Source: https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2669
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 08:43:02+00:00

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All editions of Linux Mint 17 were released. Some important bugs were identified during the RC of the KDE and Xfce editions so the decision was taken to respin the ISOs of the Cinnamon and MATE editions.
Linux Mint 17 was the first release of the 17.x series and it opens a new era for our project and a very important cycle for us. During the next 2 years, popular applications will be backported to 17.x and the team will continue to bring improvements and newer desktop environments with each new release. Security updates will also be served until 2019. Whereas the team would normally focus on the next release, this time around the next release is 17.1 and it shares the exact same base. So although 17.1 will be a distinct release and users will opt-in to upgrade to it, that upgrade path will be trivial and both releases will be fully compatible and represent the same development target. Never in the past did Linux Mint invest so much focus in its base. For the release of Linux Mint 17, attention to detail spanned to new areas and the scope of the project got a little bigger… more upstream components were patched and bugs were tackled immediately without waiting for the fixes to be applied by Debian or Ubuntu. When the base was only used for 6 months, it didn’t always make sense to invest too much into it and fixing something often meant making sure it was being tackled in the next base to come. Using the base for 2+ years means we can improve future releases while better supporting existing ones and our level of expectation can raise to a point where part of what was considered upstream before now also falls under our own responsibility.
This new strategy is already very successful and not only will it make it easier for us to release 17.1 and allow us to focus more on the development side of things, it already benefited the 17 release greatly. The same strategy could be applied to LMDE by basing it on Debian Stable, essentially migrating it from a snapshot cycle to a frozen one, like in Linux Mint. The two distributions would then be more similar to each others. LMDE would gain in quality and attention to detail while requiring less maintenance. The pros and cons are being assessed at the moment. Don’t hesitate to use the section below if you want to comment on this or share your ideas with us.
RAR 5.0x support was added to file-roller, MATE components were upgraded to 1.8.1 and additional fixes are coming in the days to come for Cinnamon 2.2. All of these are published as level 1 updates in your Update Manager.
A lot of feedback and ideas were gathered and we’re getting ready to open the new development cycle. If you want to follow us don’t hesitate to keep an eye on the roadmap and on the Linux Mint Github repositories. Keep an eye out on Segfault also where we’ll try to cover new developments.
This is really great news! It would be very wise to make this distro able to upgrade to newest LTS versions(when released) without much hassle. This is what Ubuntu does when they release new LTS, so I guess MINT will only benefit from such idea. Again, I support this improvements you have made and I hope you will make it available for us to upgrade from older LTS to newer LTS releases without problems in future. This way, MINT would be perfect. Cheers!
Debian Stable for LMDE would be wonderful. That would qualify it to deploy in offices and enterprise environments on low-end to mid-end PCs. There are many offices and small scale industries, private organisations, hospitals, schools etc at least in India and I guess in other developing countries where still so many low to mid end PCs are working. After the demise of Windows XP (or it’s support), there is a need for an OS which should work for an admissibly long period, should be rock solid and should have least to none regular updates. In fact the state governments of TamilNadu and Kerala in India are officially going for Linux OS. Most of them, I observed, are preferring Debian, what ever may be the reason.
I can see no disadvantage in LMDE being based on Debian Stable, since frozen cycle is maybe more frequently updated than the snapshot cycle. Looking forward to that LMDE based on Debian Stable, and will give it a try.
Hi Clem, I was actually surprised when LMDE started it’s journey using Testing, as I had expected it to be based on Stable. If the Stable idea goes ahead, I will still use LMDE but would like to know whether there will be an upgrade path for new releases or will a fresh install be recommended?
Edit by Clem: If it goes ahead there would of course be an upgrade path. It would likely be towards “jessie” (as opposed to “stable”). The possible switch to systemd, the merging of the two mintupdates, and the adoption of different sources might complicate things a little but I wouldn’t expect things to be that different than what we’ve seen so far between two UPs.
I think LMDE users would benefit from moving the distro to stable rather than testing. Important/popular applications could be backported as with the LTS version. I also think we would see a greater migration to LMDE.
It’s a crazy rat race to chase after a new distro every six months. Polish is what keeps a system desirable for consumer use. Good for you!
Just a few observations on LMDE. I was a faithful user until they instituted UP’s and then dropped XFCE. I switched to another Debian based distro, that also uses UP’s but with XFCE, but found that I still did not like the use of UP’s and changed repos to track Debian Testing.
I now run [b]”Sparky Linux”[/b] which is true rolling and tracks Debian Testing. I find this a much better solution for me, daily updates are quite easy and small. Takes little to no time. Yes, there can be setbacks, and problems, but I have found they are few and minor. Following their forums and others that deal with running Debian distros tracking Debian Testing (and use of Google search.. 😛 ..) is all I need.
[u]Clem’s old statement that LMDE (and Debian in general) ‘has a few rough edges’ and is not the best choice for beginners, or just those that must have a very stable system holds true.[/u] Users thinking that UP’s are the answer for a care free system are being naive. Do you really want to wait 3-6-9 months or MORE for huge Up’s of many hundreds of MB’s to a GB or more of downloads?.. 😯 Do these UP’s update with no issues? [u][b]Never[/b][/u], that I have seen. Just go back and follow the UP threads. So many issues.
