- cross-posted to:
- linux@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- linux@lemmy.ml
LMDE 6 has been officially released. The big deal about this is that it’s based on the recently released Debian 12 and also that being based on Debian LMDE is 100% community based.
If you’ve been disappointed by what the Linux corporations have been doing lately or don’t like the all-snap future that Ubuntu has opened, then this is the distro for you.
I’m running it as my daily driver and it works exactly like the regular Mint so you don’t lose anything. Clem and team have done a great job, even newbies could use Debian now.
Personally I think LMDE is the future of Linux as Ubuntu goes it’s own way, and this is a good thing for Mint and the Linux community. Let’s get back to community distros and move away from the corps.
EDIT: LMDE is 64bit only. There is no 32bit option.
You must log in or register to comment.
I’ve never had a use for Linux Mint myself, but I’m still happy to see them cut out the middle man and base it directly off of Debian. Hopefully being closer to the source will result in even more upstream contributions.
Oh, no. They consider Ubuntu the best APT base out there, and even after some trouble with Canonical, they insist on basing Mint on Ubuntu. This is a plan B, it came precisely after the differences between Mint and Ubuntu were public, but I can’t find any source of that episode between Canonical and Clemente Lefebvre.
EDIT: Found one.
Ah, my bad. I thought LM was going all in on Debian. Well, I’m glad they’re at least providing the option then.
They want to be able to provide the option should Ubuntu go off the reservation
Copypasting: (source)
The cautious approach for LMDE5 users: If your system is working fine and there are no especially must-have features in LMDE6, there is almost certainly no rush to upgrade. Take your time.
Make backups. Test backups. Play games. Work. Do things entirely unrelated to the distro.
You could even almost (aaalmost) completely forget about LMDE6 (but do keep an eye on the LM blog).
The Mint team haven’t announced an EOL date for LMDE5 yet, but if past dates are anything to go by, it’ll be at least 18 months before they pull the plug. Even then, LTS updates might still filter through from Debian proper.
[How many people will actually see this message and how many it actually applies to out of them might well include me and literally one other guy somewhere else on the planet, but if you’re that one guy, breathe friend. No rush.]
I’m not super familiar with the goals of the mint project. But this is generally a bad approach to take with project development. Even if you plan on offering LTS, it is always preferable to have users on the most up to date version. Going through the pain of supporting multiple versions of commercial software at work has taught me that lesson the (very) hard way.
To some extent I think they’re thinking of people who are in the Windows/Mac situation of wanting a stable OS that doesn’t require getting hands dirty (so to speak) every 5 minutes to do basic things, and who generally call in a relative or friend who knows what they’re doing (and is almost certainly the person who installed Mint in the first place) when things really need changing.
There’s never more than two LMDEs active at any one time, so while they are giving themselves a little extra work, they’re also managing the main Ubuntu-based Mint derivatives at the same time so they’re bound to have some kind of streamlining at their side.
As for 5-to-6 upgrades, they’ve provided an official tool that will work for most people and will require very little admin user interaction once it’s off and running. A sensible sysadmin would like to have a backup anyway, just in case.
My initial comment was aimed at the odd rare case like myself who isn’t always up for sysadmin work (it’s why I’m on Mint after all), or doesn’t have the time. There’s no immediate rush to use that official tool. Take your time. Make your backups, etc.
If you want bleeding-edge rolling updates, Mint is not the distro for you (though LMDE is a little closer to that than regular Mint).
Do they keep up with security updates and patches, though? Yes. Very much so.
Been using mint for a while on my main machine and I’m not keen on doing a reinstall, but the next time I do I’ll definitely be looking at Debian edition.
LMDE 6 still has a 32-bit version, probably the last kek
So I’m showi my my extreme age but I remember when Mint was born as a sort of windows-like Ubuntu for easy migration. Has it carved out a reason for existing for folks that don’t want a windows like experience?
It’s just a generally solid, stable, and easy to use distro. I use EndeavourOS nowadays, but when I was first getting started Mint was what I always returned to after spats of distro hopping. As far as it’s primary DE, Cinnamon, it’s less “windows like” and more “not gnome like”. Every DE that isn’t gnome could be called “windows like” in my experience.
More like Cinnamon being GNOME 2.5
Since GNOME 3 changed everything for better or worse.
Mostly worse.
Now if it had
- wayland support
- immutable variant
It maaay be a nice option.
Neither of those features are 100% production ready, even on the most cutting edge system.
Even if you are running KDE or GNOME, chances are your apps would still require X.
Why would you want immutable? That would be for either containers or embedded, none of which is Linux Mint’s use case.
If you’re looking to explore these cutting-edge features, Linux Mint is not for you.
Xwayland
Rpm-ostree works perfectly well for many users. Flatpak is not production ready, but if you do background updates and not that often, you can totally just layer everything you want.
