What about dropping Ubuntu-based Mint Edition ?

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openfred

What about dropping Ubuntu-based Mint Edition ?

Post by openfred »

Hello,

After many years using Mint/Cinnamon, I tried LMDE2 for the past 3 months (*), and love it very much so far: such a nice feeling of lightness !
The only missing feature I've seen is the lack of PPAs, that I (personally) don't use.

When LMDE3 (based on Debian 9 Stretch) development will be done, and LMDE3 released on Q1 2018 (https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3418), what's the point to work on Mint 19 ???
I have the feeling that working on 2 different bases is not only time consuming, but above all useless.
Especially now that Flatpak is going to be a good replacement for PPA. And it's still possible to add external repositories, such as Google Chrome, which is fairly similar as adding a PPA.

LMDE3 has been announced as a Cinnamon-centric distro, but removing Ubuntu-based Mint edition could free up time to continue to provide Cinnamon and Mate Editions. Only Cinnamon and Mate are needed, as KDE and XFCE are available in SolydXK for example.

I'll go even further:
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS has been launched in April 2016, based on Debian Unstable/Testing from that time (going to be Debian 9 Stretch), when the painting was still wet. Debian 9 Stretch has been launched in June 2017, plain, stable, as usual.
Ubuntu LTS is a released-too-early Debian based distro (with so many rollback updates...). With the exception of 14.04 LTS, which was surprisingly stable from scratch, Ubuntu is really not the way to go.

What's the point to work on Mint 19/Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, which is going to be rock-solid only after Debian 10 Buster has been released ?
It would be more interesting, in my mind, to only launch LMDE3, and then concentrate on LMDE4 (based on Debian 10) directly.

I strongly hope this opinion will spring some interesting opinions, because LMDE should not be considered as a "fallback Option", but definitely the ONLY way to go.

Cheers,
Fred

(*) My new laptop uses a Intel 6205 wifi which fails to connect to wifi using any *buntu 18.04 LTS and derivatives !
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Re: What about dropping Ubuntu-based Mint Edition ?

Post by Moem »

openfred wrote:LMDE should not be considered as a "fallback Option", but definitely the ONLY way to go.
If that is 'definitely' the case, why even discuss it? If you've truly seen a light that none of us here can see, then surely Clem will see it too and that's what will happen. Somehow, I doubt that... but I'm a mere mortal, so what do I know. :roll:
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Re: What about dropping Ubuntu-based Mint Edition ?

Post by Pjotr »

Why on earth should the Mint devs ever want to drop that excellent Ubuntu LTS codebase? :shock:

Note that the Ubuntu devs improve upon their Debian codebase. Mint benefits from those improvements, for free. Yay!
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Re: What about dropping Ubuntu-based Mint Edition ?

Post by Lucap »

It could also be asked why bother with LMDE when you can install standard Debian with the Cinnamon desktop option? :P
openfred

Re: What about dropping Ubuntu-based Mint Edition ?

Post by openfred »

Moem wrote:
openfred wrote:If that is 'definitely' the case, why even discuss it?
My opinion clearly overwhelmed :D thanks for pointing that out.
Hopefully, it's not going to disturb the discussion.
Pjotr wrote:Why on earth should the Mint devs ever want to drop that excellent Ubuntu LTS codebase? :shock:
Note that the Ubuntu devs improve upon their Debian codebase. Mint benefits from those improvements, for free. Yay!
Can anyone tell me how the Ubuntu base is better than the debian base?
It's the same base, only different at some point of time, and available in main/universe/multiverse/restricted, instead of main/contrib/non-free
Last edited by openfred on Thu Jan 25, 2018 5:58 am, edited 1 time in total.
openfred

Re: What about dropping Ubuntu-based Mint Edition ?

Post by openfred »

Lucap wrote:It could also be asked why bother with LMDE when you can install standard Debian with the Cinnamon desktop option? :P
To benefit from the excellent Mint work: an up-to-date Cinnamon desktop on a stable base, and all the mint tools.
That's why we are all here using Mint, right ?
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Re: What about dropping Ubuntu-based Mint Edition ?

Post by Lucap »

openfred wrote:That's why we are all here using Mint, right ?
You'd be surprised at the amount of distro hoppers and multi-booters here and the forum owner mostly uses Arch with Gnome. :P :wink:
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Re: What about dropping Ubuntu-based Mint Edition ?

