New to LMDE, has to switch to LMDE

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tonyburnaby
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New to LMDE, has to switch to LMDE

Post by tonyburnaby »

Hi,

I have been using Linux Mint 19.3 for over 2 years (although quite Linux illiterate), everything is great. Recently I thought I should test 20.3, and had serious issues with one of the Windows program, it works great with 19.3 + Wine 6.0.1, but with 20.3 + Wine 7, that program freezes or exit right away 6 out of 10 times, basically not usable. I thought it was something wrong with Wine 7, so I removed Wine 7, and installed Wine 5, but still have the same problem, then I tried LMDE 5 + Wine 7, everything works great, even faster and smoother.

So, I don't have a choice, have to give up 20.3, I have never used LMDE before, and have tested LMDE 5 for couple of days, successfully installed all the software that I am using in 19.3. I don't really see the need to have 20.3

My question is, just out of curiosity, what features/functionalities that 20.3 has and LMDE 5 doesn't?

Thanks so much!
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antikythera
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Re: New to LMDE, has to switch to LMDE

Post by antikythera »

At present there's no real feature deficit apart from two things.

-In Mint Update, there's no kernel selector and never will be
-No 3rd-party driver manager

But they are hardly deal breakers so welcome to the world of LMDE! You'll notice there's slightly less maintenance from the aspect of fewer updates to apply. On that topic, LMDE5 is based on Debian 11 so some packages will be older than Mint 20.3. If that is an issue, you can use backports, appimage, flatpak or install upstream deb or binaries instead. Timeshift works the same way so it's just as simple to roll a bad decision back.

I actually prefer LMDE these days to the main edition. The Debian Wiki is a valuable source of information but all the speed and stability tweaks on Pjotr's site still work too.
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ylm
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Re: New to LMDE, has to switch to LMDE

Post by ylm »

Actually, Debian 11 is newer than Ubuntu 20.4 (the base for LM 20.3), so most of the software is newer in LMDE 5 than LM 20.3. Apart from that, the main difference for me between these two, is the ppa support in LM 20.3. In Debian based distros it is generally advised to avoid them. This is the only reason for me that I prefer the ubuntu based than LMDE, which I have used in version 4 and it was great!
Still distro-hopping, but keep coming back!
LittleScriptMan
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Re: New to LMDE, has to switch to LMDE

Post by LittleScriptMan »

tonyburnaby wrote: Thu Jun 23, 2022 1:50 am have tested LMDE 5 for couple of days, successfully installed all the software that I am using in 19.3. I don't really see the need to have 20.3

My question is, just out of curiosity, what features/functionalities that 20.3 has and LMDE 5 doesn't?
Adding to the list previous posters began, LMDE does not support Snap Apps which are a specific Ubuntu feature only available in Ubuntu and the distros based on it like Linux Mint main branch.

If you are happy with your 5 days test and everything worked as you wish (apps & hardware detection), you will probably never experience any trouble with LMDE, which is based on Debian stable, while LM is based on Debian testing. xenopeek and other posters are explaining this much better than I could do in this thread :
viewtopic.php?f=245&t=375690

You may find some answers to your questioning by reading it.
Interests : Firefox, Cinnamon & Bash Scripts
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tonyburnaby
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Re: New to LMDE, has to switch to LMDE

Post by tonyburnaby »

Hi antikythera, ylm, LittleScriptMan,

Thanks so much for the inputs! That really gave me great confidence of LMDE 5!

To this point, only thing I couldn't do with LMDE 5 is a program called mkusb which requires ppa, but I have a better alternative any way.

Thanks again!

