Will LMDE be a stable distro for the future?

[welshmike]

Please may I be confident that LMDE will be a stable distro for the future?
Currently gksudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list shows:

Code: Select all

deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest testing main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org testing main non-free


Thanks and regards, Mike

P.S. I'm checking out LMDE here on an old spare laptop.
Today having tried many Linux distros I installed LMDE for the first time.
I'm a newbie to LMDE and this forum and a refugee from Ubuntu. Thus far the desktop layout of LMDE and usage feels ideal and easy to use for my purposes.
Ubuntu ran flawlessly from 8.04 to 10.10 for my essential financial and other administration on several PCs including a netbook, laptops and desktop for many many years.
Sorry Canonical I just cannot get on with the latest Ubuntu distros, especially Unity and even Gnome Classic. Neither are Xubuntu, Lubuntu, or Kubuntu right for me.
I decided to choose the Debian based LInux Mint rather than the Ubuntu based one because I am not happy where Ubuntu is going now. Also I understand that I will not have to do an install of LMDE again because of it is a rolling release. Nice.

[killer de bug]

Your source.list is not up to date.

If you read this post, you will have the new ones : http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1949

For me LMDE is very stable. I didn't had any big problem after my first day of configuration. But it doesn't say that it will not come in the future... But frankly, Clem and the team are doing a very good job, so I am confident I will not have any problem in the next months.

[Monsta]

Well, LMDE is gonna become literally stable in the near future because the current Debian Testing is about to be frozen in June (to become the next Debian Stable in 2013).

[welshmike]

I had downloaded and installed this ISO: linuxmint-201109-gnome-dvd-32bit.iso
It is definitely not stable for me: kernel panic when safely removing an external USB drive and updates stated in error.
I have a feeling what I have screwed up and will reinstall and not do the same action that cased to screw up.

[Monsta]

Ah, that's the old bug. It seems to be fixed in the newer kernels.

Unfortunately, the update servers are still under pretty heavy load, though things aren't as horrible as they were yesterday. If you experience errors like "failed to fetch bla bla bla", be patient and don't try to push the update button: mintUpdate won't protect you from updating when it has an incomplete list of packages, and you may end up in a broken system.

[welshmike]

Thanks for the advice. Heavily loaded servers would explain things. I did push update after getting failed to fetch and my system ended up broken. I now have a clean install.
I need to find a simple way way of cloning my system. It is dual boot (experimental W7) and LMDE.
Partitioning for LMDE is /, /home and swap. Is it possible to just clone where the LMDE system is mounted?

[Monsta]

A lot of people recommend Clonezilla. Its tutorial mentions saving a single partition, so you may want to try this program.

[welshmike]

Thank you. I'll try Clonezilla.

[cwwgateway]

To answer your original question, LMDE, when it first came out, was based on Debian Testing. There are three branches of debian - stable, which is incredibly stable but has really old packages, testing, which is not nearly as stable as stable (hence testing), but it's more or less stable-ish (every once and a while it brakes). Finnaly, there is unstable, which is cutting edge but unstable. Both Testing and Unstable are rolling releases, meaning that you never have to reinstall, you just constantly get updates. The current stable release is Debian 6 Squeeze. In 2013, Debian Testing, which is called Wheezy, will become stable and will be the new release. Debian 8, whatever it's going to be called, is then going to be testing. Normally, packages go from unstable to testing kind of quickly, but about 6 months from the release of debian stable, packages stop going from unstable to testing, and the focus is getting rid of bugs. Testing was in this stage when LMDE was created. But after a while, testing started getting lots of new packages and things started braking. So instead of being based directly off of Debian Testing, Update packs were created. Once a month (or at least this was how it was supposed to be), debian testing packages would be put into a repo called incoming. Then the package import was stopped and people would test the packages to get rid of bugs. Once these packages were relatively bug-less, they were pushed to the latest repo. These greatly improved the stability of LMDE because all of the packages were tested before going to the users. However, there are still some bugs. LMDE will never be as stable as, say, debian stable, but it's almost as stable as Ubuntu.

[killer de bug]

For a small troll, I could say that Debian testing is still safer than Ubuntu

Seriously I didn't had any problem since my migration to LMDE. Was harder to configure, but no problem. And UP mode for upgrading makes things safer.
Hope to don't have any problem in the next years

[KBD47]

Well, LMDE is gonna become literally stable in the near future because the current Debian Testing is about to be frozen in June (to become the next Debian Stable in 2013).

For the past couple of months I've been using Mint Xfce with repositories set to Stable. Not a single issue, no problems whatsoever, and it will be Stable all the way through Wheezy's run at Stable. Totally impressed and no issues/breakages from updates. Also I've got backports enabled so I'm running fairly new software.
KBD47

[bananalassi]

I have been on LMDE for a bit more than one year and finally with 12.04 I decided to go back to Ubuntu. The main reason for this was the lack of support in this forum and the too frequent breakages. I need a more stable system. The ppa system in Ubuntu enable me to have the latest of all I want.

[cwwgateway]

Yeah, as KBD said, you can make a stable LMDE (although there might be problems now that LMDE has gone to MATE/Cinnamon, because the tools in the repo like mintmenu will be for MATE/Cinnamon). Still, this is a very stable route, even more stable than Ubuntu, disregarding that problem, which can be fixed by changing the mint repos to the gnome2-frozen ones.

[CapitalG]

I have been on LMDE for a bit more than one year and finally with 12.04 I decided to go back to Ubuntu. The main reason for this was the lack of support in this forum and the too frequent breakages. I need a more stable system. The ppa system in Ubuntu enable me to have the latest of all I want.

i agree that it's nice to have the ppa to have updated software all the time. i sometimes have a hard time upgrading some of my favs. i can't go back to ubuntu and that ugly unity why not wait for mint 13? based on ubuntu anyway.