Just my opinion, but if you want/need a very stable system use the main Mint releases, or Debian Stable based. If you like to be really up to date — day to day — and want to be more involved and actually learn more try a Linux Debian based distro tracking Testing (Sparky, Makulu for example) or use one based on Debian testing with UP’s but change repos to Debian Testing… 😛 , update daily.
Personally I would like to see LMDE return to a true Debian Testing (as it first started life), and any issues handled by Mint forum “LMDE Update Warnings” http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=198&t=132747 that used to be quite active, but not so now..
1) Is Mint 17 getting the kernel updates through the update manager, I had thought that they would appear in the update manager but deselected by default. I had to install kernel updates, which included some security fixes, through synaptic.
2) Is Mint 17.1 going to include an upgrade to Linux Kernel 3.16 and Mesa 10.3 as per the Ubuntu 14.04.2 release?
Edit by Clem: Hi Gabriel. 1) Yes (although technically you’re not upgrading the kernel, you’re installing newer kernels and choosing the one you want to run among the ones you installed). In the Update Manager, click on the “View” menu and then select “Linux Kernels”. 2) It should be available yes.. whether it will be the default kernel for that release, that really depends on how well it works.
I recently started using LMDE solely because it is a Mint managed, semi-rolling, Debian testing distribution. If the semi-rolling and Debian testing aspects are taken away it won’t be nearly as appealing.
I’m just one user though and will respect whatever you decide to do. Unfortunately, I will have to move on to another distribution if this is the direction LMDE goes. Having a current, rolling distribution are two things I must have and I know I can get these features elsewhere, however, I do enjoy the polish of Mint and the management of the updates LMDE offers.
Good news! Thanks for all your work, on what has become the world’s most popular Linux distro. It’s the best!
I like the new focus on LTS a lot. That’s the way to go, for increasing quality.
Just curious (more or less as Gabriel already asked): will future releases of Mint 17.x stick to the original LTS kernel of Ubuntu 14.04, or will they make the “kernel jump” like the Ubuntu LTS point releases?
Because for up to date hardware support, I think that a “kernel jump” like that, is necessary… And it would ensure compatibility with Ubuntu LTS as upstream.
Edit by Clem: Well it really depends on the feedback/data we have available and how happy we are with a particular kernel. I can’t really comment on this yet. What I can say is that, from a technical point of view, we’re not tied to the upstream cycle, and we can release with any of the kernels available. So to be brief, it’s likely to jump alright, but we might be conservative all the same and settle on a kernel we know well rather than the very latest.
Thanks Clem and team for the hard work. Although previous versions of Cinnamon were good, 2.2. is much faster and for the first time I see it a viable desktop for most people. Linux Mint 17 Cinnamon is amazing!!
As for LMDE, a move to Debian stable would be the right thing to do. Update packs were a great idea on paper, I loved it at the time, but at least to me they have not substantially improved the stability of the distribution. The last two times I installed an UP on my LMDE machines something went horribly wrong, to the point that I’m afraid of updating my system because you never know what to expect. That is not something that the average user should experience. Debian stable provides a great alternative for that.
The challenge with Debian stable is and has always been backporting newer versions of popular applications to it. Ikey with SolusOS and many before him tried for a while, only to eventually give up. Finding a way to easily update out of date popular software packages in Debian stable is the key for the success of LMDE.
Edit by Clem: Hi Victor. The Update Packs were actually a huge success. They did exactly what they were designed for: they made all LMDE users face issues together, and after “incoming” adventurers had gone through them with the team, and they turned a rolling base we didn’t control into a mini-frozen platform we could target and build for. I’ll spare you the details, but illustrate this with one simple fact: Without the UPs you wouldn’t have had Cinnamon in LMDE. Of course UPs didn’t tackle everything and they featured they own issues.. they were huge, represented very big updates, didn’t bring a solution to day to day non-critical security updates, and they had a very important maintenance cost (if we consider development to be a common activity, we estimate LMDE to cost almost as much as Mint itself in terms of maintenance for a much smaller user base). I’m really happy with LMDE, what we achieved with it, and the end result. Its cost and what it represents in terms of development target is problematic though. On the user’s side, people also want it to get more focus and attention, and with its smaller user base the only way we can do even better while reducing its cost is by stabilizing it and factorizing more aspects by making it more similar to Mint. At the very beginning the goal of LMDE is to experiment on a different base, to implement Mint without Ubuntu and to see if Mint can be Mint no matter what it’s running on. The rolling aspects, although really cool, were a bonus that came with testing, and they had a cost. As a project also, I don’t think our role is to try and seduce everyone out there by diversifying as much as we can. There are excellent distributions who do “rolling” really well. I’m more interested in achieving our own goals, implementing our own vision, and being happy with what we’re doing. Looking at the state of LMDE right now, for instance, I’m actually keen on it not going further than GTK 3.12, I want improvements on the installer, and if we’re to tackle system issues in Debian I want it to be worth the hassle for the years to come, not a constant reaction.
I disagree with LMDE based on Debian Stable. The main reason I installed LMDE was for the speedier rolling distribution. Making LMDE like the other Mint distributions destroys the attractiveness of LMDE.
I wouldn’t use LMDE based on stable.
