LMDE 201403 released!

[clem]

http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2577

[The Dark Side]

Congratulations Linux Mint Team !!!! Another great release !!!!

[Crewp]

Awesome OS, your hard work really show's. Keep up the good work, and Thank You.

[fotofill]

Just curious: Why is Mint offering the Debian edition? Is there an issue with the Ubuntu/Debian base?

[StanTheMan]

fotofill .

Yes , when the LMDE project was first introduced , the developers explained that this Debian fork gave them more flexibility as they didn't have to wait for Ubuntu spefic releases. Unfortunately the Debian fork has had some problems with " secure boot " on the newest hardware.

[fotofill]

StanTheMan: Thank you for the info which is interesting. When you say "Ubuntu specific releases" is it correct to interpret that as software pakages? If my assumption is correct, I think that point in itself would be a reason to make a change.

[paraquat]

Just curious: Why is Mint offering the Debian edition? Is there an issue with the Ubuntu/Debian base?

I can't answer for everyone else, but I had stability problems with Ubuntu-based distros. Debian is just so rock-solid stable. And fast. In fact, I never really understood why Ubuntu forked Debian - they've poured so much effort into repacking Debian, for so little gain.

It doesn't help Ubuntu's case that they are going with Mir rather than Wayland as the replacement for Xorg. Not sure yet if Mir will cause future problems for Ubuntu-based Mint, but I see that as a possibility, so one more good reason to stick with LMDE.

[van]

After a week with this I had to register just to say well done. I honestly can't express in words the admiration and appreciation I have for what you guys have put together with LMDE. Thank you.

[bobafetthotmail]

Amazing job. LMDE rocks. Still missing true LMDE xfce, as I do run quite a few legacy systems where 3D acceleration is very very meh and I have to go in fallback mode or it stutters like heck with maxed CPU until I install the proprietary driver blobs (and sometimes even afterwards).

Just curious: Why is Mint offering the Debian edition? Is there an issue with the Ubuntu/Debian base?

Ubuntu is based on Debian Unstable and features some significant tinkering from Canonic to backport fixes and add their stuff before release. Also there are possible annoyances due to Canonic's future decisions and their reliance on software with their own stupid restrictive licenses (one of the reasons Debian devs decided to transition to systemd instead of upstart, like most other distros anyway).

Canonic can suddenly decide to charge for or restrict access to packages or repositories (for ubuntu-based distros anyway) or whatever, and did raise that point some months ago with Clem. Debian is never ever going to do that due to vastly different goals and mindset.

Also Canonic does consistently make bad bad bad choices in quite a few things (upstart, mir, their UI and the tracking services, for example), and that's all crap someone has to remove/work around to make Mint.

LMDE is based on Debian Testing (more stable than the Unstable branch, albeit a year or so older, apart from a few packages like browsers and stuff that are kept updated to latest version due to LMDE's hybrid repo system) so is immune from Canonic's decisions. Also non-security updates to critical files come in packs so you don't get fun Mondays after a weekend update that screwed up everything on multiple workstations (somewhat common on Windos and Ubuntu alike). Now at least you know when that will happen lol.

LMDE tends to be very solid if you don't tinker too much. Ubuntu... nope. Not stable, not at all. Certainly fun but not fit for workstations or PCs that must work no matter what.

[mr_raider]

Ubuntu isn't that bad as base. I've been running Mint KDE based on Quantal for 18 months with no issues. It's been my experience that Ubuntu rarely breaks on it's own. Usually it breaks when you try to do something not kosher. I.e. I broke a Mint install by installing the kde backports repo once.

The Ubuntu based versions of Mint also boot up faster. For the conservative user on hardware more than a year old LTS releases are just as solid as Debian releases IMHO.

[bobafetthotmail]

well, yeah, you need to do stuff for it to break. Ubuntu did break quite a few times just by updating.

Boot time differences are only because ubuntu has less stuff on boot.

[isaach]

The LMDE Faq seems to be a good place to start for people wondering about it.

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 7&t=159257

[MtnDewManiac]

Amazing job. LMDE rocks. Still missing true LMDE xfce, as I do run quite a few legacy systems where 3D acceleration is very very meh and I have to go in fallback mode or it stutters like heck with maxed CPU until I install the proprietary driver blobs (and sometimes even afterwards).

Just curious: Why is Mint offering the Debian edition? Is there an issue with the Ubuntu/Debian base?

