We’re hearing a lot of reactions about LMDE. I’d like to thank all the people who commented on this blog and the reviewers who wrote about it. Thank you all for the feedback. Before I start going through the different reviews, I’d like to say that I was surprised by the reception that this release got. It’s been fantastic. LMDE isn’t perfect, but we’ve seen that it was extremely popular. As you probably know, we’re fully focused on Mint 10 at the moment, but work on an updated installer and an improved LMDE live media will start again in December. The system will get updates in the meantime of course, in fact, the features we’re adding to Mint 10 are also being added to LMDE’s romeo at the moment. We’ll wait for Debian to release Squeeze as stable, we’ll decide on a strategy and the features that LMDE’s Update Manager specifically requires, and we’ll then be able to decide when to port it to amd64, which editions switch bases (if any) and what will be the importance of Debian, as a base, within our project. Things will happen progressively, and as mentioned earlier, we’re still in a wait-and-see(-and-learn-and-adapt) situation. There’s a lot of potential for LMDE, though the priority is still with Mint 10.
Steve Rosenberg:
Steve Rosenberg wrote a very interesting article about LMDE, which you can read at the following address:
http://www.insidesocal.com/click/2010/09/first-impressions-of-linux-min.html
Steve said: “With this new distro, Mint is drawing from the Debian Testing repository, which is currently nicknamed Squeeze and which will (hopefully very) soon be Debian’s next stable release. But Mint Debian won’t stick with Squeeze. It’ll remain with Debian Testing (which will continue accepting new packages … forever) and be a true rolling release that theoretically can be maintained for years on a given installation depending on how the hardware in question reacts to the changes in the core components of Debian Testing.”
–> Yes. This is important to point out. Unless you’re familiar with how Debian works, you probably overlooked this detail. Yet, there’s a huge difference between Testing and Squeeze. LMDE follows Testing, not Squeeze. Testing is rolling towards the “next” Debian release. At the moment it’s rolling towards Squeeze. When Squeeze gets released as Stable, then Testing won’t point to it anymore, but to the next release (in the making) after that. Debian is freezing Squeeze in an effort to make it stable. As a result, Testing isn’t being modified much these days… but when Squeeze gets released, a lot of new packages will make their way from Unstable into Testing, and will put the stability of LMDE to the test.
Steve said: “The question is whether a Mint distro based on the rolling Debian Testing release will provide a stable-enough platform for your given tasks and hardware.”
–> This is one of the things we’re here to find out. LMDE is young, it’s got an R&D label on it and it will certainly come with its own challenges. As with every other Mint system, the quality at the time of the release is there, there’s no problem with that. The big question is how will it handle the stretching of its base when Testing gets a huge amount of updates from Unstable. My prediction is that the Update Manager will play a greater role in LMDE than it does on top of Ubuntu, and we’ll be confronted with new challenges and developing specific features to it to make sure people are protected from breakages and issues arising in Debian Testing.
Steve said: “I wonder if the Mint team’s next move will be a distribution based on Debian Stable (though it looks like you can easily make your Mint Debian install stick with Squeeze rather than post-Squeeze Testing).”
–> No. The choice is already here for LMDE users. If they want stability, they can switch from Testing to Squeeze and find themselves on Stable using the exact same system. If they want it to roll, they can stay on Testing and get ready for the wave after the Debian release. If they want they can even switch to Unstable. Being based on Testing at the moment, means you can go in any direction, towards the upcoming Stable Squeeze, the new Testing or even Unstable, the choice is already there.
Steve said: “However, a check of the Mint forums leads me to believe that an encryption option may be coming to Mint Debian.”
–> There is no plan to add encryption. It’s a good idea though and we’ll consider it.
IT Lure:
Here’s a review from IT Lure. It’s funny and nice to read and it underlines interesting things about the installer:
http://www.itlure.com/2010/09/distro-hoppin-linux-mint-debian-edition.html
IT Lure said: “Awww… the baby is all grown up now! Yeap, the time has come for the Mint bird to leave the purple nest and fly to its true ancestor, Debian!”
–> Say Mint (born in 2006) was one generation younger than Ubuntu (2004), that would make Debian its great-great-great-great-grand-parent… I think. Wait, what are we talking about here??!
IT Lure said: “For now, we will have to make do with 32-bit only support and GNOME as the desktop environment.”
–> Yes. It’s very likely we’ll support amd64 as well, and I’ve already talked to some of the maintainers who just can’t wait building on this base. But the time for these decisions will come after the Squeeze release, when we’re ready and we know exactly where we want to go with LMDE.
IT Lure said: “After pressing next on the default English language, I had to select the timezone from this huge list. Goodbye auto-detection, goodbye pretty map… sigh. 😀 I kid, I kid, it’s not that bad, and I’m sure it will improve over time.”
–> I talked about this with Ikey Doherty (who co-developed this installer). We both wanted an interactive map that would put any installer to shame of course… It’s funny because we both worked on a Java port of Diplomacy (the board game) and we’re experienced with mapping techniques… but anyway, the reality was that things had to be ready in time if we wanted to give LMDE a chance to come out publicly before the focus would switch back to Mint 10 again. So we went for a list (easy to code, very few potential bugs) and as a consolation prize, we allowed ourselves some flags in the locale selection and a bit of Cairo in the partitioning screen. The installer will be beautified in the future, this is something we want too, but it’s not as important as the rest and so it has a low priority. The detection follows your locale selection at the moment and this will be improved as well.
IT Lure said: “The HDD-prepare step is also quite different and a bit less user-friendly than Ubuntu’s, but still doable even by a less-experienced user.”
–> It simply doesn’t come with a partitioner. It’s relying on gparted instead. Again, this is a v1 for this installer. The scope was to have something functional and relatively easy to use. There’s a lot of room for improvement and many features can be developed to enhance this installer. We’re talking to Debian and derivatives about this and the possibility for it to be ported upstream, it’s likely this installer will make its way to other distributions and we’ll probably work together with other developers on it.
IT Lure said: “At the user creation window, my machine was assigned a KickAss hostname: ms-7519-desktop. Nice!”
–> I agree with the fact that it’s nice, but it doesn’t work for everybody. This is on our bug list and it will be removed in the next iteration of the installer. In the meantime: If you’re about to install LMDE and the detected hostname contains space characters, make sure to remove them…
IT Lure said: “If you type in the name of a program that is not yet installed, you will be offered the option to either search the repositories for it or install it straight away if you got the name exactly right.”
–> … or if you enabled Romeo. Mint 10’s mintmenu is there, including search engines and integrated APT.
IT Lure said: “Even though Mint now received extra geek points for being built directly on top of Debian, it doesn’t mean you can’t still brag around with wobbly windows, cubes and whatnot. Unfortunately, it isn’t as easy as it used to be. First of all, there’s no “Hardware Drivers” app anymore.”
