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LMDE 6 has been officially released. The big deal about this is that it’s based on the recently released Debian 12 and also that being based on Debian LMDE is 100% community based.
If you’ve been disappointed by what the Linux corporations have been doing lately or don’t like the all-snap future that Ubuntu has opened, then this is the distro for you.
I’m running it as my daily driver and it works exactly like the regular Mint so you don’t lose anything. Clem and team have done a great job, even newbies could use Debian now.
Personally I think LMDE is the future of Linux as Ubuntu goes it’s own way, and this is a good thing for Mint and the Linux community. Let’s get back to community distros and move away from the corps.
EDIT: LMDE is 64bit only. There is no 32bit option.
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I’ve never had a use for Linux Mint myself, but I’m still happy to see them cut out the middle man and base it directly off of Debian. Hopefully being closer to the source will result in even more upstream contributions.
Oh, no. They consider Ubuntu the best APT base out there, and even after some trouble with Canonical, they insist on basing Mint on Ubuntu. This is a plan B, it came precisely after the differences between Mint and Ubuntu were public, but I can’t find any source of that episode between Canonical and Clemente Lefebvre.
EDIT: Found one.
Big thing about being based on Ubuntu is that the community support is the biggest. Any issue you find, you can google, and there’s a 99% chance there’ll be an answer for Ubuntu which can be applied as-is to Mint.
True, but it’s not like Ubuntu is this unique distribution with very peculiar software. Most of the time, no matter which distro I use, the best reference to solve any problem is the Arch wiki.
Ah, my bad. I thought LM was going all in on Debian. Well, I’m glad they’re at least providing the option then.
They want to be able to provide the option should Ubuntu go off the reservation
Been using mint for a while on my main machine and I’m not keen on doing a reinstall, but the next time I do I’ll definitely be looking at Debian edition.
If you don’t have Nvidia gpu, then LMDE is better. It is slightly snappier and boots slightly faster.
Oh dang. It sucks to hear that my 10 year old GPU is still poorly supported.
I have a very old Nvidia GPU and am on LMDE5. The official legacy driver works fine for me. Can’t speak for the open-source one.
Going to assume that LMDE6 will be similar when I get around to upgrading.
Well, the thing is I don’t have Nvidia gpu but it is a general rule since LMDE doesn’t ship with the driver manager as the “regular” Mint does.
That’s because it doesn’t need to use the Ubuntu drivers. I’m pretty sure it’s intentional (if a bit less user friendly). I wish distros could come up with a universal(ish) driver app.
LMDE has proprietary driver repos afaik.
Yes, for NoVideo.
Copypasting: (source)
The cautious approach for LMDE5 users: If your system is working fine and there are no especially must-have features in LMDE6, there is almost certainly no rush to upgrade. Take your time.
Make backups. Test backups. Play games. Work. Do things entirely unrelated to the distro.
You could even almost (aaalmost) completely forget about LMDE6 (but do keep an eye on the LM blog).
The Mint team haven’t announced an EOL date for LMDE5 yet, but if past dates are anything to go by, it’ll be at least 18 months before they pull the plug. Even then, LTS updates might still filter through from Debian proper.
[How many people will actually see this message and how many it actually applies to out of them might well include me and literally one other guy somewhere else on the planet, but if you’re that one guy, breathe friend. No rush.]
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I’m not super familiar with the goals of the mint project. But this is generally a bad approach to take with project development. Even if you plan on offering LTS, it is always preferable to have users on the most up to date version. Going through the pain of supporting multiple versions of commercial software at work has taught me that lesson the (very) hard way.
To some extent I think they’re thinking of people who are in the Windows/Mac situation of wanting a stable OS that doesn’t require getting hands dirty (so to speak) every 5 minutes to do basic things, and who generally call in a relative or friend who knows what they’re doing (and is almost certainly the person who installed Mint in the first place) when things really need changing.
There’s never more than two LMDEs active at any one time, so while they are giving themselves a little extra work, they’re also managing the main Ubuntu-based Mint derivatives at the same time so they’re bound to have some kind of streamlining at their side.
As for 5-to-6 upgrades, they’ve provided an official tool that will work for most people and will require very little admin user interaction once it’s off and running. A sensible sysadmin would like to have a backup anyway, just in case.
My initial comment was aimed at the odd rare case like myself who isn’t always up for sysadmin work (it’s why I’m on Mint after all), or doesn’t have the time. There’s no immediate rush to use that official tool. Take your time. Make your backups, etc.
If you want bleeding-edge rolling updates, Mint is not the distro for you (though LMDE is a little closer to that than regular Mint).
