It's a matter of opinion. I'm saying there are users that prefer the Debian package base because they are of the opinion that this package base has better stability and security.DeMus wrote:Xenopeek, did you really say: with the main LinuxMint we don't have the stability and security of the Debian packages? It only exist in LMDE.xenopeek wrote: We have LMDE because some Linux Mint users prefer the Debian package base for its stability and security.
Now that would be a reason to skip main Mint right now and only continue with LMDE.
It's been covered by me and others before. In short, only software from the Ubuntu "main" and "restricted" repositories is supported by Canonical and that covers about 25% of the packages. The other 75% of the packages are from the "universe" and "multiverse" repositories with software from "universe" supported by the community (most packages are just imported from Debian) and software from "multiverse" basically being unsupported. You can read more here https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Repositories#Main.
In practice you'll find most of your software falls in the 25% category and is just as well supported as on Debian. However, with Debian almost all the packages from its repositories are supported by its security team. So the difference is for the other 75%; if you would install something from there on paper it could be less well supported than on Debian. It all becomes a bit theoretical and opinionated at this point, with risk of degrading into security theater. Just because you could have a program with a known bug doesn't mean it is actionable to do you any real harm. The unknown bugs exist on both systems and are scarier. Just fixing known bugs doesn't give you a secure system.
As for stability, Debian stable goes through a longer period of testing than Ubuntu releases. Ubuntu releases import packages also from Debian unstable and testing repositories. That just means the software has been tested for a shorter period in Debian and Ubuntu. Ultimately the software was already tested by its developers and released as stable. Debian just wants to take more time to confirm that. What difference it makes in the real world is up for (opinionated) discussion. Some may have experiences one way or another. And that Debian stable goes through a longer period of testing doesn't mean its software doesn't have bugs. It means they've taken more time to write down the known bugs