Post by Pjotr »

openfred wrote:Can anyone tell me how the Ubuntu base is better than the debian base?
It's the same base, only different at some point of time, and available in main/universe/multiverse/restricted, instead of main/contrib/non-free
It's not. Check Ubuntu's Main repo. There are the Canonical-made changes.

Furthermore, the MOTU's also contribute to Universe and Multiverse:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MOTU

You don't really think that all those Ubuntu devs, some of them paid by Canonical, do nothing but copy Debian, do you? :mrgreen:
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Re: What about dropping Ubuntu-based Mint Edition ?

Post by Moem »

openfred wrote:
Moem wrote:
openfred wrote:If that is 'definitely' the case, why even discuss it?
My opinion clearly overwhelmed :D thanks for pointing that out.
I'm not sure about overwhelmed... I was put off, for sure.
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Re: What about dropping Ubuntu-based Mint Edition ?

Post by openfred »

Pjotr wrote: You don't really think that all those Ubuntu devs, some of them paid by Canonical, do nothing but copy Debian, do you? :mrgreen:
Not only, they're also wasting time to develop useless projects such as Unity, Mir, Upstart and now Snap. I don't even speak about their in-house do-release-upgrade which aims at doing things Debian never needed with "apt dist-upgrade".

Canonical is a company which decide by itself to work on parallel projects and then complain to be alone to work on them !
Let's imagine Ubuntu disappears tomorrow, it won't take long for some projects to move to Debian.

What Ubuntu-based Mint provides that LMDE don't ?
It's a real question, as after using LMDE, nothing is missing for me. That's why I am asking to some other Mint users.
To share. Really :)
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Re: What about dropping Ubuntu-based Mint Edition ?

Post by Pjotr »

openfred wrote:
Pjotr wrote: You don't really think that all those Ubuntu devs, some of them paid by Canonical, do nothing but copy Debian, do you? :mrgreen:
Not only, they're also wasting time to develop useless projects such as Unity, Mir, Upstart and now Snap. I don't even speak about their in-house do-release-upgrade which aims at doing things Debian never needed with "apt dist-upgrade".
Do you seriously think that's all they add and change?
openfred wrote:Let's imagine Ubuntu disappears tomorrow, it won't take long for some projects to move to Debian.
Heaven forbid that Ubuntu would disappear, but that's probably true.

However, why do you suppose that those projects didn't do that in the first place? Maybe (just a thought) because there are improvements and refinements in Ubuntu that Debian doesn't have? Or are they all just dumb and didn't see the light yet?
openfred wrote:To share. Really :)
Debunked. Truly. :wink:
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Re: What about dropping Ubuntu-based Mint Edition ?

Post by Lucap »

/me gets the stirring stick out.

What about basing Mint on Arch? :P
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Re: What about dropping Ubuntu-based Mint Edition ?

Post by ArtGirl »

There are certain things only LM Cinnamon, in it's present form, will do ie pressure sensitivity for graphics (display) tablets. I've seen people compiling difficult workarounds regarding other distros/setups ... that is way beyond what a beginner to Linux can do. I certainly can't. LM Cinnamon is plug and play, with pressure sensitivity, for nearly all devices. I'm glad it's LM that has this, as I wasn't keen on other distros anyway; that the graphics/pressure worked immediately, and has never caused any issues, is brilliant.

Many use Krita/Gimp/Inkscape, including professionals, so making a structural change that jeopardises that, wouldn't work. LMDE/KDE versions of Mint, when I tried them, were complex and no pressure sensitivity; while I fully understand the different versions cater to different preferences, there's no reason to shoot the most accessible version down.
openfred

Re: What about dropping Ubuntu-based Mint Edition ?

Post by openfred »

Pjotr wrote:Do you seriously think that's all they add and change?
Honestly no, they provides some nice tools (and they were precursors) such as a nice installer, a nice Software update tool, and a nice proprietary drivers installation tool. All this tools were stunning when first available (back in 2004), but they are not used on LM, as LM is using its own tools for these purposes.
Pjotr wrote:Heaven forbid that Ubuntu would disappear, but that's probably true.
Ubuntu will be "free forever", but it's not guaranteed that Canonical will not give up.
openfred

Re: What about dropping Ubuntu-based Mint Edition ?

Post by openfred »

Lucap wrote:What about basing Mint on Arch? :P
Manjaro/Cinnamon community edition is not bad at all :-) And much more stable than Debian testing for such an up-to-date OS.
That being said, I wouldn't use it on my children laptops, as I do not want to reply to the question: "Why the hell are there so many updates all the time" ? :D

Let's keep focus on LM, and try to find what LM provides that LMDE don't.
openfred

Re: What about dropping Ubuntu-based Mint Edition ?