Would you explain the difficulties before you make a decision?
I missed your reply to Victor. I don’t quite follow “seduce … by diversifying” — those users are already here.
It’s been easy to see how “constant adaptation of a base we don’t really control” has described Ubuntu; can you describe the “system issues” in Debian? Are they not adopting cinnamon, etc., in a way compatible with Mint’s goals?
Edit by Clem: Hi Mockturl. It’s not a case of Debian or upstream in general not being “good enough for us”, it’s a case of decisions being taken upstream to follow a direction which makes sense upstream but sometimes collides with the situation inside of Linux Mint. Debian moves packages from unstable to testing according to very precise rules and these rules comply with their own policies. When it comes to us, the decision to upgrade some components needs to follow different rationales sometimes, for instance, upgrading GTK has a direct impact on themeing, but also on GNOME applications, and on the Cinnamon DE. These concerns do not exist upstream and so they’re only real for us. You can appreciate the amount of patching and fixing done to GTK and various GNOME applications in Qiana… ideally we’d want to do the same for LMDE, but if we have to constantly redo it every x months with each and every new UP, it’s simply not worth the hassle. That is happening on the Mint side because we’re keeping that base for 2+ year… we can therefore do more and really own the base. Basing LMDE on Stable would give us the same opportunity. On your first question, by “seduce by diversifying” I simply referred to the fact that we started maintaining more and more editions, to fulfil a wider variety of demands.. Cinnamon, MATE, KDE, Xfce, LXDE, Fluxbox, on top of Ubuntu, on top of Debian, in 32 bit, in 64 bit, then there’s OEM, nocodecs..etc.. the more we maintain the more people we please, but the less we’re able to develop. If we consider development in common we could roughly estimate our cycle as 1/3 LMDE, 1/3 Mint, 1/3 development.. we want to focus more on what we really want to achieve, and thus to maintain a smaller variety of products but which would be better developed. I think we matured also, we’re no longer that little distribution which could release often and without caring as much about this or that.. we’ve bigger goals, the scope of our development is much wider and our expectations are much higher than before. In the last few years, we’ve constantly competed against ourselves and tried to do better than before. We’re really happy with where we are but we think we can do better if we focus our efforts into less projects in an efforts to be even more demanding. The goal also isn’t to dominate the market but to be proud of what we’re producing. And we are proud.. yet with every release there’s the “this didn’t make it in”, or “yes I agree, but that costs too much”. Moving the base from a 6 months cycle to a 2 year cycle gives us more time to care for it, and we can still be very active on the development of the Mint layers and projects such as the tools, MDM, Cinnamon which still evolve on a 6 months cycle. In other words Mint costs less than before, so we’re able to put as much time into it as before while achieving better results.. we’ve more time for the base and more spare time for the development. On the LMDE side, cost is even more important because the smaller audience doesn’t justify LMDE costing as much as Mint. There we can reduce the cost hugely, first by moving the base to a 2 year cycle for instance but also because the UPs themselves cost a lot. We wouldn’t end up with 1/3 ratio on LMDE, it would be closer to what it represents within our user base, but even with that reduction you’d see a significant raise in the quality of the base (right now in LMDE we don’t touch it much… I don’t know if you remember our attempts to deal with cairo for instance..) and the development would be boosted for both distributions. We would also get more flexibility when it comes to release management… as it is now, without a new UP users are waiting for us to react. On a stable base, they’d get constant updates from upstream and we could even decide to flow improvements on our own tech if we wanted to keep costs down. We’d then be in a position to release as often as it makes sense and the only thing at stake would be the refreshing of the ISO images. Of course there’s cons also, such as the fact that libs would be older than they are in Arch or Unstable and some of the newest apps might not be compatible.. but that’s a choice we already made in Mint and I think we’re ok with that. Here again, the longevity of the base and the low cost of the maintenance allows us also to selectively upgrade apps and even particular libs. (Note: When I talk about cost, I mean cost in time/focus. It’s relative to a subproject requiring more maintenance than it should and thus preventing other subprojects to thrive).
Edit by Clem: Hi, yes, that’s probably how it would be implemented. We can’t support more editions though.. we want a better installer, a better mintinstall, a better mintupdate (this one received a lot of attention in Qiana), a better Cinnamon, better integration with systemd/logind, less bugs.. etc etc.. everywhere we look we want to give existing projects more time, so we won’t be opening new editions any time soon.
supporting but that almost sounds as if it would kill it.
Edit by Clem: I understand. Personally if you’re into rolling and cutting edge I would recommend Arch Linux. There’s a wide variety of distributions out there and we want to be the best at what we have in mind, not try to be good at very different things. A switch to Stable could make LMDE lose a part of its user base, just like Mint could have lost people by sticking to LTS, but it would make more sense for us then to maintain it. I’m confident it would be a better LMDE in the end.. would it be more popular though? I don’t really know, it’s not the primary concern. If it becomes popular as a result of its better base/maintenance then we can release it more often, if it doesn’t then we can release it less. The longer base also gives us that flexibility. The work we’ll do for LMDE soon is either going to pay off just for UP9, or for the entire Jessie cycle… as you can see, if we’re talking about Jessie, we’ll have much bigger expectations since everything we’ll improve will pay off for the years to come.
