Debian Mint: Would you test it ?

frabjous · 2010-09-09 21:25:22

AlexS wrote:

I think this could be something important, like "rolling release for the masses"..

I would have thought that PCLinuxOS already counted as a "rolling release for the masses", though I could definitely see this having wider appeal.

It might be too soon to get too excited about it though. Whether or not this will would save you from reinstalling every six months remains to be seen. We'd have to wait at least six months and see if things are still going well then. It's one thing to call something "rolling release" and another thing to make it so.

Labello · 2010-09-10 09:50:16

AlexS wrote:

In any case I think I will use it as the "distro to install in wife/parents/etc" computers. Install once and then just update occasionally, instead of having to reinstall the same computer every 6 months/year.

You are right!

This flavour of Mint would be perfect for people who don't like hassle and just want a working system.

i hope they keep the rolling release upgrades more or less save to upgrade. on arch some upgrades might demand user interaction but this shouldn't happen on this mint distro. if this is the case i will recommend it to everyone wanting to try linux. :-)

mechmg93 · 2010-09-10 09:55:31

flamelab wrote:

I have only tested it a little bit in VBox. It has a very good boot time:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsksiJMySM8

If you test latest debian testing/unstable you will be amazed of the improvement in the boot time. It seems that debian developers focused on making debian boot time even better.
So it's not a Linux mint improvement.

To answer your question, being a debian user for a long time, i would not use linux mint myself but i would definately suggest it to newbies, as i do now with sidux.

picilli · 2010-09-11 09:11:42

gtklocker wrote:

I'm pretty glad they changed to Debian as a base. It's far more stable and consistent than Ubuntu.

gNewSense distro 3.0 will switch from Ubuntu to vanilla Debian too. For those who don't know, gNewSense aims to be even more conservative than a regular debian about free/non-free software.

Gullible Jones · 2010-09-12 21:06:09

Would have been cool to test it, but I left my DVD stack at home; and anyway, I may have a lot of free time now, but with CS labs and two-hour philosophy lectures coming up it's going to vanish pretty soon.

Anyway...

I'm not altogether sure this was a good idea. Ubuntu 10.04 was a remarkably good release, much better than its predecessors.

Speaking as a current Mint user - if I were in control of Mint development, I'd use LTS releases exclusively as bases, and try to keep them up to date with backported applications as they got older; and probably have sub-releases timed with Canonical's. Basically focus on keeping the desktop stable, rather than updated with the latest features, and if necessary maintain a repo with updated versions of popular apps such as Firefox. Half the stuff in e.g. new Gnome releases is stuff that end users probably don't care about, so I'd say ignore it.

venky80 · 2010-09-12 21:13:17

Ashren wrote:

frabjous wrote:
If they do a 64 bit version I might give it a try.
Ditto

same waiting for x86_64 maybe someone can link this thread to the mint forums as they are gauging interest in x86_64

hurleyef · 2010-09-13 13:30:30

I've played around with it a little in virtualbox and it seems great. Assuming that they manage to maintain stability and manage to keep it user-friendly (or even just close to it) like regular mint, this will be the new Linux for me to recommend to others.

Mintesque user-friendlyness with the convenience of never having to dist-upgrade would be crazy awesome for joe-sixpack users IMO.

sctincman · 2010-09-13 15:43:00

Gullible Jones wrote:

Would have been cool to test it, but I left my DVD stack at home; and anyway, I may have a lot of free time now, but with CS labs and two-hour philosophy lectures coming up it's going to vanish pretty soon.
Anyway...
I'm not altogether sure this was a good idea. Ubuntu 10.04 was a remarkably good release, much better than its predecessors.
Speaking as a current Mint user - if I were in control of Mint development, I'd use LTS releases exclusively as bases, and try to keep them up to date with backported applications as they got older; and probably have sub-releases timed with Canonical's. Basically focus on keeping the desktop stable, rather than updated with the latest features, and if necessary maintain a repo with updated versions of popular apps such as Firefox. Half the stuff in e.g. new Gnome releases is stuff that end users probably don't care about, so I'd say ignore it.

There is always unetbootin with a thumbdrive; worked well for me.

My impression from the release blog post was that this is another parallel version of Mint they are maintaining; they mention it being an alternative. I've been trying it out and have to say I really like it. I feel it's a great idea, and they did a really good job with it.

On your comment: I think all the work of backporting Ubuntu releases and maintaining extra repos with newer alternatives seems to be a lot more work than using a base distro that already does most of the work of a rolling release model. Plus, as they state, this frees them from having to deal with upstream decisions from the Ubuntu team. My impression of their motivation for the rolling release model was not so much to have bleeding edge software, but to avoid the system-wide update to newer releases that provided headaches before.

I concur with hurleyef, this is the distro I'd recommend to new users once it matures a bit more.

drelyn86 · 2010-09-13 17:59:38

This is pretty cool news! I'll definitely have to try it out.

However... I laughed at this on the "Known Issues" page...

The Update Manager used in LMDE is the same as the one in other editions of Linux Mint. No adaptation or changes were made yet to accomodate it to the rolling nature of LMDE.

orschiro · 2010-09-30 07:50:18

With this rolling release system Linux Mint comes closer to Arch's approach. I'm interested in if there's any Live-CD based on Archlinux with a preconfigured system such as LMDE offers it the user. As far as I now Chakra tried to be such a system but since it is no longer based on Arch I can't find any alternative.

axel668 · 2010-09-30 12:48:09

Have LMDE running on the other partition as backup (if something goes wrong with my Arch) and it's not at all like Sidux. LMDE looks and feels just like "the real thing" (i.e. Mint 9), making it the most volume ready rolling release distribution I've seen so far. My guess is, that in the near future the rolling release will be complemented by a stable release (staying with Debian Stable), and Ubuntu will be kicked out ... but maybe that's only wishful thinking.