–> We’re planning to port usb-creator, simple-ccsm, the compiz switch, and jockey to LMDE in the near future. We’re currently talking to Debian and Ubuntu about this to see whether they want to take care of it, or whether we should go ahead with it.
IT Lure said: “Sadly, there is one quite serious issue with the sound server, meaning that you won’t be able to play sound from two different sources.”
–> I heard about this in the comment section and this is something we’re looking into. My intuition is that it’s something to do with Flash and PulseAudio. We’ll have this figured out soon.
IT Lure said: “Bah, time is a lie anyway, so who needs it?”
–> True. We’ll still try to fix this though. The installer is properly setting the timezone on your system but there’s probably an additional step we’re missing somewhere. We’ll make sure to tackle this.
IT Lure said: “Even though I installed the Microsoft fonts (and that made webpages look a bit better) and adjusted the hinting, there’s still something wrong with their consistency. It’s a pleasure to look at text in Ubuntu and Ubuntu-based distros so, if you figured out what Canonical’s secret is, please share.”
–> They’re set the same way as in other Mint editions. I suspect the configuration is fine and we’re missing something that is patched in Ubuntu. We’ll look into this as well.
In the comments section, an anonymous person said: “The only thing that I really didn’t like is the same for all of the Mint systems and that is the poor security you get by using their unsigned packages and repositories.”
–> It is the same for all Mint systems indeed. It’s a feature though and it’s even a condition for our ISOs to pass the QA tests. Both the main Mint repositories and LMDE are signed and secure. The warning you see is because we set APT to allow unauthenticated repositories. This follows our philosophy that if you told your system to do something, it should listen to you and do it promptly. If for any reason you decided to add an unsigned repository, then Mint should accept it and do as it’s told. You already have a warning, if you don’t like it, use sign repositories, if you do already, remove the setting from /etc/apt/apt.conf. This default setting is there to warn people and to let them do what they want, as opposed to something that fails when you need it most. You’re not more exposed than on any other system. If something has the rights to modify your /etc/apt/sources.list it surely has the rights to modify /etc/apt/apt.conf as well. Warnings are good things and unlike errors they’re here to let you know about things without getting in your way. This is not poor security. This is a signed and secure system which lets you add additional sources, signed or not, the day you feel like it.
Distrowatch:
LMDE was also reviewed in Distrowatch Weekly by Jesse Smith:
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20100920#feature
Distrowatch said: “There are a lot of things I like about the Linux Mint distribution. One is that they aren’t reinventing the wheel.”
–> Yes. This is very important to us. In every aspect of the project we prefer to focus on what we do best and so we specialize on that particular layer of ours, close to the desktop and where our expertise can help us make a difference. The rest is either delegated to partners, the community or other entities. We’re very selective with our upstream components but also very conservative when it comes to modifying them. In particular, with our package base, we like to retain full compatibility, to follow it as closely as we can and to communicate bug reports upstream when they come to us.
Distrowatch said: “Essentially this means that the Mint team is able to introduce new ideas and features to the user without wasting resources on the underlying base.”
–> Very few projects manage to be innovative without focusing on a particular area. The underlying base requires a phenomenal amount of maintenance and if it wasn’t for Debian, Gnome, Linux and many upstream components, projects like Mint or Ubuntu, if they couldn’t find alternatives, would have to switch a lot of their resources away from desktop innovation. We’re standing on the shoulders of giants and thanks to that we can be fully focused on the areas we want to improve.
Distrowatch said: “Another point in its favour is that I can easily slap an install on a new computer in twenty minutes and have all the basics right there with no configuring, no tweaking and no adding extra repositories. It’s really the pizza delivery to your door in under thirty minutes distro.”
–> The “out of the box” aspect is extremely important. As much as we disagree with Apple’s policy to dumb down systems and remove choices from the user, we recognize the fact that they are offering working solutions which are properly configured. This is something Microsoft Windows is very bad at. Since the start of our project we’ve been trying to conciliate the two aspects of choice and readiness, power-to-the-user and out-of-the-box functionality. An ideal desktop should let you change it any way you see fit, yet come configured to you in such as way that you don’t actually feel like changing anything. A great default configuration, a lot of choice but no unsolicited questions asked. This is an important aspect of our project’s philosophy.
Distrowatch said: “According to the Linux Mint website, LMDE is compatible with Debian, but not with Ubuntu.”
–> Yes. Although they both run Linux binaries, shell scripts and .deb packages, they’re not considered compatible. A modern operating system deals with dependencies, and these can be broken by mixing packages from Debian and Ubuntu, potentially resulting in an unusable system. It’s ok to install static DEBs now and then, and they might be the same for Debian and Ubuntu but there’s enough of a gap between the two distributions to consider them incompatible with each others. LMDE users are not encouraged to use PPAs or repositories made for Ubuntu.
Distrowatch said: “Mint’s installer for the Debian edition is a little different than the regular Mint installer. It has the same feel and goes through the same motions, but there are a few minor differences.”
–> Ubiquity (the Ubuntu installer) is among the best live installers. Although our installer was developed from scratch, it’s user interface is inspired from Ubiquity. It asks more or less the same questions and presents things in a similar manner.
Distrowatch said: “Once partitions are created, setting mount points is done by double-clicking on a partition entry. I would have preferred to have an obvious Edit Partition button, but this is the installer’s début. No doubt, things will get polished as feedback is submitted.”
–> Added to the todo-list. Thanks for the feedback.
Distrowatch said: “The next thing I noticed was there were updates available for LMDE. In fact, two days after the release was announced, I found there were 280 updates waiting. The next day there were five more and the next work day there were another four… Rolling releases are not for the faint of bandwidth.”
–> True. Although, you don’t have to take “every” update as often as you can. For instance, we recently updated mintmenu from 5.0.0 to 5.0.1, then to 5.0.2, then to 5.0.3… etc.. and we’re now at 5.0.9. If you update your system everyday, you downloaded mintmenu 9 times. If you’re still at 5.0.0 and you update now, you end up with the same 5.0.9 version in a single download. If you’re not on fast broadband with unlimited bandwidth, do not update every day. There’s no point to it. Do it weekly or even monthly and you’ll be as up to date after each upgrade, while using less bandwidth. Grab the newest mintupdate from LMDE’s romeo also, which will show you the total download size for the updates you’re selecting.
Distrowatch said: “I was a little surprised to see Firefox and Thunderbird labelled as they were, and at the versions offered. The Debian team refers to their modified Firefox web browser as Iceweasel and the version available in Debian Testing is 3.5.12 at the time of writing. Likewise, the Icedove package in Debian Testing is at version 3.0 while LMDE’s Thunderbird package is at version 3.1.1. So it appears the Mint team is pulling those items from their own repository instead of relying on Debian’s packages.”
