Submitted by “Linux Mint Debian Edition comes with a Debian base, which we transformed into a live media and on top of which we added a new installer. It’s rougher and in some aspects not as user-friendly as our other editions, it’s very young but it will improve continuously and rapidly, and it brings us one step closer to a situation where we’re fully in control of the system without being impacted by upstream decisions.” It’s a rolling release, so expect continuous updates. Not a new concept by a long shot, but it’s interesting to see a distribution like Mint try this out.
I stopped using Ubuntu (which Mint is based on of course) because of the guaranteed breakage every 6 months if you updated. There seems to be an inordinate amount of regressions with each new release. Mint has become big enough that they can go straight to Debian proper and do their “magic”. I only use Mint on my kids PC (PCLOS elsewhere), but this is exciting enough to have me consider using it on some other machines.
Agreed. The funny thing is, since Linux Mint Debian Edition is based on Debian, and is a ‘rolling release’ it puts it up more with Sidux, and really is probably going to overall more stable than Ubuntu.
You’re lucky if you only had regressions every 6 months, I’ve had friends (myself, I usually use Debian or Arch Linux these days) that have had simple updates break installs.
When the Ubuntu project started, their initial goals were pretty straight forward; make a Debian based system with the most current gnome.
The problem is, they have rapidly become unstable because they don’t have anywhere near as many developers / contributors as gnome, and so they ended up breaking a lot of compatibility between packages. So occasionally you’ll see an ‘ubuntu.deb’ file that won’t install on normal debian. I propose they should change their package extension to ubt. Just kidding, but still….
I just built a new rig last night actually.
Today I’m going to install an OS and I’m not sure what to use.
I have a laptop and a desktop that runs Gentoo, (in addition to my Xbox, PS3, and Sheevaplug which all run Gentoo as well).
I’m looking to possibly make a switch to something more mainstream.
I was looking at Ubuntu, Mint, and OpenSuse. For some reason I’m turned off to Fedora. I’ll be using it mostly for photo stuff. I have 8Gb of memory so I’ll need to run 64bit.
In the end I’ll probably wind up using Gentoo because its what I know (although not that well). Also, who cares about compiling when you have 6 cores… make -j6 is pretty nice. At work I have a dual socket Intel machine with 6 cores each which makes compiling fun with make -j12.
Linux Mint Debian Edition is 32-bit only so far.
You might give Arch a spin though, if you’re looking for something new and more in the Gentoo’s DIY territory.
Edited 2010-09-08 18:46 UTC
Why would that be the case? Linux supports RAM > 4GB for ages now. All you need is the Highmem64G option enabled. Debian (and derivates, I assume) offer a “bigmem” variant in their standard repos. That being said: 64bit is nice, too.
Not exactly on-topic, but I suggest you use MAKEOPTS=”-j2″ and emerge –jobs=6, or any such combination.
I suggest openSUSE if you are a kind of KDE guy. Their gnome is also nice, some gnomers usually go for greener pastures (i.e. mint), but openSUSE is also great.
Dont wast your time downloading the whole DVD. Use the CD version and do a minimum install. When the desktop is up and running add kde-4.5 and packman repo on yast2. Select the packages you may need (on my case, audio and video plugins).
You are going to find almost all useful packages already ready for openSUSE on official repos or on build service ones.
Anyway, mint is also nice and their gnome desktop is wonderful and you, like on openSUSE, is going to find almost anything ready on it, it is just that I like the long life span openSUSE brings to the table.
I am a bit skeptical of rolling distros but, will give a shot with mint to see how it pays out.
PS.: When I say long like span, what I mean is that many packages are going to get new major and minor releases updated.
It seems bizarre to me that after all these years there is no single distro intended for the desktop that has fixed the inherent problems with upgrading applications. You generally must ether stick with a static install until the next major release or run a less stable rolling release.
Fedora.
