Ubuntu has run its course in my life and I'm ready to switch full-time to a Debian-based distro for my main computer. I am not new to Debian -- I administer Debian servers all day, every day. I would consider myself an advanced Debian server user (this does not mean elite or guru or anything like that, but I can solve problems very well). I've been doing a survey of each desktop environment and I find that for me, Cinnamon just feels the best. I set up Jessie with Cinnamon (from the stable Jessie repos) and enjoy it but I am wondering if I should switch to LMDE 2. From what I can tell, the only (though very) significant difference is LMDE 2 has new (not sure how bleeding edge, though) Cinnamon packages while Debian Jessie with Cinnamon gives you stable Cinnamon packages from the official Debian repos.
I want my system to be pretty stable (no crashes 99 out of 100 days or better), but I am open to a little bit of risk.
I am wondering if anyone has evaluated the difference between Debian Jessie with Cinnamon and LMDE 2. Are there other differences than just newer Cinnamon packages? Are there fundamental differences in default software choices? Will LMDE 2 be configured so well and be full of proprietary software to solve all my compatibility issues that I won't ever have to reach for the settings menu? Will the newer Cinnamon packages be very unstable or are they pretty well tested once they get put into the LMDE 2 repos? Any other comments between these two systems?
Thanks in advance
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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A new Cinnamon release becomes available in LMDE 2 after public testing has been completed (which you can help with by enabling the romeo [unstable packages] repository) and the stable version has been published . You could stay on the current Cinnamon release by pinning packages versions, or deselecting the Cinnamon packages when applying upgrades. On LMDE 2 you otherwise move to a new Cinnamon stable release quickly after it has been published.
Other differences are of course that LMDE 2 has the Mint tools (Software Manager & Sources, Update Manager, and so on), it comes with Adobe Flash and that is automatically upgraded (on Debian you have to upgrade it yourself with a terminal command; not handled by your package manager), it doesn't use systemd init but SysV init, and it has Firefox and Thunderbird. Aside from default installed applications and default looks, those are the major differences. Now you may not care for these (I'd uninstall Adobe Flash and would prefer systemd init), but I'm just listing the differences You can explore all the packages that LMDE 2 adds on top of Debian Jessie on http://packages.linuxmint.com/list.php?release=Betsy.
Hi tomdotdeb, I agree with what xenopeek said, and I'll add that I too prefer Debian over Ubuntu, and have run Debian with Cinnamon, and Xfce, and I must say that LMDE is just plain awesome. It is very stable, does not need a lot of tweaking accept for personal preference, and has a fine community backing it up. I still keep an old PC running pure Debian, but that is just for my experimentation, my main desktop, and laptop, use LMDE2 w/ Cinnamon. I think you will be well pleased.
@xenopeek That is a very helpful answer. Thank you. I especially appreciate you pointing out the exact package differences. That puts things in a way I can understand
@Crewp I honestly had no idea that I would enjoy Cinnamon so much after installing it from the Jessie repos while trying to get familiar with the modern DEs. I thought I would quickly cross it off my list but it ended up being my favorite after using it for a couple days. I'm more of a server guy and don't want to fiddle too much with my desktop. LMDE 2 seems like a great mix of a very polished desktop and the solid Debian core underneath when something more advanced comes up. Plus some extra tools which so far seem very well designed.
tomdotdeb wrote:
I want my system to be pretty stable (no crashes 99 out of 100 days or better), but I am open to a little bit of risk.
Well Betsy is boring stable. Or rocking solid. Depend how you want to see it
tomdotdeb wrote: Will the newer Cinnamon packages be very unstable or are they pretty well tested once they get put into the LMDE 2 repos?
The new Cinnamon packages are well tested and pretty stable. I take this opportunity to mention that there is a huge gap between Cinnamon 2.2 and Cinnamon 2.4 with regard of available functionalities! And now it's Cinnamon 2.8
I use a second-hand machine (bought for $100 - 3 years ago) - HP XW440 workstation (manufactured) 2007) with 2B DDR2-667 ECC memory and find LMDE2 fast and stable.The only hardware I have replaced are the DVD writer and Hard Drives. Never had a blue screen like in the Win XP that came with it originally.
