Linux Mint Debian Stable (For Those Running This Setup)

[Berkah]

Wow, good job, great work!
Thanks a lot!

[KBD47]

As an experiment for the upcoming New Stable (Wheezy) I did the following:

Took the latest LMDE MATE/Cinnamon spin and changed all the sources to Wheezy, removed the Mint source, installed Xfce 4.8 and ran updates. apt-get choked on the updates, so I ran aptitude update/upgrade and it took care of things pretty well. I still had about 30 updates showing in the update manager, most of those were MATE/Cinnamon related, so I used synaptic to remove MATE and Cinnamon and related files, and was eventually able to finish running the updates with the update manager. The result is not very Minty, it does have the mdm login manager and I kept Mint's icon theme. This install should be good right into the next Debian Stable, I can't see any reason for anything to break at this point though I wouldn't place a bet on it
My thinking is that by installing a 'pure' desktop onto a LMDE spin and removing the Mint source and using straight Debian sources the OS should be fully Debian compatible. The disadvantage is that you lose some Minty flavor, but you have an easy to install and relatively painless Debian OS. I must add that using aptitude to run about 300 mb of updates was more than an hour process for me. I would not be interested in running Testing/Wheezy sources except for the fact Wheezy is in freeze now as the upcoming new Debian Stable.
I'm not recommending anything here just pointing out what's possible

[KBD47]

...use a LMDE Xfce to turn it into LMDE Stable.
...but I used some tweaks I saw on the Debian Forum and got the fonts looking decent again.

What were these tweaks?
The idea sounds great to me, I am just thinking about doing the same - IF my NVIDIA Card will allow it... (works good on LM 13 Mate).

Sorry it took so long to get back to you:
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php? ... 30#p400290

[Monsta]

A note about updating your kernel to 3.2.0 from squeeze-backports: there's a breakage for those who uses ndiswrapper. If you don't, you can skip this post.

Version 1.56 won't compile for kernel 3.2.0. The problem has already been fixed in 1.57-1 (see here), but no one bothered to include the new ndiswrapper in the squeeze-backports repo.
You can get the new version from Testing though, but I can't guarantee anything.

[KBD47]

My second experiment was to see if I could get a KDE version with LMDE for the upcoming Wheezy Stable.
I used the latest spin of LMDE Xfce. I set the sources for wheezy and removed the Mint source. Installed KDE 4.8.4 from the wheezy repo, then ran updates. For some reason Gnome 3 got pulled in with the updates, so I had to purge Gnome.
It is a bit of work, and purging Gnome purges everything Gnome, so I had reinstall a few things like Banshee. But in the end I ended up with a nice KDE version with Wheezy sources. There is really nothing Mint left on it except the listing in grub menu. If someone wants a LMDE KDE with all the Mint flavor and themes they should check out the LMDE KDE thread, it looks pretty good. But for getting back to a purer Debian heading into the next Stable my experiment seemed to work pretty well.

[Mister.T]

Ok, not sure if this one has been covered already but here goes. My preferred installation at the moment is: LMDE 64 bit 21109 set to Gnome 2 "Frozen".

I would like to keep Gnome 2 indefinitely. I've tried the other options of Cinnamon and Mate but neither, at the moment seem to "cut the mustard".

Now the question: Will it be possible to change the sources to the new "Stable" and keep my current installation as it is? I already have the 3.0.0-1 kernel and am entirely happy with the performance. The one major issue that concerns me is; will this new "Stable" try to update Gnome 2 to Gnome 3? and if so what is the best way to avoid this happening?

Any advice welcome.

TBC

[Monsta]

Will it be possible to change the sources to the new "Stable" and keep my current installation as it is?

If you mean Wheezy (which is gonna become the next stable release next year), no. Unless you never upgrade your system, of course.

I already have the 3.0.0-1 kernel and am entirely happy with the performance.

Hmm, that means you've never tried to safely remove some USB drive. I know this isn't about the performance, but that bug made people unhappy.

will this new "Stable" try to update Gnome 2 to Gnome 3?

Of course it will.

and if so what is the best way to avoid this happening?

1. Don't update at all
2. Switch to another DE and remove Gnome 2 - the system won't update something that's not installed
3. Scrap your installation and install the current Stable instead (see this tutorial and my post with corrections)
4. Scrap your installation and install SolusOS 1.0 or 1.1, it's based on the current Stable
5. Scrap your installation and install some other distro based on the current Stable

[Mister.T]

Will try option 4 on a separate partition and see what like. Thanks for the help.

Option 3 does not seem to work for me. Shame as this would be ideal.

[Monsta]

Option 3 does not seem to work for me. Shame as this would be ideal.

Hmm... did any serious errors occur?