–> The decision to re-brand them to “Iceweasel” and “Icedove” belongs to Debian and only impacts their project. It’s nothing to do with us and it would make no sense for us to do the same. Regarding the versions of these two applications, we felt they were too outdated. Firefox and Thunderbird are important parts of the desktop and popular among our user base so it was decided that we would maintain them ourselves.
Distrowatch said: “Generally, I found LMDE’s performance to be good. According to Mint’s web site, they expect this edition to be a little faster than the main (Ubuntu-based) Mint edition; however, I didn’t see much of a difference. Boot times were about the same for me whether I was using main Mint or the Debian flavour. Once on the desktop, performance and responsiveness were almost identical on my hardware. I did find LMDE to be light on resources. I performed some trial runs with different memory settings in a virtual environment and found LMDE would boot into a desktop smoothly with 512 MB of RAM. I could also login and run applications with 256 MB of memory, though performance suffered a bit. With a swap partition turned on I was able to boot into GNOME with 128 MB of RAM, though performance at that stage had degraded to the point of being unusable.”
–> I’ve experienced a noticeable gain in responsiveness on my test machines, especially on an 600Mhz 512MB RAM laptop that I have here. It’s nothing to do with LMDE, but with Debian itself and I noticed the same with Debian in the past. I’d love to hear more about this. If somebody performs a benchmark or a comparison, please don’t hesitate to send it to us.
Distrowatch said: “Both Mints have the same applications, they use the same themes and to me they felt the same. This shows, I feel, that the Mint team has accomplished their goal of making the Mint Layer distribution independent. They’ve demonstrated they can switch from one base to another if they see a need, giving them freedom to choose which platform best suits their ends.”
–> This was one of the motivations. Not so much in demonstrating it (though it’s always nice to receive credit) but more so in the choice it gives us to switch upstream components and to offer a variety of editions to our users. I am confident Debian will make a great package base for us. We’ll need to learn more from it, and tune things accordingly. We’ll need to overcome some upcoming challenges and maybe adapt our strategies. At the moment , LMDE isn’t completely on par with the main edition, but through its Debian base, it already brings reasons for some of our users to switch to it.
Distrowatch said: “The Debian edition has been released at a point where Debian’s Testing repository is relatively quiet. Debian development is in a feature freeze right now where they’re fixing bugs in preparation for their next stable release. During this period the Testing repository LMDE pulls from is going to be comparatively calm. Once Debian “Squeeze” gets out the door, if LMDE continues to track the Testing repository, the users are going to be hit with a flood of packages moving from Debian Unstable into Debian Testing. What seems like a stable system now is likely to become a rougher ride when that happens.”
–> This is going to be fun! We’re going to make mistakes and we’re going to learn from them. We’ll prepare for it and no matter how much, some things will come as a surprise. I’ve warned people since 2006 about regressions, we built a dedicated Update Manager for this specific reason, and now we’re looking at a rolling distribution. In the dev. team, we’re talking about restoration snapshots, reverting updates, btrfs and many other ideas that could prevent people from experiencing problems, or at least allow them to bring back their system to life after a tragic upgrade accident. New code often means new bugs and though they’ll be fixed faster in Debian Testing, they’re also likely to happen more often. It will be an interesting challenge for us, and although we’re probably warning people about this more than other projects, this is an issue faced by the IT world as a whole, how to guarantee stability while providing a constant flow of updates… this Debian base is certainly worth it, it will be a rough ride for some of us but one definitely worth taking.
Distrowatch said: “There are three key points to LMDE: the Debian Testing repository, the Mint layer and it is a rolling release. I find myself thinking people who really enjoy Mint and don’t want to perform re-installs are probably better served with Mint’s main edition which comes with long term support. Users who are familiar enough with Debian to know they want to run Debian’s Testing branch are probably comfortable installing plain Debian. People who use a rolling release because they want to constantly stay on the leading edge aren’t going to find that in Debian Testing. My conclusion thus far is LMDE is for people who specifically want to run Debian Testing, but want to have everything pre-installed and configured for them. And if that is the case then Mint now appears to have the best solution available for those users.”
–> Mint attracts different kinds of people. I don’t think our user base is made only of people who want something that is easy to use, though we do try to make it easy for them. For instance, unlike Mac OS X, Mint being easy doesn’t mean it’s dumbed down, closed and restricted, so it doesn’t necessarily drive experienced Linux users away. The presence of the codecs is a determining factor to some, though they’re easy to add on most systems and it’s never been an issue for Windows users not to be able to play them by default… No, I think it’s more complicated than that. We try to make people feel at home with their system, it’s about comfort. Readiness plays a part in it of course but there’s more to it. As for the LTS releases, we found very few people stuck to them. For the most part, our users tend to run the latest version and so a rolling path is appealing to many of them. If we manage to overcome the stability issues and the stretching of the rolling base, if we also manage to bring the features and comfort on par with the main edition, I think LMDE could appeal to the majority of our user base. That’s a lot of ifs but there’s a big potential here. As it is now, about 5% of our user base made the switch to LMDE, but the feedback we’re getting shows a lot of people just waiting for a particular fix, 64-bit support, or a few other changes to join them. 5% is a small figure, but considering the R&D aspect of LMDE, its first release and the issues we have yet to tackle, this is very encouraging. It’s not enough to get us distracted and forget where our priorities are, but it’s enough to confirm that Debian is here to stay within our project and that we’ll continue to work on actively improving LMDE in between each release cycles.
Well as a long standing user of LMDE for roughly 50 ISO’s… lol.
Some real good feedback so far, nice to see it. I personally never
expected LMDE to get as much attention as it has done, but on
the same hand I’m not going to complain 😛
“In the dev. team, we’re talking about restoration snapshots, reverting updates, btrfs”
That’s going to be so cool, heh.
If anyone else has issues/points/etc they wish to make about LMDE,
then please don’t hesitate to join us on the forums:
http://forums.linuxmint.com/
Look for the “LMDE” section. Alternatively you can find us on IRC:
irc://irc.spotchat.org/#linuxmint-debian
Bug reporting is handled on launchpad:
http://bugs.launchpad.net/linuxmint/
Remember we have a dedicated Bug Squad now (who, btw, are doing
an excellent job), so lets try and improve the distribution together.
I’ve spoken to h2 regarding sgfxi, he’s quite happy to work with me
on a project that provides a frontend to sgfxi. Had great help from
him so far, looking forward to seeing what he produce (keep your
eyes peeled on the forums :))
If people have suggestions to make regarding the installer, or even
want to fork it, please do. The repo is at:
http://github.com/linuxmint/live-installer
We’ve got some cool stuff planned for it, but the priority with the
installer itself is bringing it as close in functionality as Ubiquity.