I don’t use LMDE myself (I prefer the normal Mint), but I see the need for a “backup” in case Ubuntu would decide to stop or would become unusable as upstream. The end of Ubuntu shouldn’t necessarily mean the end of Linux Mint.
For LMDE to be the best possible backup, it should be as compatible as possible with the normal Mint. Both in features and in release handling.
On the other hand, you have to “seduce” a section of your user base to use LMDE instead of normal Mint. Otherwise you can’t test it enough in real life, which would diminish its value as backup.
Edit by Clem: Hi Pjotr. LMDE was an experiment to learn more about ourselves. Nowadays (the compatibility of the Mint tech with different bases is assessed), yes, it’s also of strategic importance and if God forbid Ubuntu was to disappear tomorrow morning, the migration work towards Debian is for the most part already done. The reason LMDE needs to be similar to Mint though, isn’t because of this, but simply because it’s its core goal. The goal of LMDE is to implement Mint on top of Debian (or without Ubuntu, depending on how you look at it). It’s to achieve the same level of usability, comfort, polish on top of a different base. When it comes to its popularity, the only reason it actually needs to be popular is because it’s costing focus. At the start, this is an R&D project so once successful it would have been discontinued. It has a user base though and people liking it more than anything else around, so since it got released it’s also a distribution we maintain, with a user base, and with the same QA/expectations as Mint itself. Whether it’s Mint or LMDE, we want them to cost less in areas that don’t benefit users greatly (the immense amount of work done on UPs for instance, and the infrastructure behind it isn’t something that’s very visible… if I focus say on mintbackup for a week I’m sure I’ll get people much more excited). Then, there’s also the sentimental aspect behind it.. this is a project we’ve put a lot of love into, we care about it, I’m really involved myself in its development and always very proud of it when it’s out. We need to balance all of this so that its cost becomes reasonable yet I/we want more from it. Increasing the longevity of the efforts we put into it, by switching to a stable base seems to tick all the boxes.
LMDE based on stable would be a very bad idea and totally useless for me. Right now, SolydX manages fairly well with its new policy of a three-monthly updatepack.
Contrary to some commentators here, I have been a LMDE user for the last two years and kept using it even if I felt it to be a little neglected. I totally agreeed with the basic concept of “a safe Debian testing”.
Look, right now, I am waiting for UP9 to get video support on VirtualBox (with VB 4.3). I can’t imagine when it will be available on Debian stable… Early 2016? It would be terrible.
Edit by Clem: Jessie is actually “testing” right now, so you’d see no difference as of yet. In fact, Jessie is more up to date than UP8. Once Jessie hits “stable”, of course things will go slowly but that doesn’t mean we can’t backport. It certainly will be easier and less costly than preparing UPs. A “safe Debian testing” is what we wanted with the UPs and it was brilliant. It’s immensely costly though. If LMDE was our only distribution, and we didn’t support as many editions, and our QA was more relaxed, and we had lower expectations (rolling distributions have very different priorities, their main concern is usually to be up to date and as vanilla as possible), then we could justify putting as much resources into it… that’s not what we want to do though. Regarding Virtualbox.. as far as I know you can run 4.3.12 in UP8, in Jessie, even in the current stable release “wheezy”.. https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads, I’ll need to test it before upgrading the version available in LMDE (that’s not tied to UPs by the way). I’m adding it to the roadmap in the meantime.
Thanks for the answers. I have two suggestions/wishes for future Mint releases.
1) Can the Mint USB Image Writer and Stick Formatter show the progress (% complete) in the panel and be integrated into the notifications?
2) I notice some applications (Mint Update is one) do not respond to Ctrl + Q to quit the application. Can this be fixed or is there some reason that those particular applications can’t use Ctrl + Q?
Also, bringing newer kernels (e.g 3.15, 3.16 etc) and newer Mesa/llvm/xserver is quite important for Linux gamers using Mint with the open source driver stack, so it would be awesome if some mechanism is available through the update manager to install these components, perhaps as a pack.
Clem, LMDE is basically already frozen snapshots of Debian, without all the benefits of being on Stable. By all means go with a Debian Stable base. The Status Quo of update packs is just not working well. Just for the heck of it last night I changed my LMDE Cinnamon install from Latest to Jessie. It would not dist-upgrade without breaking Cinnamon, so I just did a regular upgrade, but 350 packages could not be updated. I had about 750 packages that would update. My suggestion is to reboot LMDE next year with the new Debian Stable base, and suggest Main Mint for users until then. I think it will be a lot of work to try to save current LMDE installs, especially with Cinnamon, perhaps not as hard with MATE by moving them to Stable. A fresh start for LMDE might be best.
Thanks for the wise judgement you and your team always use with Mint!
Edit by Clem: Hi Manu, that’s because Cinnamon is built for LMDE at the moment and that means UP8. It’s well able to run on Jessie but it needs to be targeted to it, and right now Jessie and LMDE aren’t the same base. Once we move the base, of course the ISOs would be built differently but there would not be any issue in terms of upgrade path for existing installations. Jessie is the current testing… tomorrow it will the current stable.. it’s the natural upgrade path for LMDE UP8, whether we’re looking at UP9 or Jessie itself, we should be able to provide users with an upgrade path very similar to what we’ve seen in the past between two UPs.
the Unbuntu cause. I look forward to UP9. Thanks for your efforts.