@drelyn86: Regarding the Update Manager, right now it's better to use apt-get dist-upgrade to be more on the rolling side ^^ (Mint update manager skips all kernel and X Upgrades for stability reasons)

@orschiro: Yeah, real pitty to loose Chakra There's Archbang, of course, but that's a much simpler approach, based on Openbox (not bad though). The closest match to Mint Debian would be Kahel OS, but I didn't try that one (I'm just not into Gnome)

Last edited by axel668 (2010-09-30 12:53:50)

orschiro · 2010-09-30 16:40:57

I haven't read much about Kahel OS but that was enough to assess it as not useable. What a pitty not having any alternative based on arch. I really come in favour of using LMDE in the future.

vrkalak · 2010-09-30 19:45:42

I install Mint Debian on my 'new' AAO Netbook

It was new and had Windows XP . . . naturally a Debian-based OS seemed like a good choice.

Only draw-back I found with LMDE was that it had Gnome as the default desktop . . . I switched it to Xfce.
Otherwise updates/upgrades follow the Debian testing repros.

No problems . . . if you like 'green'. Everything worked 'outta the box' as they say.

digitalphoenix · 2010-10-04 23:33:33

I have tried it and I like it a lot, it's a little faster than the main version. I cheer the Mint team on as they are heading in the right direction.

Anonymo · 2010-10-05 03:36:05

digitalphoenix wrote:

I have tried it and I like it a lot, it's a little faster than the main version. I cheer the Mint team on as they are heading in the right direction.

One day they'll reach perfection.

hitest · 2010-10-11 15:12:06

flamelab wrote:

The new Debian based Mint distro has been released.
http://www.linuxmint.com/blog/?p=1527
Would you test it ?
I guess it's very like Sidux (which has many issues right now regarding Sidux eV etc), but... could it survive ?

Nice. I ran Debian for years. I'm primarily a Slackware/Arch user atm. This does sound interesting:)

orschiro · 2010-12-25 09:42:45

http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1604

The 64Bit version is out finally. Great, by joke this is the most convenient rolling release distribution I've ever tested.

Regards

defcon · 2010-12-25 13:34:58

Tested LMDE 64bit and it works very fine.

kittykatt · 2010-12-25 18:28:00

Was on the ISO testing team. There's a couple of things that need to be hammered out, but was a really smooth ISO spin.

Little trivia fact for you: The LMDE 201012 x86_64 ISO was spun by the Mint maintainer, ArcherSeven, who happens to actually be an Arch user 95% of the time. I was sitting next to him when he spun it. xD

Misfit138 · 2010-12-30 16:40:34

Excellent idea: Mint debian.
I really hope it takes off, because I see the potential for it to be what Ubuntu should have been from the start.

litemotiv · 2010-12-30 16:59:18

Misfit138 wrote:

what Ubuntu should have been from the start.

Outdated..?

Misfit138 · 2010-12-30 18:08:40

litemotiv wrote:

Misfit138 wrote:
what Ubuntu should have been from the start.
Outdated..?

Mint debian follows the testing branch, which is certainly not outdated.

sbfreak · 2010-12-30 18:16:14

Mint debian follows the testing branch, which is certainly not outdated.

It's slowly getting outdated due to the fact that debian devs want to make it stable.For example the latest version of pidgin is 2.7.9 and the one from the squeeze repo is 2.7.3 or 2.7.4,which was what..like two months ago?

Misfit138 · 2010-12-30 18:20:31

sbfreak wrote:

Mint debian follows the testing branch, which is certainly not outdated.
It's slowly getting outdated due to the fact that debian devs want to make it stable.For example the latest version of pidgin is 2.7.9 and the one from the squeeze repo is 2.7.3 or 2.7.4,which was what..like two months ago?

Yeah, 2 month old software can hardly be called outdated.
Nobody can be accused of calling debian testing bleeding edge, but calling it outdated is a little irresponsible.

litemotiv · 2010-12-30 18:27:22

Misfit138 wrote:

calling it outdated is a little irresponsible.

Haha.

Well outdated or not, i like the Mint philosophy and i'm still using Debian on my servers, so peace and good fortune be with them.

Arch Linux

#26 2010-09-09 21:25:22

Re: Debian Mint: Would you test it ?

#27 2010-09-10 09:50:16

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#28 2010-09-10 09:55:31

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#29 2010-09-11 09:11:42

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#30 2010-09-12 21:06:09

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#32 2010-09-13 13:30:30

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#34 2010-09-13 17:59:38

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#35 2010-09-30 07:50:18

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#36 2010-09-30 12:48:09

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#38 2010-09-30 19:45:42

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#39 2010-10-04 23:33:33

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#40 2010-10-05 03:36:05

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#41 2010-10-11 15:12:06

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#42 2010-12-25 09:42:45

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#43 2010-12-25 13:34:58

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#44 2010-12-25 18:28:00

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#45 2010-12-30 16:40:34

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#46 2010-12-30 16:59:18

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#47 2010-12-30 18:08:40

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#48 2010-12-30 18:16:14

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#49 2010-12-30 18:20:31

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#50 2010-12-30 18:27:22

Re: Debian Mint: Would you test it ?

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