Also, don’t forget about LM10, we got some cool stuff lined up
for that too! I’ll be putting work into mintBackup and mintDesktop
again for the LM10 release, so please rekindle interest in the topic
on the forums.
great to read.
Thanks you, Mint
great to read.
Thank you, Mint
“Both the main Mint repositories and LMDE are signed and secure. The warning you see is because we set APT to allow unauthenticated repositories.”
If this is the case then can’t the system be patched to check whether a package is being downloaded from a signed or unsigned repository instead of just displaying “unauthenticated” warnings for all downloads?
It doesn’t make sense to have a popup warning that authenticated packages are unauthenticated because that warning is clearly false. IMO there should be two possible warnings that only appear when needed:
1. When a package is to be downloaded from a non-default repository
2. When a package is to be downloaded from an unsigned repository.
A warning that is displayed as a matter of course will just be ignored. It’s the boy who cries wolf and provides no protection to the end user because they quickly learn to pay no attention to it.
Pluraldave: Fair point, I guess we could patch apt for this.
I thing the most important aspect of LMDE is to kind of “break free” of any current or future upstream limitation. We know that Mint has some specific goals, and if these goals slightly differ from Ubuntu’s, that could delay or make hard to go Mint’s direction (thus departing from Ubuntu’s direction). Anyway, everyone ends up benefitting from all this awsome developments!
Those were great reviews! There was even talk about LMDE on the Linux Action Show last week! After Debian Squeeze is released, testing will receive packages from unstable, thus causing the potential for instability and breakage. Why not change the repos from “testing” to “squeeze” shortly before the release of squeeze, and then when the next testing release is frozen, switch back to testing. By then the packages have been tested for a while and most of the show stopping bugs squashed. You would still have a rolling release, just wait a year to upgrade. Is this possible?
Good job answering the quotes from the reviews, that are, indeed, the doubts can have the most of the people.
I really enjoyed reading this post.
Good reviews and comments.
I was already aware of Steve Rosenberg’s review, but I am happy to be informed of the other ones.
I have been a steady (and very happy) user of Mint since Daryna, and the latest Mint LTS installment is just great.
Having dabbled a bit with the LMDE release, I am also very interested in following closely its evolution and really looking forward to the 64-bits version.
Thank you Mint for this new endeavor.
My own observations:
Pros: NetWork manager works correctly with my laptop. It used to with other Mint versions, but disconnects very frequently (as in every couple of minutes) in 8 and 9 (had to dump it in favor of wicd).
Sound works out of the box for me, unlike in earlier versions of Mint (4,5,6 maybe, not sure now).
Most things appear and work just like in other Mint versions.
Cons: Sound has died randomly a few times, requiring a logoff. Sound also dies if I allow the laptop to suspend and resume.
Laptop function keys (FN key and brightness, suspend, wifif on/off, etc.) do not work at all.
Great job, running stable.
Is there a way for LMDE to use the ubuntu repositories? Because if there is, considering Ubuntu’s greatest advantage combined with Debian under Mint, LMDE would reach perfection. As a newcomer I don’t exactly understand how dependences work so I rely don’t know if it is just a hard task or an impossible one.
enjoyable read, indeed!
same as fragus here, except I started using Mint since Gloria and the current LTS is just awesome (even though I still continue to try out other distros – it’s just fun!). LMDE is great to play around with and since I have no clue whatsoever about computers “play” is the keyword here. Few weeks ago I started to learn Python, only as a hobby tho! GNU/Linux really did and does a great job for me and hopefully someday I’ll be able to pay back more than to “just” spread the word and help people to install and customize they’re OSs.
Greets and thanks to this wonderful team
Hilts
LMDE 64 bit will be the wave of the future. Thanks for all the hard work to the Mint team. Once LMDE 64 comes out I will do some testing in VBox and if all goes well it will be my distro of choice.
Keep up the great work, Michael G.
How about a metapackage for Debian, to make it Linux Mint?
I really liked one phrase in the first paragraph, more than any other. You talked about making the decision when to port to amd64. Not ‘if’, but ‘when’. I will patiently continue to use Mint 9 on a couple of boxes until then.
Thanks to everyone involved in making LMDE a reality!
Clem said: In the dev. team, we’re talking about restoration snapshots, reverting updates, btrfs and many other ideas that could prevent people from experiencing problems, or at least allow them to bring back their system to life after a tragic upgrade accident.
I’m very happy the dev team will be looking out for us. But also remember that Clonezilla is your friend.
@ Sean
I have the same sound dying problems. But it’s not necessary to log off to fix it, I followed the following instructions to restart the audio drivers:
file:///home/ciar%C3%A1n/Deasc/Linux%20HowTo%27s/how_to_restart-audio-drivers-linux.html
in summary:
Terminal>lsof | grep pcm #lists the current audio processes
>kill /process number/ #Kills the process
>sudo /etc/init.d/alsa-utils restart #restarts the audio drivers
@ Euthymius, comment 11:
I don’t think you would want to use Ubuntu repositories with a Debian-based OS. This is what was mentioned before, with differences in dependencies and some of the inner workings. Ubuntu is (was?) based on Debian, so there is some interoperability, but the two are not directly compatible. Yes, some things would work fine, but in the long term you’d be asking for trouble.
It appears as if LMDE is now the “Main Edition” ie ISADORA ….Why you may ask..
Go to LINUXMINT home page and there is NO MENTION of ISADORA whatsoever….
Now, I think I understand this is an R&D project….but at what expense?
People searching for ISADORA may (possibly) be turned off by lack of “MAIN” GUI…
It should not be this difficult….for newbies to find their way to Isadora
Not that I do not enjoy LMDE—with some tolerable frustrations….like the mintminu 10 in the BOLG does absolutlely not work on “copying this info to a terminal” period
Command not found is what I get….FYI
Secondly….MINT devs NEED to tell us newbie/intermediate-type commoners how to install basic programs into LMDE…..with a STICKEY or something similar…. For example—I’ve given up on Chromium/Chrome…EVER being a pert of this DISTRO…and just living with FIREFOX…
I could go on…but it serves what purpose?
Great read and excellent response by Clem.
The only pressing need for me concerning LMDE is to add an option to install GRUB to the root partition so I’m not forced to overwrite the MBR.
Others have commented at Linux Mint forums that they won’t install LMDE without this option.
I did add a suggestion at github.
Other than that LMDE gets two thumbs up from me.
Great job Clem and Ikey. I appreciate all your hard work.
Installed LMDE on my MSI Wind U100 on Sept 9th, and it works tremendously well!
The only problem I’ve had is Cheese is broke – but the webcam (the dread Buffalo) works fine under Skype, and every other program I need it for.
Oh – I lose the bottom of a menu every now and then. LMDE Netbook version on the way?
Next weekend I install LMDE on my quadcore desktop. Should be fun.
