How stable is LMDE with Gnome?

[ayozito]

Hi!

I'm using Debian Testing for a month or so but I am a bit tired of somethings like all the dependencies problems it has with gnome packages (ever marking them at manually installed).

I just tested LMDE in VBox and it hasn't this kind of issues, but also in a virtual machine I can't test how stable it is compared to a real installation (for example the gnome dash is full of glitches in the VBox).

Then I would like you ask to you, users of LMDE, how do you see it? It works fine, stable, etc? Using Gnome Shell. I don't want Cinnamon.

[rop75]

In my laptop Gnome shell used to work great in LMDE pointing to the default repos and it currently works great in my LMDE pointing to testing repos. Bear in mind that both "distros" are basicslly the same (they have the same packages, the only difference are the repos and how often the packages are updated). Currently both distros are using the same version Gnome shell so if you have problems with dependencies in the frozen testing, you are likely to have the same problems in LMDE.

VBox is a great piece of software but its performance depends on your laptop specifications, so LMDE (and any other OS) is supposed to work much better in a real machine than in a virtual machine

[ayozito]

The problem of the dependencies is that in Debian Testing I have installed by default whole gnome metapackages. After mark all the packages as manual and remove for example brasero, it removes also the metapackage itself (but no the software, so it's ok). But then, always that there is a new update, the system wants to install again the metapackage and all the software I've removed (games, brasero, empathy, epiphany, etc) so I have to remove them again over and over in every new update.

However, in LMDE gnome isn't by default. So I can install gnome-shell (no gnome metapackage) and then every single component I need. That's why I wondering about switch to LMDE and forget about Wheezy.

[zerozero]

i have one lmde installation that comes from the beginning of last year (gnome2 at the time, made the transition to gnome3 -shell-) and until now is fairly trouble-free;

it's pointing directly at the testing repos and apart from a few issues with the nvidia blob (never unsolvable) i have to say that overall the system is very very stable.