LMDE 4

[JoeFootball]

Debian 9.x starts to be abandoned, it is considered old by the Debian people, just like LMDE 3 ;(

Debian 9 is supported until June 2022.

Joe

[Nuts2u]

Phil,
If you need the latest version of a program....in stall it via FlatPak (which LMDE3 has Flatpak support bulit in) or possible appimage. I follow this routine and all my apps are running the latest version.

[phil995511]

@JoeFootball

Thank you I was already informed of this.

Once Debian 10 Buster is released, Debian 9 Stretch is only entitled to security updates, this policy does not suit me.

Chromium, my favorite Internet browser, for example is no longer available in its latest versions and it already creates problems of access to some websites...

This is just the beginning of a series of problems due to obsolescences softwares for my ;(


@Nuts2u

Thank you for this good idea, unfortunately too few softwares are available in flatpak, It does not solve my problem.


I hesitate to change the repository directories of LMDE 3 Stretch by those of Buster, or to reinstall completely my system under Debian 10 Buster, or see back to Linux Mint 19.2 if I encounter too much difficulty with Buster.

I regret that the release of LMDE 4 takes so long to reach us.

Regards.

[gm10]

I hesitate to change the repository directories of LMDE 3 Stretch by those of Buster,

Worth a try as long as you got a snapshot/image of the system. Since LMDE3 already received the 19.2 stuff it might just work. Some of the tools might still break due to newer versions (I remember apt dropping some functionality but I do not remember the details right now of what tool was affected), in which case feel free to see if you can get my PPA installed, that one should be compatible even with Debian testing (experimental even, tbh).

[JoeFootball]

Thank you I was already informed of this.

You're welcome, and I was referring to where you said Debian 9 was being abandoned and considered old by Debian users.

Joe

[gm10]

Thank you I was already informed of this.

You're welcome, and I was referring to where you said Debian 9 was being abandoned and considered old by Debian users.

well, it's the current oldstable release, so definitely considered old.

(plus no more updates and from next year only community LTS support, so getting LMDE4 out this year still should be a goal - I don't know the planned timetable though)

[JoeFootball]

...I don't know the planned timetable though

Me either, and the roadmap isn't looking conclusive as well.

Joe

[gm10]

Yes, I had just double-checked that before posting myself. Good to post the link though.

[phil995511]

I migrated to Debian 10, now I have only one computer out of 3 running under Linux Mint ;(

[seggers]

As soon as LMDE4 comes out, I'm going to migrate my laptop and desktop to it. I dual booted my desktop with LM 19.2 and D 10 and I have been spoiled up the extra update manager stuff that vanilla Debian didn't have.

[phil995511]

As soon as LMDE4 comes out, I'm going to migrate my laptop and desktop to it. I dual booted my desktop with LM 19.2 and D 10 and I have been spoiled up the extra update manager stuff that vanilla Debian didn't have.

Debian requires a little more system administration at the installation, I use the non-free images :

https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unof ... -firmware/

I like the Cinnamon environnement but it's only in version 3.8

I can install all the softwares I like under Debian Buster

First I make manually install from :

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su -

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apt install gpm lxterminal

I add the Multimedia Repository :

https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-install- ... -10-buster

After I copy this and I past it to a ternimal "Lxterminal"

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apt install berusky dosbox mame frozen-bubble gnome-sudoku tali pingus aisleriot gnome-mahjongg k3b k3b-i18n hardinfo stellarium gparted handbrake handbrake-gtk numptyphysics gnome-chess extremetuxracer gnome-mines gnome-mastermind wesnoth ksirk gnome-klotski supertuxkart supertux filezilla webhttrack geany poedit alien chromium chromium-l10n bluefish darktable clamtk rkhunter bleachbit blender freecad pdfshuffler gimp-lensfun qarte audacity soundconverter krename easytag isomaster chromium-bsu youtube-dl gufw dkms vlc timeshift flatpak gnome-software-plugin-flatpak openshot kdenlive gnome-multi-writer

I added flatpak :

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flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

I uninstall the non usuel software :

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apt remove xterm totem

And I clean the useless package :

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apt autoremove && apt autoclean

For nvidia drivers :

A) Enable the non-free repository.

As an administrative user open the /etc/apt/sources.list and add the non-free repository. For example change the repository definition :

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deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ buster main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ buster main contrib non-free

B)

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apt update

C) Install nvidia-detect utility by execution of the below command:

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apt -y install nvidia-detect

D) Detect your Nvidia card model and suggested Nvidia driver. To do so execute the above installed " nvidia-detect " command. For example :

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nvidia-detect

Detected NVIDIA GPUs:
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation GP106 [GeForce GTX 1060 6GB] [10de:1c03] (rev a1)

Checking card:  NVIDIA Corporation GP106 [GeForce GTX 1060 6GB] (rev a1)
Your card is supported by the default drivers and legacy driver series 390.
It is recommended to install the
    nvidia-driver
package.

E) As suggested install the recommended driver by the previous step :

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apt install nvidia-driver

F) All done. Reboot your Debian 10 Buster Linux box :

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systemctl reboot

* Debian Buster 10 Steam *

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su -

dpkg --add-architecture i386

apt install libgpm2:i386 libxss1:i386

apt install libgl1-nvidia-glx:i386

apt install steam

[ChrisMW]

I am not going to suggest you try this at home, but I installed LMDE 3 into a VB client, added the stretch backports and moved the kernel and MATE to the latest in there. I then simply swapped out stretch for buster in the apt configs and did the apt-get update, upgrade and dist-upgrade and that worked fine for me. It worked so well, I'm going to try it on a non-essential laptop. However, there is one held package, which affects Cinnamon. I don't use Cinnamon, so I pushed that one to upgrade and lost what I presume is the cinnamon network manager. Other than that LMDE 3 seems to be running fine. It really isn't that different, the MATE version is the same, the kernel remains the same, but the rest is moved to more recent versions as far as I can tell.

