Linux Mint Debian XFCE edition

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kengcc

Linux Mint Debian XFCE edition

Post by kengcc »

It is being removed from the page: http://www.linuxmint.com/download_lmde.php

But if I try to access some older versions directly, some pages are there: http://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=79

My question is, where can I find the latest version of LM Debian XFCE and is it still properly supported? if not I probably just use Linux Mint XFCE because I prefer the lightweight and snappy experience.
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mockturtl

Re: Linux Mint Debian XFCE edition

Post by mockturtl »

kengcc wrote:where can I find the latest version of LM Debian XFCE and is it still properly supported? if not I probably just use Linux Mint XFCE because I prefer the lightweight and snappy experience.
A recent (UP6) spin of the unofficial LMDE XFCE iso is here: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=122592

From what I understand, the project is continuing here. I think we'll hear an announcement soon.
MtnDewManiac
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Re: Linux Mint Debian XFCE edition

Post by MtnDewManiac »

kengcc wrote:It is being removed from the page: http://www.linuxmint.com/download_lmde.php

But if I try to access some older versions directly, some pages are there: http://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=79
I just noticed the same thing a few hours ago when trying to figure out if a LMDE install might provide acceptable graphics performance with an old ATI IGP340M (345M?) / RS200 setup on a laptop - because I cannot seem to figure out how to get graphics working (other than with the base "no-performance" default setup) in Mint 14 Xfce - and, if so, which version of LMDE I needed (still have no clue).
kengcc wrote:My question is, where can I find the latest version of LM Debian XFCE and is it still properly supported? if not I probably just use Linux Mint XFCE because I prefer the lightweight and snappy experience.
A thought that just occurred to me is, "Since it's a rolling distro, does it even matter which version of LMDE you choose to install, as long as it is one which has the DE(s) that you want? I mean, can't you (and I) just grab any Xfce-only LMDE version and install that, and then have it become the "newest version" by doing a normal update?

Isn't that the whole point of LMDE being a rolling distro? If it isn't, then I'm really confused.
Mint 18 Xfce 4.12.

If guns kill people, then pencils misspell words, cars make people drive drunk, and spoons made Rosie O'Donnell fat.
zerozero

Re: Linux Mint Debian XFCE edition

Post by zerozero »

the decision to drop support for xfce was announced in november http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2237
Going forward, LMDE ISOs will be released in two versions: MATE and Cinnamon. The decision was taken not to maintain a KDE version of LMDE and to stop maintaining the Xfce version. This was a painful decision to make considering the quality of LMDE Xfce and unofficial LMDE KDE, but one that made sense for Linux Mint since LMDE Xfce represented only 4% of the Linux Mint audience. This is also consistent with our strategy to focus on what we do best, to do less and do it better and to invest less time in maintaining editions and more time in developing the core technology that they use. It was a tough call at the time when Linux Mint lost its Fluxbox and LXDE editions. They were great but they only appealed to a minority of our users and we can see the benefits of this decision now, we can release all our editions and switch to focusing entirely on the development of the next iteration much faster in our release cycle. Whether it’s Cinnamon, MDM, the Software Manager, the Mint tools, the LMDE live-installer or even new projects such as a Driver Manager or R&D plans related to the installation and/or base underneath Linux Mint, development is extremely important to us.
will the old 201204 work and if properly updated be the same as any of the recently released isos?
- in a way, yes, the isos are not broken at the moment, meaning that the upgrade path is sane (the same can't be said about older isos)
- anyway you are going to install a iso with around 1GiB and right after do more than that in updates.
MtnDewManiac wrote:Isn't that the whole point of LMDE being a rolling distro? If it isn't, then I'm really confused.
yes it is if you have the system installed, you can keep rolling on for as long as you want; you can't expect to install the original sept/2010 iso and make it work now :P
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Re: Linux Mint Debian XFCE edition

Post by MtnDewManiac »

zerozero wrote:
LMDE Xfce represented only 4% of the Linux Mint audience.
(This) one wonders what percentage of the LMDE audience LMDE Xfce represented, since - IMHO - it's unfair to compare them to the overall Mint user base. (BtW, what percentage of the entire amount of Mint users use any LMDE as their exclusive Mint distro?)

