XFCE user thinking debian.

[Citizen229]

I thinking of jumping to debian. I dont know why to be honest. Mint XFCE is just a rock steady environment. I am a minimalist by nature. I will say this though, there are features of other environments/distros I did enjoy. Seeing that many distros are based on debian or in part on debian, this brings some newbish questions to my mind. I am ready to research how to compile. I like the idea of tailoring the OS to my hardware. Basically why waste space for intel things when I almost always use AMd cpu/mobo. even if I only do it once, the experience will last forever.

At the same time, there a features from debian based distros I like.I just wonder if those could be imported. For example the repackage feature from atix/mx16. currently I use Pinguy for my mint in this manner. Some things I like, dolphin file manager for example, i realize that will most likely never be a stand alone file manager to be installed in an xfce environment.

[Pepi]

I did just this and I'm not looking back. Love LMDE2 Mate Just the best IMHO

[Crewp]

It will be a lot more work, but it is great for learning. I often use Debian with XFCE on some older hardware I have, and it works great, but it took some doing getting wifi to work. But you cant beat hands on experience.

[Citizen229]

Is there really any benefit of LDME over the standard mint xfce? I would assume not having unbuntu involved could be a pro or a con.

[Fred Barclay]

Is there really any benefit of LDME over the standard mint xfce?

If you want LMDE Xfce out of the box, then no (there isn't an LMDE Xfce flavour). But if you don't mind installing Xfce to LMDE (or doing as I did and installing Debian 8 Xfce and then adding the Mint repos), then there are several benefits IMHO:

* Super stable! Though Ubuntu/Mint are nicely stable, Debian/LMDE take stability to a whole new level!
* We get access to newer Mint tools without having to upgrade your OS. We can get the latest Xapps and tools like mintStick as system updates through the Update Manager, while normal Mint users have to upgrade to a newer Mint release to get newer versions. (And if you used Cinnamon or MATE, you can get the latest releases of 'em too, while doing this in normal Mint also requires an upgrade.)
* It takes a little longer for LMDE to boot than Mint on my systems, but once I was logged in it seemed to run a little bit lighter.
* It's just more fun! You get to run the fringe version of a mainstream distro of a fringe OS on mainstream hardware... okay, you get the idea.
* Did I mention it was super stable?

[Crewp]

Yes what Fred said, but if you do not want a lot of tweaking, you could try SolydXK which is what LMDE with XFCE and KDE used to be. I've used Solyd X on some older hardware and it is very nice.

[sammiev]

Yes what Fred said, but if you do not want a lot of tweaking, you could try SolydXK which is what LMDE with XFCE and KDE used to be. I've used Solyd X on some older hardware and it is very nice.

+1 for SolydXK and SolydX, tried just about every OS on my test machines and those surprised me. May have to give them another spin as it has been a while.

[killer de bug]

LMDE is lighter and more responsive compared to the main edition. It has some rough edges too, but they are limited. It's a great learning school. You need to be prepared to solve some issues by yourself, when in the main edition it could be working from scratch (like Wifi or graphics issues).

By moving to LMDE, I really greatly expended my Linux skills. I have installed my system in 2012 and it is still working and running.

[Habitual]

I left Mint after 6 years of "off-and-on".
Since 2008:
Ubuntu
OpenSUSE
Mint.
Slackware
Mint
Slackware
Mint
Debian

I stepped outside my comfort zone stuff and went native Debian8 Jessie Stable.
Ditched lifelong Xfce and went Cinnamon.
Ditched tbird.
Ditched, ditched, ditched and took what Debian told me I could have.

Small adjustments, no big deal.
I've had leading edge gear for 5 years and I didn't utilize it.

So far, Debian hasn't given me a reason to dislike it.

[deleted]

Yes what Fred said, but if you do not want a lot of tweaking, you could try SolydXK which is what LMDE with XFCE and KDE used to be. I've used Solyd X on some older hardware and it is very nice.

+1 for SolydXK and SolydX, tried just about every OS on my test machines and those surprised me. May have to give them another spin as it has been a while.

+1 for them, too. They don't have cookies (like Bunsen Labs ) but they are really top notch, too.

-Hinto

[Bolle1961]

Is there really any benefit of LDME over the standard mint xfce?

If you want LMDE Xfce out of the box, then no (there isn't an LMDE Xfce flavour). But if you don't mind installing Xfce to LMDE (or doing as I did and installing Debian 8 Xfce and then adding the Mint repos)

I did this last weekend with Debian 9 MATE, that was no success, maybe / probably because it's official not stable
Debian 8 + Mint repos might turn out right

[Fred Barclay]

I did this last weekend with Debian 9 MATE, that was no success, maybe / probably because it's official not stable

Probably due in part to the newer version of GTK in Debian 9.

[Citizen229]

Recommended reading for compiling with debian? Its summer so work and being outside will mostly happen. I like the idea of a tailored OS. I will get lmde2 dl'd and installed and spend some time this summer farting around with it.

[Citizen229]

Tried LMDE...honestly it was eh...... Just installed solydX and am much happier with it over LMDE, so far. 4.5 gigs on basic install. 1 gig less than my gutted mint xfce for netbook.

[Fred Barclay]

Tried LMDE...honestly it was eh...... Just installed solydX and am much happier with it over LMDE, so far. 4.5 gigs on basic install. 1 gig less than my gutted mint xfce for netbook.

Have fun!

I'm back on Debian after a week or two on Manjaro, and it's like coming home! I can't describe the feeling any other way.
I'm almost sad about being so happy... I want to like Arch, but no matter how hard I try I can't bring myself to prefer it to Debian. Maybe some day I will.

[kevinthefixer]

I found Arch to be just too much work. For a big desktop, LMDE2 suits me just fine, but it's too much OS for an old netbook. I've been playing with the Raspberry Pi foundation's beta release of their Raspbian (Debian Jessie with a new DE called Pixel) ported to x86 architecture, and it's been kicking butt on resource-starved machines like Atom-powered netbooks.

[sdibaja]

you folks convinced me to try SolydXK

back story, I want Mate. I don't like xfce. I have been LMDE Mate for several years but Mint broke Mate.

While I am waiting for LMDE Mate to again be viable for me I installed SolydX.
+1 for SolydXK and SolydX!

Then I added Mate, just grabbing the packages in synaptic. It was very quick and simple! I get all of the good parts of Mate, the desktop, and I also have those Xfce things.
Win - Win

Long Live SolydM!