Do they keep up with security updates and patches, though? Yes. Very much so.
Very excited to see this. After having been through the last few Ubuntu versions, they have made some very frustrating decisions that have made the system management side a real pain.
Oh boy, here I go distro-hopping again.
Just kidding - you can pry Slackware from my cold, dead hands.Why do you use slackware?
It’s more stable than Debian and more simple in design than Arch.
It basically doesn’t do anything, except run your hardware and software, and that’s all an OS should do.More stable than debian sounds terrifying
And pretty hard to achieve, considering breaking Debian is borderline an endeavour.
I use “stable” not in the sense of “doesn’t break”, but in the sense of “doesn’t change its behaviour”.
Debian is rock solid, but Slackware is the most stable in the sense that it still looks and works pretty much exactly like it did 10-20 years ago.
That lack of dependency management tho…
…is irrelevant due to how Slackware works.
It installs all dependencies for the entire official repo right from the start.
Has the package manager improved? Can it automatically handle dependencies?
Slackware works differently than other distros. After a default installation, dependency tracking is pointless because you install its entire repository up front.
If you need something that isn’t in the repository, you’ve got Slackbuilds that work just like Arch’s AUR. Or you can use third party repos with their own package managers, semi-official tools with depedency checking, flatpaks or whatever else you want. The point is, how you manage your packages is your choice. The default package manager is just a helpful bash script.People wouldn’t be talking about the lack of dependency management of it didn’t cause.some problems somewhere, so where could it be? Third party stuff I guess?
“Slackware has no dependency management” is a meme as old as Debian, and basically the only thing people know about it.
Fact is, you install additional packages from Slackbuilds, and there’s a tool that resolves dependencies for that (slpkg). It’s not officially supported but well-maintained and it works. So in practice, it works the same way as Arch’s AUR (where absolutely everyone uses yay even though it is also not officially supported or recommended).So, the fact that the default package manager doesn’t resolve dependencies is irrelevant in practice. What is relevant, and an actual valid criticism of Slackware, is that the default installation isn’t minimal or tailored to you, and should’t be changed unless you absolutely know what you’re doing. It gives you a wide variety of software for all kinds of tasks that wasn’t chosen by you, but by benevolent dictator Patrick Volkerding. And his choices are very different from what’s become the de facto Linux standard today (e.g. Calligra instead of LibreOffice).
My take on it is that Slackware is the perfect OS for maybe 100,000 people on earth, and I happen to be one of them.
So I’m showi my my extreme age but I remember when Mint was born as a sort of windows-like Ubuntu for easy migration. Has it carved out a reason for existing for folks that don’t want a windows like experience?
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This. Mint is the only distro I’ve found where I’ve truly never needed the CLI if I didn’t feel like using it.
It’s just a generally solid, stable, and easy to use distro. I use EndeavourOS nowadays, but when I was first getting started Mint was what I always returned to after spats of distro hopping. As far as it’s primary DE, Cinnamon, it’s less “windows like” and more “not gnome like”. Every DE that isn’t gnome could be called “windows like” in my experience.
More like Cinnamon being GNOME 2.5
Since GNOME 3 changed everything for better or worse.
Mostly worse.
I just installed it in a VM to check it out, as I’m not a Cinnamon guy usually, and I really like it! I need to try it out on metal and see how it handles games, but so far I’m really happy.
Can anyone tell me if the Debian Testing branch has been stable? I like Debian, and I like rolling release to be more up to date, so I was considering swapping from Fedora.
Either use Stable or Unstable. Testing is actually the most unstable of the three branches, due to how Debian works:
Updated packages are first introduced into Experimental, then into Unstable when they actually build and run. So Unstable is equivalent to Arch’s main branch.
Then they automatically enter Testing after a few weeks without anyone reporting a critical bug.What this means: Testing is the only branch where the decision over what enters isn’t made by a human.
If someone notices critical bugs in Testing, the packages may be kicked out of Testing again until the bugs are fixed. So Testing is the only branch where packages can simply disappear when you run an update.
It’s also the most insecure branch: When a vulnerability is discovered, the packages in Stable are patched to close it. The packages in Unstable are updated to a new version that closes it. In Testing, the vulnerability stays until the new version eventually migrates down the line again after spending a while in Unstable.
I’ve run Unstable for years. IMO it’s a great rolling release distro with horrible branding.
Thanks for the info! I know what you mean that unstable is similar to Arch, but I know Arch has like a 3 day period or something like that before it hits the default “stable” repo. Is Unstable similar to that, or do they just raw dog it?
Sid is not a rolling release distro, it’s an unstable distro. If you want a rolling release distro, you want something like Arch Linux, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed or OpenMandriva RR.