Hi Clem, I’ve been a long time LMDE w/ Cinnamon user and I fully support the move to Debian stable. How can one argue with a even better LMDE when you and the devs have more time to put into it. I look forward to Mint’s future development.
Regarding the base branch for LMDE, I’m not very familiar with the Debian development process, but I have tried LMDE, mostly as virtual machine guests but also once directly on a laptop and currently only use the Ubuntu based Mint. That’s because of the lack of polish and experimental nature of LMDE, on the physical laptop the wireless interface was unstable, in the VMs update packs would break things.
Also, I’ve been curious… to what degree does Ubuntu benefit from Mint’s bug fixes? If you all fix bugs in their software, it would seem silly for Ubuntu not to use them… and since it’s all open-source, why couldn’t they use them? And if they can use them, then you are benefiting them, and I would hope they see that, and don’t try and make your existence as a project too difficult!
And YES- thanks for the v2 ISOs!
I am very pleased with the new LTS strategy for Mint 17, Mint 17.1 and so forth. I also think moving LMDE to a similar path would be great. I came to Mint when LMDE was created because I loved the idea of Debian with extra polish, but in recent times I have switched all my computers over to Mint 16 and 17 because of small issues with updates, and so forth. If LMDE starts tracking Debian Stable and do backports of important software, then it would look like a very attractvie option to me.
For those of you interested in a bleeding edge rolling distro not based on Ubuntu, I agree with Clem. Arch is a good one, or perhaps one based on Arch like Manjaro. Have tested it somewhat extensively, very nice! Further, XFCE is offered and runs quite well. This is not to de-popularize (may not be in the dictionary, but I can spell it, pronounce it, I know what it means, and most folks can probably figure out what it means) Mint in any way. Rather, I will always promote it as a project that offers very usable alternatives to Windows. By that, I mean no matter what you personally prefer, LMDE, Main, or otherwise, Mint has something that can reliably be used. It’s just my view, but it sounds like Clem wants to offer even more reliable options, hence the change to stable for LMDE. I say go for it!
I’m not an LMDE user at present, but that doesn’t mean I totally dislike it. I have used it, and have run into headaches that I just don’t want to deal with, especially when the main edition seems to address those for me. But what I like is Mint as a project. I have followed it for some time now, and have seen the team wade through a ton of ups and downs, regressions, and the like. And at the end of the day, the trend is moving in a positive direction.
I’d really like to see a 17.x with kernel 3.13 coming with priority support and bugfixing, plus opt-in to switch to newer kernels, but less support to them.
So I don’t get the clue why Linux kernels 3.10, 3.12 and 3.14 are official longterm as stated on kernel.org and Ubuntu + derivatives going with 3.11 and especially 3.13 for their LTS versions… Can someone explain this to me?
Debian Stable seems a good idea to me. However I don’t use LMDE anymore.
I second Gabriel’s request for good gaiming support, at least on the main edition.
Another thoght, won’t the two editions begin leap-frogging after LMD becomes stable-based? 2015 LMDE will be 1 year ahead, and 2016 with Ubuntu 16.04 the main version will be more up to date, and a year later it’ll be LMDE again and so on, no?
Did you consider using the exact same base, i.e. (supposing Ubuntu and Debian stick to their scedule) either using the Ubuntu-versions in-between (like 15.04) that are built on stable as a LTS-basis, or using the testing snapshot that the Ubuntu-LTS is based on as the basis for LMDE?
Edit by Clem: It would be great if they were in sync 🙂 There’s also positives to that though as it gets us ready to what comes next in a way. Also, the most important aspect is that they are frozen and that their lifetime is extended.
ubuntu has the right to use what ever they need like everybody else. why should they trust that somebody will develop what they need?! linux world is full of stories about abandoned software and projects! nobody has the time to count them. before ubuntu linux was nothing. they made from this system something useful for many people and a real alternative to windows. before ubuntu was suse and mandrake with something somehow reliable but for a very short time. the updates were catastrophic and it was only old software. with the drivers was another catastrophe. debian was also here before ubuntu as another nothing. i can’t see this system like an alternative for ubuntu or windows. old software needs nobody for home desktop. linux has become an alternative with new software, features, drivers and updates just in time for everything is needed. with old software will be again a solution for 3 people like 10 years ago.
clem did the right thing when he decided to use only lts editions. this is the only way to have a reliable system for everybody. to correct bugs is also right because this system belongs to the mint team. to wait from others is not a solution when is possible to solve a problem alone. rolling editions are for people who have time to play with systems and are for a minority not for everybody. systems based on debian are also for a minority with another interests and of course time to seek and look for many things. who needs a system to work don’t have time to correct something everyday and don’t need systems on sticks or virtual machines. ubuntu will be here in the future and can’t aford to loose supporters. it’s not a big company and all this kind of rummors against it are made by the big companies because they know that the most of the people will bite any bait.
i wrote here that the race for a beta from ubuntu every 6 month it’s a bad choice. i’m glad that it was understood and thanks clem and mint team for your work.
i hope that the software manager will be better as soon as possible. to install a program now is necessary to open a new window, install the program and then to go back for another. a button outside will eliminate two useless clicks and the open time for windows. to install 50 programs i need 150 clicks and to wait for 100 windows to open when 50 clicks will be enough. after more installations the software manager quit the job with the announcement that there is no internet connection. a restart will solve the problem for another 8-10 installations.
maybe will be time and interest to develop tools like lethe or gofris. they are very useful for many situations. redo another very useful software looks to be abandoned because since 2 years has any updates. maybe a fork will be possible.