I've been using Mint 17.3 - Mate but decided on a more secure and stable alternative and found LMDE2 Mate.
I've tried Debian "Jessie"- Mate (hoping it is more faster) but realized it takes additional effort to make it as usable as LMDE2 .
At least, in the process I learned how to compile a driver for my wifi USB(my very first compile) - just to get it to work.
Thanks for tomdotdeb for asking the question and for xenopeek for his brief and concise answers.
Your comments have been very helpful in making me decide to stick to LMDE2 for good.
BTW can you recommend steps to make my OS more secure?
I have a few idea's first make sure your firewall is running, ( It doesn't by default )in the terminal type sudo ufw status verbose to see status. If it's disabled just type in sudo ufw enable and you are all set.
Also, sand boxing your browser, and mail client, and bittorrent is highly recommended. This link should help. viewtopic.php?f=42&t=202735
I also use an ad blocking, website firewall on FF called Bluhell, works very good.
Hope this help's.
Hi folks. Steve Cook calling. Been AWOL from Mint for a year or two while using Ubuntu Mate. However, with the recent news that Canonical have got into bed with Microsoft, decided to give Mint another go.
I guess I'll give my reasoning here for having a problem with Canonical's actions. The following is a slightly modified post I read elsewhere. But, since I could hardly put it better myself, here it is:
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Microsoft is a company with one goal; to make money. Everything they do is an attempt to help them achieve this goal. Currently their business model is selling OS licenses and every computer running Linux is a lost sale of a Windows license - at least in the eyes of a corporate economist. There shouldn't be any doubt at all that MS wants as few people as possible using Linux, unless they create something which allows them earn money from it.
Microsoft do not want what's best for Linux or its community. If they do anything which might be good for Linux we must do like Agatha Christie's Poirot and ask ourselves "cui bono" - who benefits? Or more precisely, how does MS benefit from this? We've already established that they don't benefit from people running Linux, so the only answer that remains is that they hope to attract companies and developers that would otherwise use Linux. In turn, bleeding valuable talent and potential income from the Linux world with all of the very difficult to predict but nevertheless very real negative consequences for that world.
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I should stress here, I have nothing but good things to say about UM and its devs. UM is a wonderful distro. But, I simply cannot be associated with an organization (Canonical) even if only indirectly (via UM) that has behaved in this way. I know and understand why Canonical have done it and it will be the money (Canonical is also a company that is in the business of making money). But, in doing what they have done, they are undermining the longer term prospects of Linux as whole. And that is unforgivable as well as unbelievably short-sighted.
All of the above being said, standard Mint uses an Ubuntu base and so, to avoid the same same ethical issue by proxy, I went with LMDE. Though, by quite a circuitous route.
I use a program called PPTGUI. It is a program whereby you can take many photographs of a real world object from many angles and then feed them into the program, whereupon it is able to reconstruct the object from the data in the photographs into a 3d mesh and then texture the mesh with the data from the photographs leading to a final 3d model that is essentially a 3 dimensional photograph of the original object. Indeed, this technology has now been employed by Microsoft, ironically, in what they have called "holoportation" technology. This is where a video is filmed and coded into a real-time-updated-photogrammatic mesh of someone stood in a room and then sent over the internet to someone else, who is wearing hololens goggles, who can see the original person in real time in full, 360-degrees 3d in front of them. In fact, they can walk around them just like they would be able to if they were really there. Its pretty insane and I recommend going on the internet and looking it up.
However, PPTGUI is a right pain to install. The only distro I know of that has PPTGUI and lots of other related goodies installed by default is ArcheOS. This is a Debian based distro specifically for archeologists. So, the way I finally ended up with LMDE2 is by employing the following method:
Installed the latest version of ArcheOS, which uses the XFCE desktop and is based on Debian Wheezy
Up-graded to Debian Jessie
Side-graded to LMDE2 Betsy
Installed 1.12.0 Mate desktop
It's working wonderfully. Indeed, it is running quite a bit swifter than Ubuntu Mate and is using lower RAM into the Bargain! UM typically uses around 600MB of Ram at boot-up. This cobbled together version of LMDE2 with the Mate desktop is using around 400MB at boot-up.
