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.

  • Sparking
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    01 year ago

    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.

    • palordrolap
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      1 year ago

      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.