Ubuntu is based on Debian Unstable and features some significant tinkering from Canonic to backport fixes and add their stuff before release. Also there are possible annoyances due to Canonic's future decisions and their reliance on software with their own stupid restrictive licenses (one of the reasons Debian devs decided to transition to systemd instead of upstart, like most other distros anyway).

Canonic can suddenly decide to charge for or restrict access to packages or repositories (for ubuntu-based distros anyway) or whatever, and did raise that point some months ago with Clem. Debian is never ever going to do that due to vastly different goals and mindset.

Also Canonic does consistently make bad bad bad choices in quite a few things (upstart, mir, their UI and the tracking services, for example), and that's all crap someone has to remove/work around to make Mint.

LMDE is based on Debian Testing (more stable than the Unstable branch, albeit a year or so older, apart from a few packages like browsers and stuff that are kept updated to latest version due to LMDE's hybrid repo system) so is immune from Canonic's decisions. Also non-security updates to critical files come in packs so you don't get fun Mondays after a weekend update that screwed up everything on multiple workstations (somewhat common on Windos and Ubuntu alike). Now at least you know when that will happen lol.

LMDE tends to be very solid if you don't tinker too much. Ubuntu... nope. Not stable, not at all. Certainly fun but not fit for workstations or PCs that must work no matter what.

My experience with an actual (not "based on...") Ubuntu was short and not pleasant. But I've been running OS that people assemble by starting with Ubuntu and changing a few things (Mint and before that Ultimate Edition) for several years now and have never had a stability issue and never had any kind of "refuse to boot" situation other than once when I used a Microsoft OS repair disc (that one would be due to User Error ).

I don't think it's a question of stability so much as unchangeability. Either could make rather staggering changes, but in practice, Debian's speed of change has more in common with wind-erosion (if not tectonic plate movement), but Ubuntu's developers might one day make more drastic changes and with less notice. Which might cause issues for people who are in "long-term no-change" environments - see the current hubub in some businesses where the person who does their computer support is a halfwit who waited (years ) too long to plan an XP-Exit Strategy over the demise of XP support, lol; to those people, I'd recommend something based on Debian because it'll not change as much as (everything else) over time, methinks.

There's also the benefit of constancy (so to speak): Your LMDE installation should not require you do a wipe & install when the next version comes out (unlike the main edition). That's a biggie to some folks. Although... I like XFCE and wanted to install the last official LMDE XFCE edition and just do all the updates since (several years?) in order to end up with a current LMDE XFCE and was told it doesn't work that way, so IDK how helpful that feature really is.

Regards,
MDM

[bobafetthotmail]

Been lucky. Ubuntu did the "weekend update screwed up X" trick 4 times before I disabled the update manager alltogether. It's annoying to open up your PC and suddenly find out you cannot do X until you find out what the heck happened and how to revert/fix it.

Debian's speed of change is the same as ubuntu, it just has different timeframes. Bulk of the Ubuntu's system packages come technically from Debian devs, so...

The Unstable branch is usually newer than Ubuntu (being Ubuntu a snapshot of Unstable...), the Testing branch is just one or two years "in the past" and the Stable is more time in the past.

People tend to think that Debian is only its Stable branch. But I went and pulled down/installed kernel 3.13.7 from Debian Unstable repos (+dependencies), just because I can (and my ethernet card not working properly in kernels older than 3.12 because of a bug). Latest Ubuntu has same kernel if not older. Is Debian only using old stuff? Nope. Debian Stable is, other branches don't.

Although... I like XFCE and wanted to install the last official LMDE XFCE edition and just do all the updates since (several years?) in order to end up with a current LMDE XFCE and was told it doesn't work that way, so IDK how helpful that feature really is.

There is a better way, and it works.
Install LMDE Cinnamon, install all XFCE stuff from official repository, then reboot and choose XFCE on login from the gear icon, then remove all Cinnamon's stuff (apart from codecs, icons and some themes you will need). You end up with LMDE XFCE, with wisker menu (the menu you get in Mint 16 XFCE) and all.

Since I'm stubborn I also used terminal to force removal of a package (I think mint-meta-debian-cinnamon) ignoring dependencies so I could replace it with the xfce one (I think it was mint-meta-debian-xfce), but it's just a cosmetic change (either just changes a couple text files about the distro's name and changelogs, they are nearly dummy packages).

I was expecting a huge borkstorm to sink my efforts, but nope. No serious issue. Had to fix a few minor things like xscreensaver not activating on command, personalized the task bar to be the same as in Mint 16 XFCE (not hard at all, just use its own setting panel), fixed screen brightness control (although I suspect this was an issue of my netbook only), but now everything is like it should be.