A fantastic job – and thank you.
Jaime
Most impressive post from Clem. What really surprises me about the entire Linux Mint family of projects is the absolute focus on the user’s needs as an almost religious principle. The absence of any personal driver and ego and humble and yet very competent approach makes this team really shine. The strategic analysis from its leader is as sharp and clear as it could be. My only worry, as in most open source endeavours, is that too many spin-offs and versions are created which become unmanageable for the team and spiral into inferior quality, potentially damaging Linux Mint’s brand reputation of best Linux experience for virtually every class of user, from newbies to experienced. If I were a government leader, I’d grab a chunk of public resources and hand it to you guys to make free (as in open) computing a majority movement.
Awesome work!
Stefano (current LMDE user)
PS my only main complaint with LMDE right now is about the installer’s inability to deal with multiple hard disk setups (and potentially with GRUB’s inflexibility). This IMHO should be patched before anything else (and re-ISOed), because if you can’t install something properly there’s no way that you can fine tune it (or bug-test it) later on…
Yeah, mint has some imperfections, but it was released only 10 days ago! i strongly believe that this system will be improved in order to have the same simplicity of ubuntu using debian as base..
repare pulse audio!:)
Thoroughly enjoyed reading the post.
I am new to Mint. I once installed Mint 8 and was put off by the opacity of the menu… finally a couple of months ago I installed mint 9 and loved it. Then I decided to install LMDE the day after it came.
So far so good…
There is one thing however that kind of tripped me. The linux Mint distro seems to cater for the kind of people who want a linux desktop but are not necessarily interested JUST in the OS itself. They want to use to to do whatever their interest with the OS being ‘least’ in their way.
Making and viewing videos seems to be where we are heading as tech consumers. To that effect I am really surprised that there is no comprehensive software for video capture. There is ‘cheese’ and I am still struggling to capture any larger than 160/120 video on my Samsung n210 with the inbuilt webcam. This is to me is really damping my experience.
Apart from that I am wrapped. The Mint team have not only made a great distro but they also have the right philosophy. I am not leaving Mint in a hurry.
I can’t thank the Mint team enough for their efforts.
THANKYOU!!
Great job all! I have been using Mint since version 7 and I love it.
I tried LMDE last week but had to switch back to main edition because of the video (Nvidia) driver. Unfortenatly it’s not possible to install the restricted driver with a simple click like it works in the main edition so I tried to manually install the driver from the Nvidia website. I didnot succeed, partly because of lack of time, partly because my lack of knowledge.
I hope the restricted drivers will become part of the LMDE edition in which case I’ll certainly will try to install again.
Keep up the good work and thank you for a great distro!
Thank you for the Debian Edition. I will use a lot and hope for a quick implementation of the 64bit version.
@Ikem (#13), there’s a metapackage for LMDE.
Add to your Debian testing’s /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import romeo
then run
apt-get update
apt-get install linuxmint-keyring mint-meta-debian
I too am running LMDE and it’s been working great.
The only issue I’ve noticed is the time zone thing. If that gets fixed, then everything will be perfect for me.
Great Work. Thank you.
I’ve Ubuntu installed on Server, Laptop and Desktop.
Now I use on my Desktop a dualboot Ubuntu 10.4/LMDE with sharing /home
and the 2nd harddisk.
Just for fun, I also installed LMDE in a VirtualBox, but with pointing to sid!
I alredy subscribed to the bug reports of LMDE and posted a possible solution/workaround for one.
Keep going.
My question regards kernels. Will LMDE get updates from the Debian Testing kernel team, or will kernels be developed in-house by Mint? IIRC the official Debian kernels can’t contain any “non-free” content. And Mint’s philosophy has always been to make the OS a pleasure, and leave the political squabbles to others.
It would also be nice to have TuxOnIce included in the kernel. Right now I’m Using Isadora (Ubuntu based) with a PPA for TuxOnIce kernels. This is what got me thinking about kernel LMDE would use going forward.
The only thing I am waiting for before installing LMDE on my laptop is the 2.6.35 kernel because of problems with my Toshiba laptop’s power management features. I will probably be putting it on my kids desktop when I get time to build it.
Great work guys!
Do we really need pulse-audio?
Using LMDE on y old Dell laptop and my newer home build. All going swimmingly so far. 🙂
Good work guys, looking forward to a 64bit LMDE release.
@woodcat
we need something that is able to recieve sound from multiple fonts..
Has just installed LMDE in VirtualBox. Great distro overall, it may replace Ubuntu Jaunty on my laptop!
One thing though: can you install old gdm by default instead of the abomination that the new one is? Mint is so beautiful, but gdm ugliness ruins the look at the login time. And AFAIK Squeeze has the old version…
debian package system is very good, but it can be much better. Pardus for example has delta packaging feature, it allows users to download only differences between older version and newer of a program, it is a big traffic economy, and more logical.
Why ubuntu,debian,linux mint,knoppix …. etc – can’t create something like that ?
I ran LMDE inside my KVM virtual machine, and am having a great time playing around with it. It’s obviously not a polished as the main release but it’s still much nice then some other distros. The idea of having a linux mint with a rolling release is fantastic and is exactly the sort of thing I will jump onto once it matures.
Must say as a non PC lit user Mint is for me, only problem I’ve had is the Thunder bird update and hash miss match other than that fantastic, thanks all.
If you’re still waiting for the 64 bit version, you’re missing all the fun. I installed LMDE on a SATA drive which I reformatted with multiple partitions (I’m comfortable with gparted), and it picked up my IDE drive and the installations on it and after installing grub and rebooting I can choose LMDE, Mint 8, Mint 9 XFCE, or tiny Vista from the menu and everything works.
I rarely need more than 3.6 G of ram and I was able to copy /home to the new drive and it was picked up without a hitch.
Also, just for kicks, I installed the XFCE desktop, which I can choose at login, and ding I’m in a standard Debian box (well sort of).
I found an Ubuntu page I used for Mint 8 that had a great description of Pulse audio utilities and how to use them, I’ll try to find it and post it in the forum.
I had tried Mint 2 years ago but didn’t see ant compelling reason to change (from Ubuntu). Now with LMDE, you will have me switch for good. Waiting for x64 bits version.
Just loaded up LMDE… flawless! Sound, video, wireless all work “out of the box”! I’m excited by the new Debian base, and the freedom it could bring from Ubuntu dependency. Great job folks, keep up the good work!
Clem said:
> There is no plan to add encryption. It’s a good idea though and we’ll consider it.
In the main edition, it is possible to prepare the whole partitioning scheme (including LVM and encryption) outside the installer, in a chroot environment. The installer will find these devices and I can install on them.
While this is a bit more complicated as in the original Debian (expert) installer, it is at least possible. In LMDE, there is no such thing. This was the reason for me to stop testing.
