some rough edges", and that a more advanced linux skill set would be required. No update packs, no safety nets.

Quite a few forum members then began "breakage" threads, and many others pitched in with answers to the great majority of questions asked in the LMDE forums. There's no lack of community answers here, and I've always felt that the forums here are some of the best. If you'd like, you can experience the other sort quite easily. Just go to the aptosid forum, and ask some mint related questions. Even in the debian forums, if you ask a mint question anywhere except in the "Offtopic" section, you may not find them quite so friendly.

Then came the Update Packs. Some people here thought they'd be great, and several others thought it was a waste of time - but even so, the members pitched in with help on incoming, and for the most part, the Update Packs helped those users who were having problems with testing. It also added to the workload, web site overhead, and so on.

Mint Debian has been discussed in one way or the other at least since version 6 (Helena) was out. I didn't pay that much attention at the time, but as each new version came from ubuntu, more problems developed and never got fixed. Worse with each version. I started paying more attention to the Mint Debian developments.

Clem and company have done a great deal of work on this project. It hasn't always been perfect, but the wishes of the users have been one of the driving forces in the Mint distributions. This fact alone has brought many of the users here. They actually have a say in the development. The Update Pack model is an example of this.

I will agree that it would have been better to have had more info from Clem and the team. I will also agree that updates are long overdue for those on Incoming or latest. The pages about the Update Packs should have been updated as the situation changed. However, as has already been pointed out, the dev team is pretty thin.

It's a good thing I'm not in charge of this distro - not only because I lack the skills to maintain it, but I would have shut it down by now if I were facing the sort of rants I've heard here as of late. Between the general dislike of gnome shell, and the complaints about Update Packs here, I think I might have decided on a different career path.

Clem and company have taken on a lot of extra work, trying to give everyone what they want. And that's BEFORE gnome shell came into the picture. Not to mention two base distributions, debian and ubuntu. Then add the different DE's. The problem with this is that NO ONE can give everyone everything that they want - it's impossible.

If you haven't done it already, take a look at Mint 12 "Lisa" to see what's been done with shell. That's the future for LMDE as well, and while I'm still not crazy about the shell, it's a huge improvement over the default. There's MATE, for those who can't abide leaving gnome 2.xx. And while it lasts, even fallback mode. Of course, you still have xfce, KDE and so on.

Too ambitious? Yes, I think so. I'd drop mate, for a start. Whether we like it or not, gnome shell is coming, and I'd spend my development time there. Change happens, and all there is to do is adapt. It won't be stopped. I can't wait to hear the screams when gnome 4 arrives. The Update packs would have to go too.

I can't code. I can't help much on the forums - I'm competent in Windows environments up to XP as a system admin, but still what I would call a "dangerous" user in linux. All I can do is donate, post an occasional answer here and there in the forums, and break stuff here to find out what works, what doesn't and how to fix it. If nothing else, I may be able to help someone else down the road. My original install is still running just fine, largely due the help found here and the good job of the Mint team. Perhaps you will volunteer to help fix the problems you've mentioned.

I'm going for the full ride with LMDE. If it got dropped, I'd have to switch over to debian. Like with microsoft windows, the day came when I knew I wouldn't be using ubuntu-based distros from that point forward. I for one hope this does not come to pass - I'd prefer to stay with LMDE.

Critique is fine, even needed for the success of the distribution. But when critique is presented in this fashion, it comes off as a rant. Valid points are lost. It may not have been your intention to come across as combative, but it appears to be the case in this instance, judging by some of the comments found here.

There are any number of ways to get what you want, outside of whatever the mint team may decide to send our way. Many of them have been shown to you in this thread. I would suggest that you make use of them.

[Davarish]

This is all for me? Thanks!
Well...you are right. Maybe my language was not the appropriate. Many people thought that I write while frustrated or that I demand things here but I am not. I think my questions, my statements and my opinion were very clear on my previous posts and I have nothing to add or anything to make more clear

[monkeyboy]

[quote='' Come on, unless you can site the security issues you are concerned about no one can answer your questions.

I talked about security issues, bugs, misleading advertisment, lack of official answers, lack of community answers that point to the real problem. You people think that the problem here is me and that I need to take a chill pill. lol! At least many came here and understood my points, so I know that Mint community does not consist of complete Cartmans (''Whatever! I'll read what I want")[/quote]

I am sorry but I did not mention "misleading advertisement, lack of official answers, lack of community answers"? Let me answer my own question, no I did not. I am trying to deal with one specific issue with another individual. I have pointedly refrained from responding to your posts because it would accomplish nothing. Thanks

[Nuts2u]

Wow....This sure is a lively discussion!! I think this is great, we all have the freedom to state our opinions, like and dislikes. They are there for all to read.

I for one pick stability over security. MY LMDE is solid and boots every time. Would I like to have the latest FireFox or Chromium? Sure, but I can wait. There are a lot of people helping out on the incoming repo, way above my level at this time. But I do appreciate the fruits of their labors, thru the update pack that will come down the line. Clem and his small team sure do have their work cut out for them, and I really appreciate their efforts.

I'm not gonna pick sides in this debate. I've stated where I stand, and I do not expect anyone to agree with my decision. However with that said, I really do enjoy this lively debate on this thread. I do believe we all benefit from this discussion as open and honest discussion as this.

I'm staying with LMDE until the project is scrapped. Which I hope it is not.