I think it would be an excellent move for LMDE in general to aim to be a grand package that sits properly on top of Debian, offering lastest versions of cinnamon, mate and all those tweaks that make LMDE so much nicer to use than bare Debian. But given even for cinnamon there was only 1 held package, seems to me thst LMDE on Buster should not be a lot of work. Based on nothing but this one little experiment. Next is my X230 on LMDE 3, after that works well, I might just have a go and try my main laptop as well. Will report progress......

Note that I use MATE only and not cinnamon. 64 bit, my VM had 8GB, 32GB Hdd and the SVGA card, max mem, 3d on and a paravirt nic, this is sort my default for Linux VM's on my laptop. Now VM's are generally easier than real machines, because the drivers are more mainstream. I just tried it on a default LMDE 3 install, not additional programs. My X230 is my travel laptop, so it comes with actual configured software, VB and some clients. So that will be more of a test. So it's just a FYI, not a recommendation. This is YMMV territory.

[ChrisMW]

Ok, I tried my X230. It worked quite well.

As expected, there was a slight difference from the VB trial. The laptop has mono, postgresql and virtualbox host installed. I did the first round of apt-get update, upgrade and dist-upgrade and no problems. Then I changed all stretch references in /etc/apt... to buster and went at it again.

apt-get update --> no problems
apt-get upgrade --> failed. I had to sudo locale-gen en_GB.UTF8 and sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales, after that
apt-get upgrade --> no problems
apt-get dist-upgrade --> no problems.

Also noteworthy is that I always chose to keep the config whenever asked what to do. Same package is being held as under the VB trial, gir1.2-nma-10. Upgrading that removes the packages cinnamon, cinnamon-dbg, gir1.2-networkmanager-1.0 and gir1.2-nmgtk-1.0 and mint-meta-cinnamon. I'm not sure what that does, but I see nothing break on MATE.

So now I have one laptop running LMDE3 and Buster. VirtualBox, PostgreSQL and Mono where all moved to be installed from the new repos and all work. I have one MONO program that uses GTK and worked fine after the upgrade + reboot. You could well argue it won't be supported, or it is risky, or not for you because it breaks Cinnamon. But for me it seems to be fine. It simply moved to the buster repo, rather than stretch-backports for the packages I consider key. It updated a truck load of programs from stretch to buster and reinstalled from the other repos where I now had a buster mentioned. Update manager then decided I needed a newer Apache.

I will test a little more, and probably start a full backup for the main machine....

[Nuts2u]

I also run LMDE3, have been quite pleased with it......Ran across this thread, and I did the same thing the above poster suggested. Install LMDE 3 in a VB, I stuck with Cinnamon...no MATE. Followed his directions and he is right...it seems to work well...so far. I noticed that after the upgrade to Buster Mint's software sources editing tool no longer works....no big deal..just need to edit the apt files via file mgr.....I'm now going to try and recreate my my stretch machine in the VB Buster machine and see what happens. Hopefully the Mint devs monitor this forum and can fix these minor issues....

[ChrisMW]

Yes, I noticed that also. There is netselect-apt, which helps a little. Mintsources reinstalls well, but the error is still there. As it is a python script, I think it can be fixed. It fails with an error on line 1570, invalid syntax in file /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/aptdaemon/client.py

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async = reply_handler and error_handler

I'm not a python person, but I'll have a look, later.

[gm10]

I'm not a python person, but I'll have a look, later.

If it helps, I would expect my PPA to be fully compatible with Buster and newer (but not older releases like stretch/LMDE3). Did not try it, though.

You should stay away from mintsources' Official Repositories tab though for that would reset the apt sources back to stretch in the official*.list files.

[ChrisMW]

Wouldn't the PPA be targeting Mint proper, not LMDE? Not sure if that would be of interest here. Given the error, I was hoping that updating the apt-daemon stuff for python would fix the problem.... But I'll explore the options, thnx

[gm10]

Wouldn't the PPA be targeting Mint proper, not LMDE? Not sure if that would be of interest here. Given the error, I was hoping that updating the apt-daemon stuff for python would fix the problem.... But I'll explore the options, thnx

The PPA would work but you are likely correct that here the problem is with aptdaemon itself - I hadn't realized that it's not included in the Debian repos anymore so you didn't receive an upgrade when moving to buster and you'd have to import it from Ubuntu now.

mintsources had a bug with an @async decorator as well but it seems LMDE recently received that fix already. So don't mind me (unless you plan on upgrading to Debian experimental, then I know the PPA fixes a few additional things). Sorry for causing confusion.

[phil995511]

Unfortunately the update of LMDE 3 with the URLs of Debian Buster 10 does not work for me on my workstation, even if it seems to work in a virtual machine as some people show on video on the internet.

My system loses coherence and does not boot anymore.

So I had to switch to Debian 10 Buster or to satisfy myself with a LMDE 3 which is updated only for security parches.

I chose Debian 10... I sincerely regret that the Mint team does not consider it a priority to keep LMDE up to date by releasing LMDE 4 in the coming days. According to this reference Mint 19.3 has priority over LMDE 4 ;(

https://github.com/linuxmint/Roadmap

Remove debian-multimedia is not a good idea for my, add backports it's easy for all users in command line or graphical console.

You know if there is a directory for Debian 10 Buster so obtain to the latest version of Cinnamon (v. 4.2.3) ??

[gm10]

You know if there is a directory for Debian 10 Buster so obtain to the latest version of Cinnamon (v. 4.2.3) ??

Can't you just add the LMDE3 Cindy repos and pull it from there?