There seems to be a few Mint haters who are spreading the rumour that the reason why some security updates are listed as level 5, is because you haven’t the staff to properly test them, so you are leaving it to the user to decide if they want to risk an untested security update. They are saying that Ubuntu is therefore more secure than Mint. Could you give your reasons why some security updates are level 5, and require the user to opt in to them, and also how secure Mint is compared to Ubuntu?
Edit by Clem: Regressions in updates are a constant issue, sometimes they impact packages which don’t really matter (you update Banshee, it no longer fades songs properly.. no big deal, you look online, find ways to fix it), sometimes they impact packages which are critical to the OS (you update the kernel for instance, next thing you know your wireless doesn’t work anymore, or you’re greeted to a black screen and can no longer log in). Bad developers will tell you good developers don’t create regressions. Bad managers will tell you good testing prevents any regressions from going public. Imbeciles will repeat anything they don’t know about. We tackled this issue years ago, we put a lot of resources into creating a tool which did two things: It filters updates by levels according to how difficult it would be for users to solve resulting issues, and it allows us to react to bad updates (for instance in Trusty, the Mesa updates were a bit risky, if you didn’t apply all of them at once you’d end up removing Cinnamon and Totem, so they got pushed from level 3 to level 4 if I remember well.. thus still available to all but only recommended to non-casual users). Ubuntu started in 2004, their policy has been the same since the beginning of their project and they’ve done nothing (well almost nothing, they did look into staged updates) about it. Linux Mint started in 2006, mintUpdate was amongst the very first developments and was featured as early as 2007 in Linux Mint 4.0 Daryna. We were small at the time and I understand that Ubuntu didn’t learn from us in 2007. That’s ok. I understand also how easy it is to negate/ignore the issue and criticize what appears to some as a solution to a problem which doesn’t exist. We’re really happy with what we have though, and since 2007 this is a major improvement on upstream Ubuntu. This is 2014, this concept was discussed and the design started some 8 years ago, and its implementation has been extremely successful and given us the tools to react to nasty situations for 7 years now. To efficiently demonstrate the usefulness of mintupdate we’d have to catalog regressions and all the critical issues present in Ubuntu we either fix or prevent. What good would that do? We’re already enjoying that technology and it would only making things worse between us and Ubuntu. Note that we’ve very few contacts with Canonical. As long as they don’t continue to spread FUD on us to convince their users they don’t need update filtering, we won’t feel the need to demonstrate how useful it is by showing you how often things break in their distribution. I hope that doesn’t look as me showing my muscles, I find it funny to see people look at one of our most popular tools 7 years after it was released, one they badly need themselves, and not only say they don’t need it but using it to make Mint look somewhat less secure than Ubuntu. This is a dangerous game… google “Linux Mint secure” and see how this FUD makes us look insecure. If this gets out of hand we’ll need to publicly correct this and the easiest way for us to do so is to show the World how EXACTLY as secure as Ubuntu, Linux Mint is and how risky/broken Ubuntu can be to Joe user who blindly applies everything without reading anything.
Moving LMDE to Debian stable base is fantastic idea, it will bring more people to debian!!!
One thing I would like to see in the future in terms of UI polishment is fading the seams between boot, mdm, desktop and shutdown. Right now the login screen and the desktop feek completely separate components (like they are) instead of feeling like I’m using one single system called Linux Mint. A bit something like what Ubuntu has done with their login screen.
1) I work a second job from home and I want to use a base system that works.
4) My windows 7 box at work has an operating system that is 5 years old. A windows XP virtualbox installation at home is 13 years old. Complaining about the age of Debian Stable, makes me laugh!
5) As long as I get a systems that “works” (see above), with prompt security updates and prompt application updates, I am more than happy.
6) When I moved from Mint to LMDE, it felt like I had made a hardware upgrade. It really is faster and less demanding on resources than Mint.
7) If we could also get 95% of the functionality of Mint Cinnamon in LMDE, it would be the perfect system for people like me.
8) I too feel like a linux upgrade junkie at times, but I do not let that interfere with my production machines.
LMDE is not that resource hungry; I’m running LMDE on a P4 (2.8GHz @ 2GB RAM) and on a Pentium M (1.5GHz non-PAE @ 1.5GB RAM) and it runs quite smooth.
The Mint log on screen reacts slowly to password key strokes, but in general LMDE works very nice!
long as Clem decides to keep it going.
I agree LMDE is responsive compared to main edition based on Ubuntu. I’ve tried and experienced it myself. My only point is that I have not seen a distribution based on Debian Stable and offering out of the box functionality similar to what LinuxMint does. The “update packs” concept (though it is innovative in it’s own way) may not work out for SOHO, enterprise deployments as there will be numerous PCs spread across different parts of the country with users of different levels of proficiency. Instead, regular smaller updates (of which the user is notified with the tray icon) which are guaranteed not to break the system is a better option.
