by ·87 Comments

As re-spin of the LMDE 201012 32-bit ISO was made available under the name “201101”.

The new ISO comes with an up-to-date live kernel which addresses the following issues:

  • “Black screen of death”, live session hanging with a black screen.
  • Installer hanging while configuring Grub.

Explanation of the problem:

A liveCD contains two systems: One that is decompressed, copied during the installation and eventually used post-install, and another one (smaller and with minimal functionality) which is used to boot the liveCD itself, decompress the filesystem and get an operational live session running on top of it. As such, the liveCD comes with two kernels, one of which is used for the live session and the other which is actually installed on your system. In theory, these two kernels should be identical to avoid mismatches since the live session uses the live kernel but relies on the kernel files present in the compressed system. In practice this was never an issue (until now) for the following reasons:

  • On a frozen base (Ubuntu for instance), kernel changes and updates are minimal and the difference between two kernels could be insignificant in the scope of the liveCD.
  • Linux Mint is extremely conservative when it comes to changing base elements such as the kernel and as a consequence, Linux Mint ISO releases based on Ubuntu always use the exact same kernel as their Ubuntu base.

The Debian live CD we’re basing LMDE on is built by us from scratch. Unlike Ubuntu-based releases, LMDE doesn’t rebase itself with each release, it continues to use the same base which is simply updated using the repositories. LMDE 64-bit is relatively new and so the difference between its two kernels is insignificant. LMDE 32-bit was built in August 2010 and the difference between its old live kernel and its modern embedded one were quite dramatic and affected modesetting with the “nouveau” driver. On some hardware, it also affected the configuration of Grub.

The problem was hard to spot but easy to fix. The live kernel was updated in the ISO and after a lot of testing we were happy to see the 201101 successfully boot and install on a large variety of hardware.

We failed to detect the issue prior to releasing for the following reasons:

  • Significant infrastructure problems around Christmas: Our testing server in London was taken offline by the host and this created a lot of problems. Additional stress was put on various team members around Christmas (car accident, water/electricity shortages, financial problems, DSL upload speed maxed at 128kbps) which made it extremely hard for many of us, including myself and Ikey, to be available and to work efficiently.
  • New challenges specific to the rolling nature of the Debian base: Mintconstructor wasn’t designed to update the kernel and this was an entirely new challenge for us. It’s something we simply did not see coming.
  • Lack of RC releases: Unlike other releases, LMDE didn’t benefit from any public testing.

201012 was leaked and tested by a few people within the team and the community (I’d like to thank especially Justin, ArcherSeven and Gazza for their help with testing 201012 and actively supporting the resolution of the problem in 201101). I personally tested 201012 remotely in a virtualized environment. It passed QA with all test cases successful and it behaved perfectly on the hardware it was tested on.

Long term solutions:

  • QA: We go through a lot of testing but most of it is functional and regression testing. We’ll be adding hardware specific test cases to our QA process to ensure our releases always successfully boot and install on Intel, ATI and nVidia chipsets.
  • Test server: Without going into the details. The availability of a test server is extremely important in our process. Though it didn’t cause the issue, the lack of a test server affected our communication, our speed and our responsiveness to tackle the problem. At the moment it’s holding the testing on the KDE edition. We’ll be getting a new testing server this month.
  • MintConstructor: Our construction tool will be modified to detect mismatches between the live and embedded kernels and to allow maintainers to perform an update if necessary.
  • RC releases: We’ll be considering introducing RC releases for LMDE or involving the community and getting more people to test the ISO before it gets approved for a release.

Workaround for LMDE 201012 32-bit users:

If you downloaded LMDE 201012 32-bit and all you’re getting is a black screen, you might just be a kernel argument away from a successful boot. The solution is to download 201101, but you can save 1GB of download and a new DVD by using the following arguments:

  • For ATI chipsets: radeon.modeset=0
  • For nVidia chipsets: xforcevesa or nomodeset
  • For GeForce and Generic: nouveau.modeset=0
  • For Intel: i915.modeset=0

This should give you a live session in low resolution. Since the embedded kernel is already up-to-date, you don’t need to configure anything post-installation and your system should then boot in high resolution.

Download links:

Md5 sum: daeabb182b016cd62bfced5483441b5a

Torrent: 32-bit

HTTP Mirrors:

To all the people who got disappointed by the incident affecting our 32-bit Christmas release, I’d like to apologize. This has been a really stressful experience for the development team and I understand your frustration. This is a new base, and the first time we come across this particular challenge. We already started addressing our infrastructure problems and we’re coming out of this incident with a better QA process and a better technological expertise. As you can see, we’re starting the new year in style. We’re probably as proud of LMDE as we are sorry for this incident. Many people enjoyed this desktop in 64-bit already, some managed to run the 32-bit ISO in low resolution or find a workaround, and this re-spin will allow those who were left out since Christmas to finally enjoy LMDE in the New Year.