And I wonder if the developers have considered that, while those who favor MATE or Cinnamon could conceivably (I suppose?) be using one of those DEs because they actually like it better than Xfce... That the people who use Xfce are comprised of not only people who do so because they like it, but also people who do so because they simply cannot afford to purchase a computer that is new (or less than five years old - my newest is, I believe, eight years old and I think it might be nine) or even new components. For those of use who are in that particular boat, "liking" a DE has much less bearing on our choice than the fact that a given one is actually usable on our systems (although we may well also like Xfce better than the GNOMEish ones).
This is also consistent with our strategy to focus on what we do best, to do less and do it better and to invest less time in maintaining editions and more time in developing the core technology that they use.
I completely understand not wishing to spread yourselves too thin. That scenario, if taken to its logical extreme, hurts everyone.
It was a tough call at the time when Linux Mint lost its Fluxbox and LXDE editions.
I would think that it would have been an easy call to make - and that the obvious decision would have been not to drop Xfce, for the reason that I discussed above.
They were great but they only appealed to a minority of our users
Again, while the "majority" of users that {some other DE} appealed to undoubtedly had the freedom to choose the DE that did appeal to them, there are some (and I suspect that the actual number is more than "some") of the "minority" of users that Xfce appealed to that did not have the ability to make a choice of DEs.

For many people - at least in my country (USA) - it's a choice between eating once a day or, say, paying our water bill on time (and when we get sick, well...). In my own case, I would like to say that if I had dedicated my entire "entertainment/luxury" budget last year towards purchasing a different computer, that I could have done so. But I bought a meal at a restaurant once (it was Taco Bell and cost around $5) and bought one paperback book (for a dollar at a yard sale). Other than that, I guess you could call the meat that I was able to purchase (sporadically, rarely, during the Summer, when I actually had work) a luxury; I gave up my vehicle years ago, along with cable television (and, in fact, haven't even turned my television on in about a year because it's too difficult to pay my electric bill now).

I know that many are in better shape, financially, than I am - but then, too, I see people almost every day who are in worse shape.

You mentioned that Fluxbox and LXDE had already been dropped... and then Xfce was dropped, too. In order to keep two GNOMElike DEs? I do not really understand the logic in that.

Respectfully, I tried both Cinnamon and MATE when I had my friend's new laptop here, and they both looked like "almost, but not quite, copies of GNOME." Which is fine, I understand that GNOME 2.x has been dropped. So you decided to create... two of them, lol? But you do not wish to spread yourselves thin? So you dropped Xfce, which isn't a copy/clone/imitation/"almost" anything but, rather, its own DE? Which provides a wonderful balance of capability and low resource requirements? <SCRATCHES HEAD> Err... What? :roll:

Are you drawing a line, saying, "Those of you who make this much money are welcome to use our OS, but those of you who manage to earn less, be off with you?" Or is that just the impression that you give by dropping the DE that actually performs well (or at all) on the systems that poor people are likely to be able to afford (or, regrettably, to find whilst looking in dumpsters)?
and we can see the benefits of this decision now, we can release all our editions and switch to focusing entirely on the development of the next iteration much faster in our release cycle. Whether it’s Cinnamon, MDM, the Software Manager, the Mint tools, the LMDE live-installer or even new projects such as a Driver Manager or R&D plans related to the installation and/or base underneath Linux Mint, development is extremely important to us.
Faster is good. I guess. Do you have a fear that if you had continued at your (then) current speed, that you would have lost a significant number of users? Because I think I read somewhere that you were nearly the most popular linux OS (if not THE most popular) already. At your (then) current development speed. <SCRATCHES HEAD AGAIN>

I feel that I should point out that the decision to drop Xfce from your Debian edition (or is that Debian-based edition? I'm not really clear on the terminology) does not, at this time, affect me directly. But it is distressing for two reasons: First, because my own much-used old computer is about shot (Mint 14 Xfce breathed new life into it, but its fan is gone and I cannot see well enough to be sure that I could disassemble it and reassemble it again into a working laptop, even if I could afford the $39 for a new fan/heatsink assembly), my - even older desktop runs but I cannot figure out how to get the nVidia FX5200 graphics to work right and was in the process of trying to find an old LMDE edition version with Xfce to try on it because I've read that Debian tends to be "older" yet it's a "rolling" OS - so I thought maybe I could find one that worked on my hardware yet would still receive updates - and the even older laptop I was loaned to use has an ATI IGP340M/RS200 graphics setup that ATI doesn't seem to support at all in any form <SIGH> and, again, I was wondering if I installed an old version of LMDE Xfce, would it both support the hardware and be updatable. But, secondly, it distresses me because I cannot help but wonder, is Mint Xfce to be the next victim on the chopping block, since you have already dropped the LMDE version of Xfce?