For latest kernel or applications …. some applications can be taken to LinuxMint repos from Debian Backports and also, if it is affordable in terms of human resources, LinuxMint can build some applications from sources and offer in its repositories.
I first started with Mint Isadora and I always been a Mint LTS user ever since: at office, once I have everything working, it’s just fine, I just want my computer to keep it this way. And at home (and family) same philosphy: end-users I deal with just care about a stable reliable OS with their apps and data always available, usually nothing more.
When I switched from Mint9 to Mint13-xfce I encountered a few issues that pushed me to take a closer look to LMDE. My experience then was that LMDE was fast. In the other hand, I found LMDE not as polished and functionnal as Mint. So I stuck to Min13 and I overcame the couple issues I was facing. Since I’m delighted with Min13.
With LDME going stable and with the same quality level as Mint, I might give LMDE another spin. Nevertheless, for my own sensibility, LMDE would have to offer XFCE flavour: Xfce (with a touch of compiz for a better experience) in definitly my best DE; I am not ready to leave it nether for Mate nor Cinnamon.
Talking about cost of development, I’m a bit confused about Cinnamon. For me Cinnamon was first created to give Gnome2 users not ready to do the big (and unwished) Gnome3 jump a smooth enhanced experience with light changes. Then Mate came, some users switched to XFCE and others became Gnome3 ready. I don’t know Cinnamon so I don’t know what particular aspects it brings that the plethora of other DEs do not (I guess there are some since quite a lot of users choose it, even in distros other than Mint). I just hope it is worthwile since I guess maintaining its own DE could have a significant cost.
It is a perfect idea. I would change from Debian to Mint immediately.
I think that moving to stable brand of debian would be great!!!
Personally I have experienced that the system did not start at all after a kernel update on Ubuntu (I can’t remember which version). My PC was at that time IBM T40.
Should we expect the LMDE based on Debian 8.0 after stable release or after 8.0 freeze?
I have Wheezy installed with stable bpo and stable dmo enabled but NOT pinned, I’m having absolutely no problems at all and just in case a package needs a newer dependency, they’re available. Best of all worlds IMHO. Just some thoughts for LMDE’s move to Debian stable.
I’m very much looking forward to using LMDE based on Debian Stable. With the Cinnamon desktop it would be the ideal distro to settle down on. I see Debian stable as the best base, and Cinnamon as the best desktop.
+1 for a Debian Stable based LMDE!
If LMDE moves to Debian Stable, I hope Debian Backports will be utilized, rather than just the Linux Mint team providing a few backports on its own; I would certainly welcome the Linux Mint team providing backports in addition to those provided by Debian Backports though, if deemed necessary or otherwise beneficial, or in the case of providing more up-to-date versions of certain software than what are available via Debian Backports. I also hope LMDE would stick with the main Firefox release, and wouldn’t switch to Firefox ESR.
Would a Stable-based LMDE allow more focus to be put on providing more multimedia support on top of what the Debian Project already provides, kind of like what the somewhat controversial Deb Multimedia does?
If Jessie ends up receiving LTS updates (https://wiki.debian.org/LTS/), would a Jessie-based LMDE release be supported by the Linux Mint team for the duration of Jessie’s LTS support, or just for the duration Jessie is supported by the Debian security team?
@Caner – Yes, I’m all for emphasising how secure Mint’s update systems are but it’s generally not a good idea to infer that that some other distribution is less secure. I think Clem would go along with that (and may already have done so).
LMDE moving to Debian Stable is an excellent idea. I think it will work better for more people, on both older and newer hardware. LMDE is a necessary alternative for Linux Mint, too, as Ubuntu seems to be trying too many new things too fast, and might not remain a reliable base for the Main Edition. I used the 2012 LMDE Cinnamon/MATE version as my main distro for a while, and still run it now and again just because I like it so much. The UPs, though, have been a problem for me, partly because of this aging hardware. A couple of applications made a mess of the X server in LMDE UP8, so I just gave up on it, and still rely on LM13. Ready to try LM17 Xfce, though. Anyway, thanks Clem, for all the good work. Mint is wonderful.
@Kaufhof: I do not say that some other distribution is less secure, I only say that (based on my experience) it may break things which are already working just fine.
I think that there’s a big difference between the XFCE DE in Mint13 and Mint17.
Coming from a MS Windows environment I found the transition to Mint13 XFCE very easy because of the similarities in the ‘Start Menu’ etc.
Testing the Mint17RC XFCE it was like a completely different DE compared to the XFCE version in Mint13.
Having played with Mint17RC XFCE I definitely prefer Mate and Cinnamon (used in the current LMDE).
Yeah ! A system based on Debian Stable and / or an LTS with the possibility of upgrading software (not the core) as you need, is the best approach.
Why not wait for a while, say half a year, or even a year, to see how the strategy with a more solid base works out for the main edition? After a release or two of the main edition you can have a look at all the experiences from developers and feedback from users about this new process, and then make the decision for the future strategy of LMDE.
If the decision has to be made now, I would argue for keeping LMDE more of a rolling, “on the edge” version, than the main editions. I think this would be a great way to differentiate what “Linux Mint” is, and how it is perceived. A big, popular (main) edition that focuses on stability, and an edition that has a different appeal, and that can perhaps bring in different, more technical, users. I think this could be a strength for the community and the project as a whole.