Many thanks to all the people who contributed feedback or helped solving this situation. Happy New Year to everyone!

by ·75 Comments

LMDE:

  • We’re currently addressing the “Black Screen of Death” bug and re-spinning the 32-bit ISO which is likely to be released sometime this week as “201101” to avoid confusion with the current ISO. This bug is preventing many people from running the live CD.

Servers:

  • The forums were moved to a new Cloud Server running Debian in 64-bit. Among other advantages, this allows us to “resize” the server and add or remove RAM to it remotely in less than 10 minutes. We’re currently experimenting for 3 days with different amounts of RAM to decide how much to allocate to the server and to reach the perfect balance between performance and cost. The servers were running successfully with 8GB RAM yesterday. They’re running with only 2GB RAM today and they’ll be using 4GB RAM tomorrow.
  • The Community Website is now running on its own in our Canadian server in Toronto.
  • We lost our development and testing server in London.
  • A second Cloud Server was allocated to host our public archive (which was previously in London).

by ·373 Comments

Linux Mint Debian (201012/201101)

What a better time than Christmas to bring all the best from 2010 into an updated release of Linux Mint Debian.

  • All Mint 10 features
  • 64-bit support
  • Performance boost (using cgroup, the notorious “4 lines of code better than 200” in user-space)
  • Installer improvements (multiple HDDs, grub install on partitions, swap allocation, btrfs support)
  • Better fonts (Using Ubuntu’s libcairo, fontconfig and Ubuntu Font Family) and language support (ttf-wqy-microhei, ttf-sazanami-mincho, ttf-sazanami-gothic installed by default)
  • Better connectivity and hardware support (pppoe, pppoeconf, gnome-ppp, pppconfig, libgl1-mesa-dri, libgl1-mesa-glx, libgl1-mesa-dev, mesa-utils installed by default)
  • Better sound support (addressing conflicts between Pulse Audio and Flash)
  • Updated software and packages

If you’re new to LMDE, welcome to Linux Mint Debian. Enjoy the release, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone!

Important links

LMDE in brief

  • Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) is a rolling distribution based on Debian Testing.
  • It’s available in both 32 and 64-bit as a live DVD with a Gnome desktop.
  • The purpose of LMDE is to look identical to the main edition and to provide the same functionality while using Debian as a base.

FAQ

1. Is LMDE compatible with Ubuntu-based Linux Mint editions?

No, it is not. LMDE is compatible with Debian, which isn’t compatible with Ubuntu.

2. Is LMDE fully compatible with Debian?

Yes, 100%. LMDE is compatible with repositories designed for Debian Testing or Debian Squeeze.

3. What is a rolling distribution?

LMDE constantly receives updates. Its ISO images are updated now and then but users do not require to re-install it on their systems.

4. How does LMDE compare to the Ubuntu-based editions?

Pros:

  • You don’t need to ever re-install the system. New versions of software and updates are continuously brought to you.
  • It’s faster and more responsive than Ubuntu-based editions.

Cons:

  • Although it’s using Romeo for unstable packages, LMDE continuously changes as it receives updates and new software. Compared to a frozen version of Linux Mint which changes very little once it’s publicly released, it’s not as stable. Things are likely to break more often but fixes can also come quicker. For this reason, LMDE requires a deeper knowledge and experience with Linux, dpkg and APT.
  • Debian is a less user-friendly/desktop-ready base than Ubuntu. Expect some rough edges.
5. Will it come with KDE or other desktops?

The decision wasn’t made yet. When it’s fully on par with the Main Edition and if there is a demand for it, further editions will come for LMDE.

Additional notes:

  • About the installer: The live installer is developed from scratch with Debian in mind. It’s configurable and it can be re-used by other Debian-based distributions. We noticed a lack in live technologies and in live Debian installers, so we’re happy to take the lead on this. If you’re a developer and you’re interested in using it, have a look at its source repository and don’t hesitate to contact us so we can help you fork it and merge upcoming changes between our two projects.
  • About bugs: Please use Launchpad for bug reports.
  • About the media: It comes as a liveDVD. Locales work differently in Debian and the package base requires more space. We made LMDE compatible with unetbootin though, so you can install it using a USB stick.
  • Dedicated chat room: #linuxmint-debian is open to LMDE users on irc.spotchat.org.

Download links:

Our forums go down regularly these days due to an increase in traffic and activity within the community. Our servers couldn’t deal at all with the recent release of Linux Mint 10 and this made it hard for many people to download the ISO files the day of the release. If you can’t access the website, please use the links below to get access to our HTTP download mirrors and torrent files.

Md5 sum:

  • 32-bit*:  daeabb182b016cd62bfced5483441b5a
  • 64-bit:  1284feca2dff0ec76c6be6825a71f9b7

Torrents:

HTTP Mirrors for the 32-bit ISO*:

HTTP Mirrors for the 64-bit ISO:

* An issue was addressed in the 32-bit ISO and a new re-spin was made available under the name “201101”. For more information about this re-spin please read this blog post.