Any disadvantage in switching from LM20 to LMDE?

[citfta]

I have been using LM20 for a couple of months now and really like it. But I also have been reading posts about LMDE cinnamon version. And almost everyone has posted that they have found LMDE cinnamon to be faster and even less buggy than LM20. I haven't seen any buggy problems with LM20 on my machine but am wondering if LMDE would be faster on my old Asus machine. It is a quad core machine with 8 GB of ram. I really like cinnamon so I am thinking LMDE cinnamon might be a good switch. Does anyone have any thoughts about any negative aspects of making that change? I understand I will need to make a clean install of it. I have lots of practice doing that as I have been distro hopping for about a year now.

Thanks for any input.
Carroll

[axisofevil]

It would be a good switch, especially if you value stability.
A possible negative is that you should only expect major updates/upgrades every two years (excepting security updates) - but that's the price you pay for stability.

Why not try the live USB/DVD version first?
It won't give you an idea of the speed thing, but you can give it a trial run.

Alternatively, you could give it a try as a VM - if you have that set up.

[citfta]

Thanks for the reply. I did try it live on a USB stick and it seemed to work fine. I just thought I would ask if anyone had seen any disadvantages to switching. I don't mind not having the latest and greatest OS. I would still be using Windows XP if it would work on the newer PCs. But since I have sworn off anything MS I am still trying different versions of Linux. And LM20.3 is the best I have found so far. So that is why I was wondering about LMDE.

Thanks again.

[Jymm]

I ran standard Debian for years, but got tired of the notices that my software was out of date, so I switched to Ubuntu based Distros that keep the software more up to date, especially web browsers. I am not sure but I think LMDE is based on stable. So is up to date or stability more important to you? Only you can answer that.

[SMG]

But I also have been reading posts about LMDE cinnamon version. And almost everyone has posted that they have found LMDE cinnamon to be faster and even less buggy than LM20.

What version of LM20 are you using?

There have been improvements to the Cinnamon versions in each of the point releases of LM20. The Cinnamon version in LM20.3 is a newer version than the Cinnamon in LM20 (LM20.0). The newer version has patched memory leaks and better memory controls.

The Cinnamon version in LMDE5 is the same version Cinnamon used in LM20.3

Edited to add: I see you posted a few minutes before I did and mentioned using LM20.3. Any differences in response you see when both Cinnamon versions are the same would be the difference in the base, Debian versus Ubuntu.

[cretsiah]

the only negative i can think of is that some Flatpaks might not work....

i use 3:
Discord - works
Bottles - works ( once mastered can be a better way to use windows programs )
Guilded - does not work ( an alt to discord ) - so i use the browser instead.

otherwise everything seems to be the same for the most part.

I understand I will need to make a clean install of it.

this is a much better idea for new people, so they can keep their sanity

[all41]

I have been using LM20 for a couple of months now and really like it. But I also have been reading posts about LMDE cinnamon version. And almost everyone has posted that they have found LMDE cinnamon to be faster and even less buggy than LM20. I haven't seen any buggy problems with LM20 on my machine but am wondering if LMDE would be faster on my old Asus machine.

I run all three Mint desktops as well as LMDE on the same system.
I have not found Mint Cinnamon to be unstable in any manner (LMDE either). None of them get broken.
On fresh installs LMDE is always a tad slower on boot time, Mint Cinnamon and MATE boots around 6 seconds,
LMDE 9.5, Xfce boots fastest at 5.4 (as reported by systemd-analyze)
'Speed' is a difficult parameter to determine though--especially with a quad core and 8 GB ram you would be good to go
on either version and both should perform equally well.
I personally prefer Mint Cinnamon
Are you 'feeling' some lack of responsiveness now?

[citfta]

Thanks for your reply. No, I do not see any lack of responsiveness. In fact LM20.3 seems to be the best OS I have ever used. By far better than any Windows version. I have used Windows as far back as 3.1. I have just been reading some of the posts by people that are using LMDE5 and they all seem to be giving it high praises. So I wondered if it was even better than LM20.3 or were there any disadvantages to switching. I do really like it that both LM20.3 and LMDE5 use Cinnamon. That is my favorite DE.