I am a bit afraid that a decision on this matter made now, so soon after a really big change for the project, could prove to be a hasty one!
LMDE based on Debian Stable? A dream that comes true.
I have alwasy thought a LMDE build as Debian Stable + Cinnamon desktop + all the Mint utilities + Mint look and feel. It would be just perfect! Beware Clem and all the Mint Team.. if you will make this happen be prepared to handle a MASSIVE response! I bet you will find yourself in promoting LMDE to *main* edition! Keep going guys, you’re doing a terrific job!
1. LMDE base need not be changed. let it be as it is.
2. Linux Mint based on ubuntu should be changed to Linux Mint based on “Debian Stable”.
3. It is always better to have a common base. Like debian those who are using debian stable can easily change to debian unstable.
4. Either stick with fully ubuntu base or change to fully debian based.
Switching LMDE from Debian Testing to Debian Stable is an excellent idea, because it means more stability and easier maintenance. Given that Linux Mint is intended to be an excellent general purpose distro that beginners can use, this change makes a lot of sense.
Basing LMDE on Debian Stable would broaden its appeal and help extend the useful lives of users’ computers. Because the Ubuntu overhead grows with each release, the day will come when it becomes too slow for a given user’s computer. Improving LMDE (by making it less rough around the edges) induces users to stick with the Linux Mint brand rather than defect to lightweight distros like antiX Linux, Puppy Linux, and CrunchBang Linux.
While Debian Stable uses older software than Debian Testing, I don’t expect that to matter to most users. antiX Linux and Sparky Linux already provide good general purpose utility with a Debian Testing base. People who really want to use the latest and greatest software use Fedora, non-LTS Ubuntu, Arch-based distros, or Debian Unstable-based distros.
The distroverse needs more distros based on Debian Stable. The most popular distro based on Debian Stable is CrunchBang Linux. This is what I now use, but I insist on installing LXDE because I don’t like the out-of-the-box setup (which lacks a DE). Basing LMDE on Debian Stable would appeal to people who want a stable system but are put off by CrunchBang’s default setup.
I know that Clem doesn’t want to add any more editions of Linux Mint and has been cutting back on editions, but I think LMDE should offer an LXDE edition in addition to the MATE and Cinnamon editions. If this requires discontinuing other editions, I think the KDE and Xfce editions of Ubuntu-based Mint should be the ones to go. The Linux Mint team is in charge of MATE and Cinnamon, so there’s no need to hedge any bets by providing KDE and Xfce. Also, any speed difference between MATE and Xfce is dwarfed by the difference between Ubuntu and Debian.
LXDE is not only lighter than MATE and Cinnamon but also lighter than Xfce as well. LMDE with a Debian Stable base and LXDE would work very well on 10+ year old computers and be a very formidable competitor to antiX Linux (based on Debian testing), Puppy Linux (which has a much smaller software repository), and CrunchBang Linux (based on Debian stable but lacking a preinstalled DE).
Linux Mint already dominates the high end of the Linux market. LMDE with a Debian Stable base and LXDE would dominate the low end of the Linux market as well. Given that there’s less competition at the low end of the Linux market, Linux Mint could have an even bigger presence.
@ugort: I think the team will have to wait a while anyway. The freeze of Debian Testing repository – the first step on the way to the next Stable – will happen only on 5 Nov 2014.
I’ll be change my distro form LMDE to SparkyLinux. If i wish to use debian stable, i prefer CrunchBang Linux.
3) Packages are relatively up to date, as opposed to the slowness of Debian stable or Ubuntu LTS. Those are simply too slow for any software developed 6-12 months after their release.
As such, if you did switch LMDE to track Debian stable, I would choose then to instead track Debian testing; however one comment above makes me wonder if this would work, since the comment reports that one cannot dist-upgrade to current testing without breaking Cinnamon.
Thus, I would ask that if you do decide to move LMDE to stable, that Cinnamon and related packages be kept updated enough to at least work in some fashion on testing. How much does Arch contribute back upstream? That would be a decent barometer for how hard that would be.
And now, for a vaguely related question: what does basing Mint on Ubuntu offer over basing it on Debian? Easier multimedia codecs, or…?
Oh, I forgot. When will we see Cinnamon 2.2 in LMDE (regardless of what form LMDE takes)?
From Debian Testing to Debian Stable – LMDE, I think, would be a good move.
Personally, I dabble with Debian and trying it with different DE and its responsiveness – for curiosities sake. I also tried LMDE Testing on a few of my machines but I tend to go back to the stable LM KDE.
So now, I am anticipating you and your team’s take on stable Debian given your excellent take on Ubuntu.
Re Debian Stable vs Testing for LMDE-I’d favour this if the size of update packs was considerably smaller than is now the case, or if the update pack system was ended. I had tried LMDE some time ago and decided to use something more stable (generally Mint 13.) Being on an internet connection with limited bandwidth charged monthly, update packs the size of an ISO don’t work for me.
@tyhee88: basing on Stable would eliminate the need for UPs.
@LMDE Stable, Question: How would this, generally speaking work out for some people that may have newer rigs (1 year or less)? Some compatability issues, most likely?

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