(SOLVED) LMDE(5) and the Debian Handbook

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WriteF
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(SOLVED) LMDE(5) and the Debian Handbook

Post by WriteF »

Greetings everyone. I have been looking for a community to talk more about Linux and have decided to dive deeper into it.
As a full-on Linux Mint user for over 2 years, I want to switch to Debian or LMDE now. I hope to learn more, and even get good enough to help others here.

One of the books that I think I should work through is 'The Debian Administrator Handbook'. Does anyone know if there could be any issues if I use LMDE for this? From what I understand looking at sources.list LMDE uses both it's own as well as Debian sources. How can one know what packages come from where? Should I delete the LMDE repo and it is then the same, but with a more polished DE?

I am pretty attached to stuff such as Warpinator and easy kernel switch menu and such, but that's probably too spoiled for someone that want's to seriously learn how to do everything :lol:. Thinking that maybe I should stick with standard Debian with Cinnamon.

LMDE5 is still far away but there is no guarantee it will have all the features that LM20 has right. :(
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Benkyou taimu!
  • LPIC-1 [__________]
  • Debian Admin Handbook [==________]
  • The Linux Command Line [__________]
  • How Linux Works [__________]
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Re: LMDE(5) and the Debian Handbook

Post by xenopeek »

The Debian book can be a useful read. But yes for things having to do with package management pay a little more attention to differences. One important difference, if you get to the command line stuff, is that Linux Mint's apt command is different from Debian's apt command and predates it by years. On Linux Mint the apt command is a wrapper for all the many different package management commands that Debian has (apt, apt-get, apt-cache, dpkg, aptitude, and more). Just enter apt on the command line to have it show all that it can do and apt help something, where you replace "something" with one of the commands it understands, to show you what that command equates with. If you need to run Debian's apt then invoke it as /usr/bin/apt.

You should not disable the LMDE repository; that will block you from getting updates for LMDE software. You can review what is in the LMDE4 repository here: http://packages.linuxmint.com/list.php?release=Debbie. When you're in doubt about where a package was installed from you can run the command apt policy package, where you replace "package" with the package you want to know, and it will show you from where it was installed.

I don't think you will learn from using either plain Debian or LMDE. You learn from doing things with it. If you prefer older version of Cinnamon go with Debian. If you want the newest Cinnamon go with LMDE.
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Re: LMDE(5) and the Debian Handbook

Post by WriteF »

Thanks you! I was not aware that apt didn't change on Debian. I want to switch over to it fully so that I can learn from any unexpected problems/differences, I don't expect that it will necessarily make me better at anything by just using it off course. But it is probably a better learning experience than only messing around in Virtual Machines. 'Apt' is something that I will be using all the time if I'm going through the books, so I am glad I avoided what could have been a lot of confusion.

I was already considering doing this but I am going to use Stable Buster since the book handles that and switch over to Bullseye (or probably rather the next LMDE) once I am done with it. I have no idea what the differences are going to be but I don't expect Buster and Bullseye to differ much aside from the kernel version.
Benkyou taimu!
  • LPIC-1 [__________]
  • Debian Admin Handbook [==________]
  • The Linux Command Line [__________]
  • How Linux Works [__________]
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