I am not mad, but I am sad - and more than a little worried.
zerozero wrote:will the old 201204 work and if properly updated be the same as any of the recently released isos?
- in a way, yes, the isos are not broken at the moment, meaning that the upgrade path is sane (the same can't be said about older isos)
- anyway you are going to install a iso with around 1GiB and right after do more than that in updates.
MtnDewManiac wrote:Isn't that the whole point of LMDE being a rolling distro? If it isn't, then I'm really confused.
yes it is if you have the system installed, you can keep rolling on for as long as you want; you can't expect to install the original sept/2010 iso and make it work now :P
I don't understand. If I installed yesterday's version yesterday, I could update it today, but if I install yesterday's version today, I cannot? Can you dumb that down a bit? I'm no Homer Simpson - but Albert Einstein I'm not, either. Maybe you better use small words (and type s l o w l y).

I recently installed Ultimate Edition 2.3 (grabbed the wrong disc :roll: ), which is Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope based - which was released in April, 2009, and support was dropped on October 23, 2010 - and it still worked. I just would not have been able to download security (et cetera) updates for it because it is not a rolling distro. Everyone says that Debian and Debian-based distros are rolling... But they only roll if we install new(ish) ones? If so... What's the point of calling it a rolling distro?

Yeah... I definitely do not understand it all. At all.

Saddened, worried, and greatly confused,
MDM

EDIT: I seem to have screwed up the quoting structure somewhat. I hope that you can tell which bits are mine. Oh, and interesting user name, lol. Were I 25+ years younger, I might ask, "Are you from Morocco?" :lol: But that was another lifetime (although... one which people who actually remember it tell me that I enjoyed).
Mint 18 Xfce 4.12.

If guns kill people, then pencils misspell words, cars make people drive drunk, and spoons made Rosie O'Donnell fat.
GeneC

Re: Linux Mint Debian XFCE edition

Post by GeneC »

MtnDewManiac wrote: [...]
I don't understand. If I installed yesterday's version yesterday, I could update it today, but if I install yesterday's version today, I cannot? Can you dumb that down a bit? I'm no Homer Simpson - but Albert Einstein I'm not, either. Maybe you better use small words (and type s l o w l y).
[...]
Saddened, worried, and greatly confused,
MDM
It not that you can't, its that it mostly likely would break. A nearly year old iso would have a HUGE amount of updates coming in (a Gigabyte +), some of which would PROBABLY (almost SURELY... :lol: ) break your new install.

If you want a lightweight XFCE Debian based distro, the answer is here.
http://solydxk.com/about/solydxk/
MtnDewManiac
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Re: Linux Mint Debian XFCE edition

Post by MtnDewManiac »

GeneC wrote:It not that you can't, its that it mostly likely would break. A nearly year old iso would have a HUGE amount of updates coming in (a Gigabyte +), some of which would PROBABLY (almost SURELY... :lol: ) break your new install.
Yeah, that's what he said. And I did not understand it when he said it, either.

He also mentioned that the .ISO would be a gigabyte and that a gigabyte of updates would be downloaded. I did not reply to that part of his reply because, well, I do not see where that has any relevance; I'd be installing from a DVD, right(?) - not a floppy disk. When I was installing Ultimate Edition OS, they were always over 2 gigs, sometimes well over. And as for the size of the updates... My old 1200 bps modem is packed away in my mother's attic along with the rest of my Commodore stuff, so I probably will not be using it to download updates. It is equally unlikely that I would not choose to install and update a new(ly installed) OS seconds before I actually need to use it. That'd be about like calling the water department to turn on your water and then walking into the shower and expecting to get wet as soon as you turn the handle, wouldn't it?

And I still can't understand how I could have installed an OS a long time ago and it would work today but if installed it not quite so long ago, it wouldn't. Do you guys, like edit the files on this site so that they won't work any more, is that it, that I'd have to find a copy that was downloaded to a safer location before you messed them up? If so, what's the point of still having a link for them, just to make your page look fuller or something? And, if that's not it then... I still don't understand.