So if you say that encryption is not (yet?) planned, let me just ask you kindly for the “chroot” support which exists in the main edition. Take all the time you need, but I regard this as pretty important.
Thanks by the way for this “experiment” and its rapid improvement.
Clem I am amazed by your dedication towards the users comments, reviews and queries. I am a fan and a user of LM from Felicia till Isadora. Expecting the next LMDE edition with Squeeze stable, features of LM 10,updated installer and more from Mint Team
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but once the “unstable” packages are transfered into “testing”, there will be a significant amount of new updates so one can notice that and choose not to upgrade for some time, right? Will there be problems if someone waits for a few weeks for most issues to smooth out and then run update?
I am fairly new to linux trid several versions and seltled on linux mint 9 I tried lmde and worked just fine until I tried to get wireless working In mint nine it just worked well in lmde its a nightmare have no idea how to get it going . make it more friendly thank you
I totally agree with the Mac OSX comment, but it’s going to start a religious way if I say anymore, so I’ll leave it at that.
I’m looking forward to trying LMDE out when I can get the time of day to work with it, probably closer to when Mint10 is released.
It’s great to see the many reviews on the more positive side, grats to everyone’s hard work. And looking forward to more releases in the future to come.
I was using Mint (Main edition) for the past 3 releases. Never tried 64bit or KDE, Fluxbox, etc. editions. The main reason (for me) was that I was using an advanced distro based upon Ubuntu.
Ubuntu is for the masses. Mint was for the educated mass, not too overly geeky (make install, at most), and who disliked some of the inflexible choices that Ubuntu made. Above all, it felt more advanced, letting users test the latests packages right on the repos. But being Ubuntu.
I switched back to Ubuntu when I felt that in 10.04 was pushing further than Linux Mint. I want to get back to Mint. I’m afraid LMDE will take too much attention out of Mint developers, and that Mint 10.10 will be as conservative as Mint 9.
Of course, I’m complaining about something that i download and enjoy for free, I know that.
@WoodCAT (#33)
I don’t need it (PA never worked with my good old Terratec DMX XFire 1024 on any Linux distribution), you don’t need it – but I have read many comments of people, which managed to set up impressive sound configurations with it (i.e. mapping sound over an home network).
It’s all about choice – but I agree, it should be an optional component rather than a default one.
Furthermore, it seems to be as nearly deeply cramped into the system as IE in Windows 😉
One of the first things I do after installing a new Linux distribution, is removing PA using this guide:
http://idyllictux.wordpress.com/2009/04/21/ubuntu-904-jaunty-keeping-the-beast-pulseaudio-at-bay/
At least for me it works like a charm – no stuttering and no crashing anymore, just pure ALSA sound dripping out of my speakers… 🙂
I just wanted to say that LMDE seems like it could become my ideal operating system, I’ve experimented with pretty much every popular distro out there and have observed this trend: easy-to-use/out-of-the-box distros are bloated and efficient distros take a lot of work to set up and maintain. I hope that LMDE will grow into something that can bridge the gap between efficiency and automation. Keep up the great work!
#31 > It would also be nice to have TuxOnIce included in the kernel.
I second this notion, since so far, to best of my still very limited Linux knowledge, this is the only way to get at least hibernate to work on my Compaq Presario laptop (Athlon XP-M, N-Brdg: IGP 320M, S-Brdg: ALi 1535+).
Suspend however still shuts off/crashes and freezes the system, so that the battery and external power has to be briefly disconnected, before the laptop responds again to the power key.
I dream of the combined supend + hibernate feature, but 1 out of 3 is better than nothing, even though not being able to suspend is dearly missed.
Other than that, I’m very grateful for the introduction of the new rolling LMDE.
Being forcefully locked into the application versions that come with any given regular Mint/Ubuntu distribution without for the most part being able to upgrade to newer releases other than replacing the whole distribution with a successor, is still a strange concept to me, that I never liked.
AMD64 release..? there is a AMD64 kernel available in the repos… in fact i installed it yesterday and presently running it.. does this not make it 64 bit..? so far so good… granted im running it as a vm in vmware workstation 7 running on linux mint 8 amd64…
I’ll try & review it…
*not patient to download*
@46 Malisha: Yep, nop problem on that. As Clem said: “do not update every day. There’s no point to it. Do it weekly or even monthly and you’ll be as up to date after each upgrade”.
😉
@30 Peter: I did the same a week ago. I have the ‘testing’ repositories now pointing to ‘unstable’, and get sid updates, which seem to be as stable (unstable?) as squeeze, by and large. I see LMDE as a friendlier sidux / aptosid. No issues so far, but I’m not testing the system hard.
It seems to me that a number of users who venture to LMDE might find sid a better base than squeeze. Just a thought.
Would you mind answering a question? Thanks in advance.
In future (far future, maybe), will LMDE become the Main, the sole version of the Mint team (which means the extinction of the Ubuntu-based Mint or nearly so: Ubuntu-based Mint will be just another variation…etc), or will LMDE and Ubuntu-based Mint will coexist for a very long term, or else?
I’m asking this because I am running a production system with Mint 9 and I was excited at the birth of LMDE. Although I like testing new version every time, I don’t feel very eager with the too constant Ubuntu’s releasing schedule (and thus, Mint’s) which is once-in-6-months. If LMDE is the main actor in future, I will not hesitate reinstall it, once-forever with its rolling feature. 🙂
* Another question though… Besides Debian, do the Mint team plan or think of testing any other codebase ?
Thanks. 🙂
I’m wondering, that Debian has ever got an “install with KDE4” option at the installer. Or the LMDE. I use KDE4 only, but in the stable section, there are just KDE4 4.1.0. But that version is not so usable or stable than 4.2 or 4.3, or so on. If the Debian, or the LMDE has got a good KDE4 version, I will use that, cause I like the Debian. But i dont like Gnome.
Wo0o0w,
my Laptop : Hp Pavilion dv6940se Special Edition.
Memory : 4 GB Memory
Cpu : Core 2 Due 2:ghz
HDD : 250 GB
Intel x3100 358MB video memory
Wlan/bluetooth
ac97 realtek sound
built-in webcam
etc…
every thing works 100% as mint ubuntu based but i notice that sound and video quality more more clear & good.
i love mint Debian based ..
thanx team.
RE: When Testing gets upgraded – I’m running what will be testing at the moment and it seems to run fine if not better than the current testing…
I request for the opportunity to customize packages during the installation.