Immutable is not cutting edge, is simply a traced, resettable, secure system. You can reset it with one command. But you can also install as many native packages as you want, simply that updating will take a bit longer then. But updates are done in the background, I dont know if by default, but there is a systemd service.
Flatpak is more mature than you’d think. It also seen more adoption than Wayland (not exactly apples to apples…).
Immutable concept may not be new, but the current implementations are. Even the pioneers such as NixOS, Fedora, and openSUSE are still ironing out quirks as we are having this discussion. Even NixOS, the current top leading, is having performance issues.
Linux Mint have snapshot system. It is not perfect (certainly won’t beat immutables), but ot certainly works well for its use cases. Once again, being the latest and greatest is never its use case.
Flatpaks lack:
- plugin support (Audio stuff, Video)
- drag & drop xdg portal
- “share” xdg portal
- local networking (KeepassXC, KDE Connect, KDE Plasma Integration, this citing program)
- persisting portals (this is huge, there is no GUI way to allow the Flatpak to perma-access certain locations like on Android)
- good minimalist runtimes, not needing 7GB of them
- a package manager in the container
They are already better in
- cross-distro app support
- official application adoptions
- installing crappy browsers at your system without any nonfree repos (Edge, Chrome, Opera, …)
- being user-maneagable
- container stuff: listing, managing, updating, copying resetting (just remove the user appfolder)
- having GUI permission settings (better than SELinux, Apparmor, firejail)
- …
Never heard of performance issues of immutable OSes. Why should there be.
- updates slowing down the system in the background
- binaries, no custom compiled software (normal in all regular repos apart arch or gentoo)
- needing to wait when installing new software to your main system (something nonexistent on Android and iOS since forever, so this layering could be completely removed on for example ChromeOS)
Linux mints shapshotting works for avoiding errors that happened in between two versions of the OS, during a single update.
If the issue happened over time, or you already updated two times with the error, its useless.
Rpm-ostree allows to:
- install apps to your system
- update all the system apps according to the git repo and your layers
- reset the OS to the exact image of another OS or itself in fresh form
- allows to monitor exactly the changes you did to the current system.
I think a well-managele system could and should also be possible to do without all that image-creation. Having two seperate systems is not needed if you know exactly whats the difference between your two images.
Wayland probably has more things it lacks. Again, it’s not apples to apples comparison.
The performance is more toward manipulating system packages. Since it’s not supposed to be changed, a new system image tends to get created everytime user makes modification. At least that’s the issue with Nix.
While that rpm-ostree sounds nice, it is not required for Linux Mint’s use case.
Yeah, I don’t think Linux Mint is for you… Perhaps NixOS would fit you better.
Don’t get me wrong, I am interested in the prospect of immutable systems. I just don’t think it is a silver bullet for every problem out there.
I think Wayland is the future. In fact, I’ve been using it as a daily driver. However, it’s still a long way to go until it can truly replace X11. For starter, it has some issues that can be dealbreaker for some people (having all the applications terminated upon crash is one). Also, XFCE, MATE, and all the others got some catching up to do.
You may have your opinion, but there are reasons those two features are not as widely adopted (yet?).
I am already on Fedora Kinoite. Not sure if their immutability model is actually suited for rolling Distros though:
- OS packages are traced by OSTree
- updates come from another repo using OSTree (afaik). So you have a “wanted” “vanilla Fedora KDE” image on their servers, and your client has older packages, downloads just the diffs
- the OS does atomic updates. I guess this can’t be done differently. Updating works fully in the background, a new system image is built. If you dont like it,
sudo ostree admin cleanup 0. Btw wheel can do rpm-ostree stuff without a password prompt. - when rebooting, without any second of delay, you boot into the updated system. In grub you can see both options though, if you something may break
- as the system is image based, you can rebase to any other system images. These are like Docker/Podman images.
Its a really superior technology and the best overall solution. I was mind experimenting with an only traced system that is not immutable but uses OSTree to manage updates. Only when something breaks you would create a new clean image, or rebase. As most updates work normally since forever.
Because in the process of generating the image, locally the complete OS is build on every update. Not downloaded. But copied etc. This takes a lot of resources, which works fine on monthly updates like on Android, but not so well on daily rolling updates.
To “Linux mint does not require OStree”. Rpm-ostree or apt-ostree not. But ostree I think yes. It may be stable and all, but what if its not? And you dont want to reinstall everything? There needs to be a way to reset the system to work again. All rpm-ostree does is remove “it works on my machine though” bugs. Its the only thing newcomers should use.
You are not meant to add tons of RPMs to your system, but you can. Updates can be done in the background, no problem. So you could literally “layer” (thats what its called) any huge piece of software, that doesnt work locally. You can add proprietary drivers, install media codecs and all.
Various ways to make media playback work on RPM Firefox
Ublue really shows the potential of rpm-ostree. Use Fedora as base, to kernel mods, layerings, replacements how you like, and ship the “working out of the box” image for exactly your hardware. Its brilliant.