And, you know (well, aparently you didn't?), when someone tells a person something and that person says that they don't understand them, repeating the same exact words - even if it's someone else that does the repeating - doesn't magically create understanding. That's why I asked the other person to use simpler/plainer languange and, in short, explain what they meant by telling me that if I install it it won't work, but if I call Mr. Peabody and borrow Rocky & Bullwinkle's - or maybe it was Peabody and his dog Sherman's - time machine and go back a few years and install it on a computer then, that it would still work and update now. Maybe it's because I'm sicker than a dog that I don't understand that - but I think it's because it just doesn't make any sense.
GeneC wrote:If you want a lightweight XFCE Debian based distro, the answer is here.
http://solydxk.com/about/solydxk/
To be honest with you, I don't really care who makes the thing, I just want something Xfce that I can get the graphics on my working computer (desktop nVidia FX5200) or my loaner (laptop ATI IGP 340M/RS200) to work right on and that I can install all the same apps that I use on. Was wanting Mint because what I got to experience before my laptop got so I had to take it outside in the cold/snow to keep it from melting really impressed me, but anything that has Xfce and works with the Ubuntu apps - but actually fixes the "Ubuntu core crap" - like Mint does and what works on 7-12 year old computers with not a lot of CPU or RAM is great.

I tell you, back in '81 I saw my very first computer - a Commodore Pet 2001 - at school and was told not to touch it "because we can't find the books" and it didn't seem like all that long before I figured out BASIC pretty much through trial and error of what the various commands might be (and what they might do, once I figured out what each word that did anything actually was) and a couple years later when I actually got a computer everything seemed even easier (it came with a manual, lol). And, up until just a few years ago I still felt like I knew a little bit about them. But here lately, IDK. It seems like every time I turn around I think I feel a little bit dumber, a little bit less... IDK, it's hard to be happy with something when you can't even figure out how to make the thing work right. If it wasn't for the fact that most of the communicating I do is via email and a few web forums and all the video/audio I have access to is through streaming sites like Hulu and Crackle and since I haven't been up to walking to the library all that much any more, most of the "books" I've had a chance to read have come from Project Gutenberg and other free sites (Baen Free Library was great until he died and a bunch of greedy moneygrubbers took over who don't seem to understand that if you give someone a chance to read - anything - for free, they'll be more likely to shop at their business when they can actually afford to buy a book, and if you give them a book, like the first book in a series by a good author, doubly so; so they quit adding to their free library and, since they decided to switch their setup and use Amazon to peddle their eBooks, they've pretty much taken down everything that was up because apparently Amazon gets all bent out of shape when they sell something for any amount of money and the same thing can be found elsewhere for free. The only book I was able to buy last year was just an old paperback at a yard sale, so that doesn't really count, but the year before I must have bought a dozen books and at least half of them were ones that I had gotten the chance to read for free first, and liked well enough to purchase. I guess Amazon and Baen must feel that what they're producing at the old book mill must be of such deplorable quality that no one who has a chance to see it before buying would actually want to purchase it. Well, I figure they should know, so I'll keep their thoughts on the quality of their merchandise in mind and if/when I have a chance to purchase another book (or anything else), I'll make sure that I don't purchase it from Baen or Amazon. But I think I'm rambling a little bit, please forgive me, I've been up all night again trying to figure out how to get the laptop to work graphics right. It's just... I depend on computers to bring at least a hint of normalacy and a ghost of happiness to my life and lately, there's been precious little of either. Sometimes I wonder why I keep on trying - and if Myspace, Facebooks, and that Twit thing that I've read about are any indication, I don't guess I'd exactly be missing anything of importance if I stopped; that anti-"social" webjunk seems to be doing to computers what "reality" tv and "professional" "wrestling" has done to television. It's enough to make a man cry, I guess.

Anyway, I'll check out that link you posted for me later today or tomorrow when I hope my fever finally goes down and I can feel better maybe. It's like Mint, you say? That'd be nice because I really like all the Ubuntu apps that I've got (I just didn't like Ubuntu itself when the only thing that annoyed me was that it was brown on brown with extra brown and people like TheeMahn had to fix all kinds of issues with it in order to turn it into a decent OS, and now that they think we all own giant touchscreen cell phones or something, well...) Rambling again, I think, so I'll just sign and sign off.

Regards,
MDM
Mint 18 Xfce 4.12.

If guns kill people, then pencils misspell words, cars make people drive drunk, and spoons made Rosie O'Donnell fat.
usbtux

Re: Linux Mint Debian XFCE edition

Post by usbtux »

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