Linux Mint Debian Edition 4 Released - Finally Supports SecureBoot, Home Encryption

[Charlie68]

Everyone uses the DE that they prefer, there is no best, there is the best for me or for you etc.
Every time you read about quite unnecessary discussions on DE, it is only a graphical interface, quite the opposite is a distribution, which instead has the task of assembling and distributing the software, this means work and ability to distribute quality and version software not too old.
However Mint is only a derivative, so Ubuntu or Debian does it in its place, so they can keep 2 distributions, because in reality the bulk of the work is done by Debian and Ubuntu.

[andyprough]

I consider everything that has the options and configurations more than two click away from your starting point is defective by design. For that reason I don't consider Windows, Android (I mean the UI/UX) and KDE good options, all of them have all these settings nested one into each others. While in XFCE4, macOS even Gnome 3 you can do everything within two clicks, for me this is having a good user experience.

Since Mac and Gnome don't give you any options, doing everything with 2 clicks is really 2 clicks too many.

[andyprough]

Everyone uses the DE that they prefer, there is no best, there is the best for me or for you etc.
Every time you read about quite unnecessary discussions on DE, it is only a graphical interface, quite the opposite is a distribution, which instead has the task of assembling and distributing the software, this means work and ability to distribute quality and version software not too old.
However Mint is only a derivative, so Ubuntu or Debian does it in its place, so they can keep 2 distributions, because in reality the bulk of the work is done by Debian and Ubuntu.

Except Mint maintains their own DE, something neither Ubuntu or Debian does.

[Charlie68]

Except Mint maintains their own DE, something neither Ubuntu or Debian does.

In reality it is not the task of the distribution to do it, among other things it only keeps one of the DEs that are shipped, but in this case if not understood correctly, XFCE is used. They have time to do it, because everything else is done by other distributions.

[mppix]

andyprough cm'on man, lets not be ridiculous. Kde is definitely not best at wayland support, fractional HiDPI support, or touchscreen support. However it can be the best DE for you. I respect that. Do you respect thay something else is best for me?

[tuxd3v]

MX does all that and so much more. Even gives you a choice of whether to use systemd or not at boot time. One of the really nice features is the ability to add all your drivers and change your kernel and add any packages while in the live environment, and press a button to install with all of your changes and additions intact. MX gives you two tools to make your live environment or your installed system into your own live USB to install on other systems or to hand to a friend to let them try out.

Plus it defaults to a light, beautiful, customized XFCE environment instead of a bloated Gnome-based DE.

Mx Linux is great, starting by letting you choose what init system to use..
I agree that gnome3 is a freak desktop, but I also acknowledge that xfce starts to be bloated too, as soon as they go gtk3, and so on, the bloatware come with it,
But yeah it could/should be less bloated than others..

[andyprough]

Mx Linux is great, starting by letting you choose what init system to use..

It's just so funny to me that MX allows the init switching so easily from grub, with a tiny number of developers compared to the giant that is Debian. And yet, MX does it with Debian's own repo's.

And one MX developer showed recently that not only can you easily switch between systemd and sysvinit, you can almost as easily switch MX to runit or openRC with just a handful of commands.

Again, MX uses Debian's own repos, and just a small group of their own packages. For Debian to claim that it's too much work to support init freedom seems hypocritical in light of what MX is able to do.

[Charlie68]

It's just so funny to me that MX allows the init switching so easily from grub, with a tiny number of developers compared to the giant that is Debian. And yet, MX does it with Debian's own repo's.

And one MX developer showed recently that not only can you easily switch between systemd and sysvinit, you can almost as easily switch MX to runit or openRC with just a handful of commands.

Again, MX uses Debian's own repos, and just a small group of their own packages. For Debian to claim that it's too much work to support init freedom seems hypocritical in light of what MX is able to do.

Most users don't have a clue what an init service is, most of the remaining users don't care about changing the init service because they don't care. At the end of all this thing about changing the init system, only a few users are interested, this is the reason that nobody cares to maintain an init system, which can have a little testing, with all the problems that derive from it.

[mppix]

It's just so funny to me that MX allows the init switching so easily from grub, with a tiny number of developers compared to the giant that is Debian. And yet, MX does it with Debian's own repo's.

And one MX developer showed recently that not only can you easily switch between systemd and sysvinit, you can almost as easily switch MX to runit or openRC with just a handful of commands.

Again, MX uses Debian's own repos, and just a small group of their own packages. For Debian to claim that it's too much work to support init freedom seems hypocritical in light of what MX is able to do.

Every Debian and Ubuntu ships already with systemd-boot. Everyone can "just" enable it. Main difference is that systemd-boot needs the kernel in the EFI partition (typically /boot/EFI formatted in FAT) instead of the boot partition /boot (typically formatted in ext2).
This is not rocket science and needs fairly straightforward post hooks after a kernel update (copy new kernel to efi partition).

https://blobfolio.com/2018/06/replace-grub2-with-systemd-boot-on-ubuntu-18-04/

Doing direct efi entries directly, i.e. no boot-loader at all, is more manual and has likely different failure modes.

However, both approaches should be pretty straight forward. After all, also grub-efi must be found in the the EFI partition or efi cannot start it..

[mppix]

Most users don't have a clue what an init service is, most of the remaining users don't care about changing the init service because they don't care. At the end of all this thing about changing the init system, only a few users are interested, this is the reason that nobody cares to maintain an init system, which can have a little testing, with all the problems that derive from it.

Point well taken but there are slimmer and faster boot loaders that could benefit a subset of systems, e.g. some embedded or industrial PCs.