Unless you know how to deal with problems, go ahead and install Sid. It shouldn’t be a problem if you already know Linux and Debian specifics.
I’ve only been running Debian testing for a few weeks (hopped from Ubuntu dev), but I believe testing also has a 2 to 10 day period before pulling packages from unstable. Like after 10 days in unstable with no issues it automatically gets moved into testing, with more important updates getting a human moving it earlier.
and also that being based on Debian LMDE is 100% community based.
At first I read it as “completely based” and wondered whether LMDE is also red pilled.
When I heard LMDE was goated, I wondered if it was with or without the sauce.
I wonder if they’ll ever ditch Ubuntu and release a version based on Debian Sid.
Not Sid, but that’s exactly that Mint LMDE is. Rather than being built on top of Ubuntu, it’s built on top of Debian
I’m excited to give it a try.
Still no Wayland, right?
Sadly, no :(
Why is this important?
Mint/Cinnamon will probably be the last adopters of Wayland but surely at this point they should be starting to test it?
Can someone explain to me how it differs from regular Debian Cinnamon? Is it as secure, with updates and all?
Underneath it’s exactly the same and you will get all the same security updates. However Debian will not release any further updates to the Cinnamon desktop until Debian 13. And they don’t theme it, your get the basic grey version m
Linux Mint Debian Edition will include the latest Cinnamon desktop and it will be continually updated by the Mint team because they are the creators of the Cinnamon desktop. So you’ll likely have a better version of cinnamon on LMDE.
Plus they theme it out of the box. And LMDE includes other Mint utilities like Warpinator and Timeshift. These will also get updated sooner than plain Debian.
And of course you are more likely to get support on Linux Mint compared to Debian
Nice, thanks for the explanation!
I did have really good experiences with LM, notably
- timeshift backups
- unobtrusive updates
- fully automatic LUKS unlock and mount
But it broke for me. Also it wasnt fully Ubuntu, which was a hassle too.
I wonder why it broke? Did you reach out to support? They would have helped you.
I also used to use full Ubuntu but I’m fed up with the snaps nonsense.
I even went so far as to uninstall the snap system, yet somehow on doing apt update, it freaking re-installed it 🤬
That’s when I understood what Mint was about and why it’s so great.
Moving to LMDE I’ve taken a full step away from Ubuntu all together.
Random screen freezes afaik.
I dont know the exact package Differences between Ubuntu and Debian, but I think LMDE will be pretty outdated soon, right? Ubuntu is also not really bleeding edge but way better. Until they stop packaging APT packages I guess it should be fine?
Random screen freezes sounds like a graphics card issue. Do you have an Nvidia graphics card by any chance because Nvidia doesn’t supply any open source drivers so getting them to work is huge pain on Linux?
Actually LMDE currently has newer packaged and kernel then regular LM because the Ubuntu base is from 22.04 whereas Debian 12 came out with the latest kernel and packages.
For whatever reason Ubuntu never released an LTS this year so Mint has to wait until next year February. I suspect it will use the same kernel and packages as Debian, because it’s an LTS, which never includes the very latest stuff.
So we could be looking at a scenario where both LM and LMDE will have the same kernel and packages for at least one year, until the next Ubuntu LTS (25.04?).
But even though LMDE will have the same kernel and packages for 2 years or so, Cinnamon desktop and the Mint apps will still be updated to the latest as far as I know.
If your need the very latest packages then LM is probably what you should use but if don’t need that and want stability and not having to update often then LMDE is the way to go.
No actually its said to be a typical AMD problem. Mint actually was Thinkpad T430 intel integrated Graphics, and AMD modern mobile graphics.
Ok thanks, so Debian ≈ Ubuntu LTS?
Odd, AMD produce open source drivers…
You could say Debian = Ubuntu LTS, but only for 1 year because Ubuntu normally rehearses a new LTS every year (but not this year for some reason). Debian won’t update for another 2 years at least.
I would’ve jumped on this instantly, but I finally landed on a Min21 configuration that works well. New laptop => new hardware => need new nvidia driver => need new kernel.
Which kernel does LMDE currently ship with?
6.1 like Debian 12.
I’ll probably give it a go, then, if I need to reinstall.
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The question everyone is thinking, but no one will ask: will I be able to install Snap packages on it? Hahahhaha kidding.
I’ve been eagerly awaiting this release, and will likely replace my OpenSuse with this. I really like OpenSuse, but have some software needs that are only available on dep packages.
Hahahaha…good one! 😂
That’s a good point - that’s the same reason I also prefer to use a Debian based distro, all non repo software is most likely going to be available as a deb.