It rolls out both major and minor version updates to most apps for stable releases of the OS. Check it out, its great.
Can you direct me to a page with info on this? The last time I tried, and it’s been a few years, they weren’t a whole lot better than other distros in this regard.
If so, it seems better than the mish-mash Ubuntu is trying to do to band-aid this over. On Windows and OS X upgrading apps is a trivial process. It’s always been rather silly that Linux tends to make you jump through hoops.
It’s Fedora Raw Hide, the roling repository, not very stable.
Gentoo and Arch do a better job at being a stable roling distribution. Debian testing/experimental is also fine.
Thanks, I kind of figured it might be Raw Hide that was referenced.
Debian Testing is what this Linux Mint edition is using, I believe.
No I wasn’t referring to rawhide. I am referring to stable Fedora version.
have a look in http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/updates/13/i386/
usually there are new versions of popular software there like Pidgin, Transmission, Firefox etc. I have had major versions in the past on Fedora also.
Well, there’s always backports, which Debian recently adopted as an official service: http://backports.debian.org/.
Mint is a brilliant distribution. There’s always improvement that’s well thought out, what appear to me to be some of the best relationships around between users and developers, and a ‘just works’ magic about it. I have it running on a P4 Desktop and a trusty old VAIO laptop. I so much like the way Mint is laid out and operates (and have become naturally so productive with it as a result) that I am seriously thinking of dual booting it on my MacBook Pro; OSX, as much as I like it, sometimes feels less businesslike in comparison, at times.
I really wish the Mint team well with this new way of doing things. Based on past form, it will be entirely successful.
The 6 month break-o-matic cycle with Ubuntu is unacceptable.
A rolling release fits better with the development of the kernel, for better or worse.
At least they are trying something different and acknowledging the problem.
Everyone seems to prefer the Linux mint theme as well which is funny since Ubuntu has a team of designers while Mint is mostly the work of one guy.
A few people here have complained about Ubuntu (the regular base for Mint) due to the fast upgrade cycle. Why not use one of the LTS releases then? Those are supported for three years.
Because application updates and new drivers get tied to system updates.
Having used Debian testing and unstable for a while, I would say that it isn’t the best rolling distribution. One of the biggest potential issues for users, which I’ve seen in testing is that it commonly can have packages disappear for a while, and only exist in the stable or unstable releases. This issue can make updating awkward at times. Of course unstable has its own issues.
Yea, that is a real problem. When a new stable release comes near, some packages with release-critical bugs can suddenly disappear from testing. Following carefully this howto should fix the problem:
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=15612
The same howto should work also with the Debian flavour of Linux Mint.
Basically, you need to enable both testing and unstable repos in /etc/apt/sources.list. Then you write /etc/apt/apt.conf that makes testing the default branch for APT (Debian’s Advanced Packaging Tool) to track.
It enables you to upgrade any applications you choose to the unstable version (hint: use the ncurses version of aptitude as your only package manager), and if packages disappear from testing, you will automatically get the updates from unstable.
It’s neat, it’s cool, and it works for me.
[Note: If you want to add the debian-multimedia repo that is in the howto, you need to verify the gpg public key for the repo. It takes two commands (as root), like these:
# gpg –keyserver wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net –recv-keys *key*
# apt-key add /root/.gnupg/pubring.gpg
Just replace *key* with the public key in the error message of “aptitude update” that you can see in the terminal output.]
The problem is non-testers and non-developers using testing.
Just because Debian is awesome and testing is usually better and more stable than other distributions does not mean that regular users should rely on it.
I was always a Slackware fan, then I became an Arch fan despite being OpenBSD users for years. Recently I got tired of configuring all of my clients desktops and I switched them to Mint – works beautifuly. I even use Mint [besides OpenBSD] myself for the same reason. I think I accustomed to Debian, or it may be the case that Mint is so non-problematic?
Either way: it just works on all of my HW – laptops, desktops – and it saves me a great deal of work.