Tony
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antikythera
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Re: New to LMDE, has to switch to LMDE

Post by antikythera »

ylm wrote: Thu Jun 23, 2022 6:04 am Actually, Debian 11 is newer than Ubuntu 20.4 (the base for LM 20.3), so most of the software is newer in LMDE 5 than LM 20.3. Apart from that, the main difference for me between these two, is the ppa support in LM 20.3. In Debian based distros it is generally advised to avoid them. This is the only reason for me that I prefer the ubuntu based than LMDE, which I have used in version 4 and it was great!
Yes, for now some packages are newer than Mint's 20.04 base. The kernel is a prime example and to the benefit of some of my hardware. snaps and ppa can be added to debian if you are hellbent on it but I wouldn't really bother. Mint developers use flatpak to provide warpinator to other linux distribution users, which is great.

You can use appimage and flatpak already which cover most bases where upstream debs are not available in future.
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tonyburnaby
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Re: New to LMDE, has to switch to LMDE

Post by tonyburnaby »

I will never even think about adding snaps and ppa myself as newbie, antikythera :oops:

I am glad LMDE 5 supports appimage and flatpak, plus Debian's software, that is more than I need.
tonyburnaby
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Re: New to LMDE, has to switch to LMDE

Post by tonyburnaby »

Just a follow up message:

I finally decided to take the plunge (iMac, 2015), the experience is beyond my expectations, I consider LMDE 5, from layman's perspective, a faster, more reliable, more function version of Linux Mint.

A few of Windows program (including Amazon Kindle) that didn't work with Mint 19.3 + Wine 6.0, now work smoothly in LMDE 5 + Wine 7.

Hesitated whether I should encrypt my home folder, because some articles say it will slow down the computer quite a bit, turned out that is not the case, (at least on my computer), so my home folder is now encrypted.

Thanks again for your kindness and patience!
LittleScriptMan
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Re: New to LMDE, has to switch to LMDE

Post by LittleScriptMan »

tonyburnaby wrote: Sun Jun 26, 2022 12:30 am Hesitated whether I should encrypt my home folder, because some articles say it will slow down the computer quite a bit, turned out that is not the case, (at least on my computer), so my home folder is now encrypted.
If encryption is needed, I should have encrypted the whole disk. IMHO, it doesn't make much sense to encrypt home folder and not root / file system, but as said, imho.
All the best for your LMDE journey.
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antikythera
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Re: New to LMDE, has to switch to LMDE

Post by antikythera »

LittleScriptMan wrote: Thu Jun 23, 2022 6:39 am LMDE does not support Snap Apps which are a specific Ubuntu feature only available in Ubuntu and the distros based on it like Linux Mint main branch.
snapd is available in the debian repos for install, so it does support snaps
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LittleScriptMan
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Re: New to LMDE, has to switch to LMDE

Post by LittleScriptMan »

antikythera wrote: Sun Jun 26, 2022 5:14 pm
LittleScriptMan wrote: Thu Jun 23, 2022 6:39 am LMDE does not support Snap Apps which are a specific Ubuntu feature only available in Ubuntu and the distros based on it like Linux Mint main branch.
snapd is available in the debian repos for install, so it does support snaps
Ok. Learned something (not very interesting for me because I don't use snap apps, but can be for users that rely on it).
Interests : Firefox, Cinnamon & Bash Scripts
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antikythera
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Re: New to LMDE, has to switch to LMDE

Post by antikythera »

I don't use them either but noticed the daemon package in Synaptic while looking for another daemon recently. I don't know if it was a new addition for Debian 11 which is why neither of us were aware of it before.
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runmint
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Re: New to LMDE, has to switch to LMDE

Post by runmint »

Good notes in this thread, thank you to all.

I recently tried LMDE5 after being a fan of LM for years (and I love LM21), and I'm super impressed with LMDE5... I will be making it a daily driver for a while to compare to LM21, but in all honesty so far, I don't see any advantages (for me) with LM21. The differences I know about so far are NOT meaningful to me, except maybe the kernel management, which is not a dealbreaker since there are workarounds. I don't want snaps, I don't need ppas, I don't need the driver manager on this hardware (although that might be an issue with other hardware). Overall very impressed. Huge kudos to the LM team for LMDE... hoping they promote LMDE more and elevate it to headliner distro. :D
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