[MiZoG]

I have LM 20.3 Cinnamon installed on my daily driver and recently installed LMDE5 on a backup system of somewhat lower specs. LMDE5 exhibits amazing performance on that latter system (which has served a variety of OSes) and I have almost replicated my main computer's setup n workflow. A few third-party repos available for Ubuntu are not available to Debian. Both machines feature nvidia cards. 510x driver is easy-peasy to install on mainline LM. Only 470x is available via Debian-backports repo on LMDE5 for now. There is a nvidia "developer" repo I'm using on LMDE. I don't know if this is a good idea though. .deb installers of Discord n a couple of similar apps are built against a libindicator library included in Ubuntu base systems and not found in Debian Bullseye. There are workarounds published on web. With all that, I'd say that I'm getting more or less the same experience on both versions of Mint.

[all41]

Thanks for your reply. No, I do not see any lack of responsiveness. In fact LM20.3 seems to be the best OS I have ever used. By far better than any Windows version. I have used Windows as far back as 3.1. I have just been reading some of the posts by people that are using LMDE5 and they all seem to be giving it high praises. So I wondered if it was even better than LM20.3 or were there any disadvantages to switching. I do really like it that both LM20.3 and LMDE5 use Cinnamon. That is my favorite DE.

The original idea for multiple Mint installs was to discover this--but there is so much to
like in each I just kept them--and update them with new releases.
They all run equally well on this older I7 4th gen system.

Why not install them both in a dual boot arrangement if you have an extra 30GB.
Running on the same machine you will be able to make a true comparison.
If you do this, or try LMDE5 please report your first-hand findings here.
enjoy

[citfta]

Thanks to everyone for all the suggestions. I do have room for a dual boot system so I may give that a try. I will have to do that after the first of the week as I won't have time before that. I did install LMDE5 on an old Pentium laptop and everything seemed to work fine but that of course is not a good comparison because of the old processor and low memory.

[antikythera]

LMDE5 has debian backports enabled by default so if you encounter issues with hardware, I'd recommend using the backport kernels even with older hardware. I do that with my system because there was a glitch with the radeon and amdgpu rendering menus properly, the highlighted category flickered when moving the cursor over application names. with the backport kernel that highlight flickering issue is resolved. If you look at the specs in the link from my signature you'll see it's quite old. I am using the experimental amdgpu driver support but the default for it would be radeon. radeon doesn't detect my monitor refresh rates properly, amdgpu does.

You can install newer applications on Debian by using appimage, deb files from upstream or flatpak. You can enable snap support too as a last resort but it's not something most of us would give the time of day. Libreoffice debs from the document foundation for example work very well with LMDE5 if you want to stay on Fresh instead of being stuck with Stable for the next few years.

Linux Mint package current versions of Chromium, Firefox and Thunderbird so you aren't stuck on the extended support release versions in the main debian repositories. So really, there are ways of negating the supposed disadvantages but the same applies to Mint 20.X now too anyway. Mint 20.X is based on Ubuntu 20.04.X LTS so a number of packages are also stale for that too now.

[axisofevil]

But if you choose a distro for its stability, you wouldn't want to to put a load of semi-tested software on the machine.

In particular, this means not using a variety of install methods to obtain semi-tested collections of software.
Backports are OK, since these have been through Debian's QA.

[citfta]

Thanks again for the input from all of you. I did install LMDE5 as dual boot with LM20.3 and have been using it since Sunday evening. I just finished using it for most of today doing research online and using a Bible program and Free Office to write a Sunday School lesson for this coming Sunday. And everything just worked fine with no glitches at all. I have noticed that the software updating seems to work better on LMDE5 than on LM20.3 but that may only be because my internet connection is pretty erratic as far as speed goes. Not really a fair assessment yet. But anyway so far I am pleased with LMDE5.