Post by openfred »

@ArtGirl: interesting. I would never have thought about display pressure !
ArtGirl wrote:(...) I've seen people compiling difficult workarounds regarding other distros/setups ...
Did you tried LMDE Cinnamon already ? I wonder if that feature is from ubuntu or from Cinnamon. Maybe this feature exists with LMDE Cinnamon already ?
ArtGirl wrote: (...) including professionals, so making a structural change that jeopardises that, wouldn't work.
I see no reason this feature could not been available in LMDE 3. It would be surprising to see this feature only available for Ubuntu base.

Fred
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Re: What about dropping Ubuntu-based Mint Edition ?

Post by Hoser Rob »

Lucap wrote:It could also be asked why bother with LMDE when you can install standard Debian with the Cinnamon desktop option? :P
For one thing, as bad as the LMDE forum is, if you ask the typical sort of noob question from here or ubuntuforums, they'll just suggest you install Ubuntu or Mint. No noob hand holding there.

For another, there are enough noobs on this forum who are ticked off because they don't get the newest versions of software from the repos. Debian stable is even worse.

BTW, Debian unstable version is more stable than most distro's stable version.
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Re: What about dropping Ubuntu-based Mint Edition ?

Post by ArtGirl »

openfred wrote:@ArtGirl: interesting. I would never have thought about display pressure !
ArtGirl wrote:(...) I've seen people compiling difficult workarounds regarding other distros/setups ...
Did you tried LMDE Cinnamon already ? I wonder if that feature is from ubuntu or from Cinnamon. Maybe this feature exists with LMDE Cinnamon already ?
ArtGirl wrote: (...) including professionals, so making a structural change that jeopardises that, wouldn't work.
I see no reason this feature could not been available in LMDE 3. It would be surprising to see this feature only available for Ubuntu base.

Fred
@openfred, I think I did try LMDE; can't fully recall, tbh, but any other versions of Mint I tried didn't have pressure sensitivity. Cinnamon is amazing for that. I'm really not sure what it's based on that makes it amazing, lol, tbh. I'd be interested to learn, but not from the angle of going on to compile ... not pos, lol.

I have always felt 100% confident that pressure sensitivity will work on Cinnamon, and relieved to see Wayland isn't a high priority ... as far as I understand, Wayland is more included in the other versions, and is considered a replacement for x.org? With my experience of other versions, and a few other distro tests I did before being glad to settle with LM, Wayland doesn't cater for pressure sensitivity being plug and play ... I had briefly attempted a manual install of x.org in one of the tests, but no success, and quickly registered it may be too complex. Again, I'm confident in the LM devs that pressure sensitivity would be safeguarded, as it works so well already and all the drivers possible have been included.

If other versions of Mint had the pressure sensitivity equally included as plug and play, it'd be a different playing field. I understand the versions cater to different needs, so can understand why eg Cinnamon is very beginner-friendly, thus includes plug and play pressure sensitivity, but other versions may be more suited to those who have no need for such a thing, the knowledge needed to compile, and like to tinker/bleeding edge, etc.
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Re: What about dropping Ubuntu-based Mint Edition ?

Post by JerryF »

Here's are extracted quotes from https://www.linuxmint.com/download_lmde.php. In my opinion, these touch upon the reasons why many wouldn't want to move to LMDE:
...
it is not compatible with PPAs, and it lacks a few features. That makes it a bit harder to use and harder to find help for, so it is not recommended for novice users.
There will always be novice users. It's good to have an option besides LMDE.
...
newly developed features get directly into LMDE 2
...
staged for inclusion on the next upcoming Linux Mint 17.x point release.
There is time to prepare for newly developed features.
...
Consequently, Linux Mint users only run new features when a new point release comes out and they opt-in to upgrade to it. LMDE 2 users don’t have that choice
It's nice to have choice.
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Re: What about dropping Ubuntu-based Mint Edition ?

Post by Dave B »

Don't forget another great benefit of the Ubuntu base, Linux Mint versions have a nice easy to use driver manager. :)

Some time ago I tested several GNU/Linux versions, including all Mint versions, on an old (2008) Netbook which has a single core Atom CPU. Surprisingly, LMDE was the slowest overall. Link still in my signature.
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