[Monsta]

Somehow I've missed the fact that the maintainer of debian-multimedia.org was asked to stop using the word debian and had to change the website's name to deb-multimedia.org. This happened on 10.05.2012. Yesterday he started removing stuff from the older website:

30/07/2012 :
I started to remove suite from debian-multimedia.org
The first suite is stable and experimental then testing in september/october and unstable in november.
Of course people should move to the new domain name right now.

I've changed my post to reflect that.

[Berkah]

...use a LMDE Xfce to turn it into LMDE Stable.
...but I used some tweaks I saw on the Debian Forum and got the fonts looking decent again.

What were these tweaks?
The idea sounds great to me, I am just thinking about doing the same - IF my NVIDIA Card will allow it... (works good on LM 13 Mate).

Sorry it took so long to get back to you:
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php? ... 30#p400290

Thanks a lot! no problem - just had time to check it

[Berkah]

I beg your pardon for another dummy question... sorry, sorry...

(I appreciate the advices and to-do's for getting a LMDE-stable (squeeze) system! Thanks to all contributors so far!!)

Is there any advice for getting already your LMDE Stable based on (Beta) Weezy?
(Or have i just missed that, maybe...)

[KBD47]

I used the most recent LMDE spin of Xfce, installed KDE Standard, chose kdm login manager, with sources set to Wheezy and Mint source removed. It basically gave me a Debian Wheezy KDE without much if any Mint remaining. I guess it could be called a New Stable beta since Wheezy is in freeze. But last I heard there were about 600 bugs to fix, so not sure how Stable it really is at this point.

[intelamd]

hi Monsta,


I didn't know that you pointed this thread for further discussion about Linux Mint Debian Stable so I posted this same message in the newbie questions thread. After reading your post again I realized that you asked me to post my messages here. Anyway I thank you for your support you showed me. I am very determined to create an ISO for Linux Mint Debian Squeeze and I would need your help to create this for sometime. This doesn't mean I would put extra pressure on you and keep on asking you everything. I would try my best to solve things by myself and in case something is above my understanding I would ask you for your guidance. I hope that you would provide me with your useful guidance. I wish to create a i386 iso and for that I would use a virtual machine. Also I would wish to mintify everything of the OS as the latest version of LMDE has it. Kindly inform me whether this would create some bugs and instability if I mintify the OS with the latest mint looks. Kindly also inform if "mintconstructor" would be better for creating a remaster or should I use "remastersys"? I love the look of Linux Mint, its green minty colour and everything so I desperate to create a LMDE squeeze. I have no one but you to look forward to completing this mission and I would be very thankful to you for your support. I hope you would guide me and not leave me alone as I don't think anyone else could help me in this.

[KBD47]

I can't tell you much about mintifying it. But I'd suggest you get a Mint spin from around the time Squeeze was released. There will be lots of updates that will take some time as Squeeze has been out for awhile. What I've noticed with setting things to Squeeze is that updates want to remove the Mint stuff, like font config and themes and sometimes even icons. This is why I usually don't try to retain the minty stuff. Hopefully someone can tell you how to add those in or somehow keep updates from removing those Mint tweaks.

[squeezy]

It's getting very much harder to maintain a decent LMDE Squeeze setup. Most of the Mint stuff that makes LMDE what it is has been ported over to MATE now, so things like mintmenu and mintdesktop that were used in the GNOME 2 environment can no longer be updated. You have to pin them or do something else to stop them from being updated. As the Mint-specific repo gets updated to work with newer version of Debian, it gets farther and farther away from being able to easily support Squeeze anymore.

[vrkalak]

As the Mint-specific repo gets updated to work with newer version of Debian, it gets farther and farther away from being able to easily support Squeeze anymore.

The LMDE repros are based on Debian 'Testing' which is Wheezy and not Squeeze.

I have been using LMDE set to Debian Squeeze (stable+backports) and everything is still updated to the latest versions of all Apps. Extremely stable and fast.

Debian is well-known for being rock-solid stable - always.

[intelamd]

I am very confused as to what step should I take forward. Anyway if LMDE Stable works fine even after mintifying it to give it somewhat current look, and the mint stays, kindly help me choose the iso which I should download. Should I download 32 bit iso from this link:


http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/497



Kindly inform so I begin to make my LMDE stable at the soonest.

[squeezy]

The LMDE repros are based on Debian 'Testing' which is Wheezy and not Squeeze.

I know that. I was talking about the Mint-specific repo at packages.linuxmint.com, not the Debian snapshot repos.

[intelamd]

I am very confused as to what step should I take forward. Anyway if LMDE Stable works fine even after mintifying it to give it somewhat current look, and the mint stays, kindly help me choose the iso which I should download. Should I download 32 bit iso from this link:


http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/497



Kindly inform so I begin to make my LMDE stable at the soonest.

I have understood now that Squeeze had Gnome 2 and the current LMDE has Gnome 3 or Mate etc. so I won't be bothering with the further mintifying of the LMDE stable I wish to create. I would use the one that is available.