Apart from that, I really can’t bash Debian Mint, seriously I wanted to, I’m familiar with the quirks of the squeeze repositories alterations on a testing based operating system, and used to go through a long winded process to get it setup the way I wanted, and having the packages automatically installed without the opportunity for a selection process, contradicts the need many feel for control in a linux based operating system, especially the quirky ones!
nonetheless, this is an excellent system, and implementation of a fully functional debian desktop through LMDE has proven absolutely painless and a delight to behold, the simplicity and capability of this distribution for desktops is greater than anything I have ever seen before! I hear a few gripes about GNOME, and made a few myself before, as I must reiterate, one cannot, must not, deny the simplicity and capability of debian mint as a complete and efficient desktop distobution.
now all we need is a little more flexability in the implimentation process in regards to package selection and x64 support-
keep up the good work mint!
-kmonk
Looks very promising, guys! Is there any chance we could have a ‘netinstall’ image, which would be smaller and would drag the current software from a mirror?
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
Thanks for the good work on this very promising sub-project.
Chris.
@ 57. IsaoHK:
Quote: ‘I don’t feel very eager with the too constant Ubuntu’s releasing schedule’
I’m new to Mint, but if this is a problem, could you not just use the version of Mint that tracks Ubuntu’s LTS version?
Quote ‘I am running a production system’
My personal feeling only, but if this is a server, I’d be inclined to stick with something based on Debian Stable, but that depends on how important Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability are to you and your users.
Thanks,
Chris.
@necromantiarian:
You can install debdelta in LMDE. It works great.
Great job with it guys especially having developed it in such a short time, had a few probs installing initially but found out that it was the dvd, LOL!!!
It’s great to use a real debian based system again, since ubuntu is moving away in it’s own direction, which i personally don’t like, some of the software is still not mature (plymouth etc) & leaving out common apps like gimp.
This version of lmde i’ve found so far is fast,stable & reliable. Hopefully it’ll attract more users to it so it can grow & we’ll see other desktop versions of it like kde,lxde the normal linux mint versions of those are awesome so i’ve no doubt the lmde version’s will be as well.
Thanks for all your hard work,
Dan.
Debian now will have a continous, rolling-like repository, named CUT. Unlike the testing repo, it will be updated continously. I think, it would be perfect base for LMDE in the future.
website: http://cut.debian.net/
I agree with Mervin B. When there is an LMDE amd64 release, the first thing I am doing is updating the repos from Testing to Sid. Testing tends to be a bit older and out of date. And the “breakage” that people talk about in Sid seems like Myth and Superstition as I’ve never had it happen to me.
It seems rather unfortunate that Ubuntu+PPAs has surpassed Debian Sid terms of an up to date usable desktop. Perhaps LMDE can change this.
It would be nice for the Mint repository to include Emerald, as Debian doesn’t and you either have to use a 3rd party repo of build it from scratch.
But yes, LMDE would work as a more intuitive, user-friendly, and community-polite version of Sidux 🙂
Hello
I’d like to say that Linux Mint XFCE edition is absolutely perfect for me and my co-workers [and family] and I hope it will be present among other versions – I never had any problem with is, in fact: I had some problems with main Gnome edition.
Anyways: I really hope Linux Mint XFCE will be eventually based on Debian, as it sounds like a really GREAT idea.
Many thanks for Linux Mint XFCE edition and best regards from OpenBSD / Linux [Slackware, Arch, Debian: Mint] user.
#51
I’m in agreement with Jonathan when he says:
“LMDE seems like it could become my ideal operating system . . . Keep up the great work!”
I installed LMDE on a 2.66ghz Intel dual core machine with 1gb RAM. Almost everything worked without a hitch. It has a 256mb Geforce FX5500 AGP Video Card that I have to figure out how to install the Nvidia driver for. Unlike Mint 9 and the restricted drivers install option that pops up on first run, LMDE apparently doesn’t offer the same. With time available tomorrow I’ll hopefully get that issue sorted. Until then everything else seems to be working extremely well, something we’ve come to expect of Clem and his Mint development team!
Wow. Guess I’m late to the party. Go away for awhile and return to find my dreams came true. I was growing a little weary of the Ubuntu base and did search around for other alternatives, but none offered the same Linux Mint usability. So thank you very much for this.
Linux Mint 9 does not boot on my Dell Latitude D505 (either gnome kde lxde flux) except for this Debian flavour. The same happens with Ubuntu or Kubuntu 2010 but Mandriva, Fedora or Suse runs very well.
Before Linux Mint 8 and Ubuntu 2009 was able to boot or install fine.
Fortunately I have LMDE!
For those who are having troubles installing restricted/proprietary drivers, you may have to look around Debian’s wiki. For Nvidia cards: http://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers
The thing is, the Hardware Drivers GUI (a.k.a. the “jockey-gtk” package) is native to Ubuntu; Debian doesn’t have any similar utility. Therefore, the Mint team will either have to port it to LMDE, or write a new “Hardware Drivers” GUI from scratch. Either option will take time; in the meanwhile, you’re going to have to install proprietary drivers manually. It’s simple, just not as simple as pressing a few buttons in a GUI like in Ubuntu.
I really like LMDE but there are some things from linux mint ubuntu that I would like to see again like the installer for deb packages. I am reluctant to install this on my desktop and server because I support many vms and game simultaneously. Please put a rush on for 64 bit and then I will probably uninstall windows for good.
what a GREAT blog entry clem! you managed to stress priorities while expressing excitement for upcoming challenges as well as the accomplishment of what LMDE has currently achieved. i know you are collaborating with decent folks such as ikey and have a rockin team.
DE is wonderful, my thanx to you and your team for the awesome opportunity you have given to the planet..
LMDE is a great release and I hope it’ll become a flagship Mint distro one day. Thank you for your excellent work and good luck!
I started using linux 4 years ago with Mint, then I moved to ubuntu. The release of a running distro will surely get me back to Mint as soon as it releases a 64bit version. Great idea folks, thanks very much for your hard working!!!
Linux Mint 9 Live DVD recognises my WiFi set up straight from the box and is raring to go.
Unfortunately, the Live Debian version does not. Will it be possible to fix this in the near future, as I am a newbie to the Linux scene and would like to give Debby a whirl.
Mark you, I am very happy with Mint 9 anyway – just want to see what Debian will do for me that Mint 9 will not
Thanks Linux Mint team. I’ll be using LDME for a long time (or even a lifetime). I hope this distro will continue to be robust and efficient as it is now. 😀
The first release was great, any plans for a follow-up release, which would look at the installation stuff mentioned in the ‘Known Problems’? (http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_debian.php)
Apologies, the link I used doesn’t seem to work when it is copied into another page.
Cheers,
Chris.
I tried Linux Mint Debian. I like the new installer, but it took some getting used to. One problem I had was installing the OS on multiple drives. I tried installing it on a system with 3 hard drives. I wanted to put / and swap on one drive, then put /home and swap on another drive and /dos and swap on the third drive. It seems like the new installer would only let me install to a single drive. I decided to reinstall Linux Mint 9 Gnome instead and run Linux Mint Debian using VirtualBox. I really want to try the Debian based Mint, because I am studying for the LPIC exams. I need to try as many Debian and Red Hat based operating systems as possible. The Debian Netinstall takes forever with my 1 mb/s internet connection. I’ve had to reinstall it several times. Installing Linux Mint Debian is much faster, because I don’t have to download over 800 packages. It all fits on the DVD. I like Linux Mint Debian better than Mint 9 LXDE. I haven’t tried any of the other flavors of Mint, but I’m not a big KDE fan. I decided to stick with Linux Mint 9 Gnome. Now I have it installed on 3 of my computers.
when are we going to see Quanta in the LMDE-repo ?
first time i installed LMDE all seemingly went well, the distro had even migrated settings from my LM9 installation, or so i assumed … alas, what had happened is that it had mounted my LM9 Home partition (which happens to be the 64bit version) as its own Home … It did this on 3 consecutive installs, even though i gave it its own Home partition, each time it completely ignored its own Home & mounted only the LM9 Home partition (which, incidentally is on a different drive) …
The Fifth time i re-installed LMDE i used only / with no Home partition, that was a week ago, been running it ever since & it appears to be purring along like a finely tuned engine..
Many Thanks to all concerned
Jeff
Hello Mint team,
I’m a big fan of Linuxmint, and I find it awesome that you now have decided to go with Debian (like going back to the roots).
I have just installed LMDE next to my Linuxmint 9 edition, and am eager to try this new version.
Also an important reason to use LMDE is to stop replacing a distribution every 6 months!
I wish you all the best in making a great Operating system ever greater and better!
Cheers,
Richard
The MINT TEAM ROCKS!
I am a loyal MINT user.
Actually Mint brought LINUX to my life.
I have since installed both gnome, XFCE and NOW debian on several machines…. HAPPY AS A 2 TAILED DOG!
I must say that if LMDE keeps up with its amazing debut… I firmly believe that this is the way to go to prove its rightful independence as a full-fledged OS!
Cheers!
I installed lmde on my asus eeepc 1005 pe. it works very fine for the work i have to do. it is snell and my battery autonomy is about 9 hours if i work only with openoffice. The hardware is working without problems and the software is top. The only thing i do is to wait for the 64bit version for my desktop at home
i don’t always stay tuned to new posts on the lm blog so i was very pleasantly surprised to read yesterday about the great work the lm team has done in releasing the 32-bit version of LMDE.
it wasn’t long before i downloaded and burned the iso and had it installed on my self-built linux-desktop (quad-core, 64-bit, two 500gb internal hdd’s, 4gb ram, nvidia video card, etc.) in short order, alongside lm8-gnome,lm9-gnome, lm9-kde, pclos-gnome, pclos-kde, archlinux-lxde, and peppermint-one-lxde.
installation went flawlessly and super-fast. LMDE is great! many thanks to clem and the whole lm team. this is a tremendous breakthrough!
Switched from Aptosid/Sidux to LMDE, I always admired the Mint Team and community but not so much the Ubuntu base of the distros, it is just not as smooth and efficient as Debian. Keep up the good work, will try and make a donation soon!
Can’t wait to get my hands on this edition :), currently downloading per torrent (thanks seeders). Hope it works in VirtualBox?!
Greetings from a Linux newbee over at mylinuxmint9.blogspot.com
@ Paul Salmon (re post 81).
Installing across multiple disks is the reason that I was wondering when the next release with a possible partitioning update would be released. I always have /home on a seperate drive and like to have a second swap partition which is usually a small drive that isn’t much use for anything else.
Chris.
@89
Works like a charm on Virtualbox. This is always easy to do since the exact setting can be tested — as opposed to some obscure seldom used laptap brand.
So…. generally speaking, LMDE and Virtualbox are both by themselves the best invention since sliced bread…
Enjoy!
Is it too much to hope for a LXDE 64-bit version? I know, I know…!
Hi Everyone
I had a very good time working with LMDE in the last few weeks. I also had trouble with sound on some computers and surprisingly when there was no sound I would remove Alsa and Pulseaudio …
sudo apt-get purge alsa pulseaudio
When I rebooted it surprised me by having acquired full sound capability.
Another peculiar bug that I fixed … compiz would not work until I installed xorg using synaptic. Compiz required changes to the xorg config file. Before I install xorg it mysteriously did not appear to be installed.
All was well after that and compiz and sound are 100%. Yet on two other computers the sound worked without purging pulseaudio and alsa.
Did anyone else have similar issues??
Ian
I made the switched from Linux Mint 9 to LMDE. I love it! I primarily switched because I wanted to move to a rolling release. I couldn’t believe it when I saw LMDE at just the right time. I didn’t even realize this was in the works. The Mint team has managed to simplify a Debian installation while keeping much of the feel of stock Mint. Many thanks to Clem and the team. GREAT JOB!
Awesome!
I added LXDE on top of it, and the machine (in VB) idles at 85MB!!
My only gripe is Pulseaudio!
Please drop like a hot rock.
Thanks for all the work.
I got my sound working from multiple sources simultaneously by following the Ubuntu guide to PulseAudio:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PulseAudio
Just follow the steps “Installing PulseAudio” and “ALSA Configuration”. Reboot and you’re good to go.
Great job! keep doing the good work!
+1 for LMDE
(I installed Mint 9 on a DELL E4310 – no sound – went straight to LMDE – only had to twik for a broadcom wireless module)
i’m loving it !
Great job, thanks for the hard work.
Will LMDE be updated when Mint 10 arrives?
I love LMDE in theory and have been waiting for this for some time. Ideally it’s my dream distro – a user-friendly desktop distro built directly on top of Debian. I just came.
Unfortunately this release is buggy to the point of unusability. APT problems, Compiz problems, torrent problems, sound problems, problems, problems, problems. I hope my updates include plenty of bugfixes in the next week or two (that is, if the repositories manage to resolve, which they aren’t), or I may have to move to Ubuntu Maverick until Julia is released.
Still, thanks for finally doing this thing, guys. Keep at it.
Aaron > LMDE is a rolling-release distro (it’s based on Debian Testing), and as such will be continuously updated until the end of time. Don’t worry, it’s relatively quiet now, but once the current freeze on Testing is lifted, you’ll see a deluge of updates from upstream Unstable.
Asmodan > Come to the forums, describe your problems, and we’ll help you iron out the bugs you seem to be facing. Complaining here on the blog won’t change anything.
Been playing with this in a VM and really liking it. I am eagerly waiting for the 64bit release to slap it on a real machine.
I was quite happy with Ubuntu, at least until version 16.04. The following versions (18 and up…) are if not disasters at least less usable for me and now, after testing LM 20 I’m back in track again.
Thanks for a good job!
I am responsible for maintaining some 20+ system installations among friends and colleagues