Linux Mint Debian Edition 6 Reaches Beta

[boPt]

I'm curious at this stage what benefit Ubuntu brings vs. Debian as a base distro. I so often hear of Mint as an alternative to Ubuntu that fixes some of it's issues, why not avoid it altogether and use Debian as the base?

Assuming its a genuine question and not just trolling ... Debian leaves A LOT to the end user. If I'm wanting to install a simple server, Debian is ok. If I'm installing a desktop Ubuntu brings a lot of tweaks & help with it that make life easier. Not all of us have endless hours to fiddle. Also Canonical garnered a big installed base which makes it easier to get support of tge 'how to' nature. Ultimately i see it as a matter of taste & convenience. Its not religion.

[W-Floyd]

Assuming its a genuine question and not just trolling ... Debian leaves A LOT to the end user. If I'm wanting to install a simple server, Debian is ok. If I'm installing a desktop Ubuntu brings a lot of tweaks & help with it that make life easier. Not all of us have endless hours to fiddle. Also Canonical garnered a big installed base which makes it easier to get support of tge 'how to' nature. Ultimately i see it as a matter of taste & convenience. Its not religion.

It was a genuine question. My phrasing was perhaps a little poor, what I meant was: why does Mint base itself off Ubuntu and not Debian. I understand for an end user Debian has a steeper learning curve than Ubuntu, but as a base for Mint, I'm not seeing the benefit of Ubuntu over Debian.

[boPt]

It was a genuine question. My phrasing was perhaps a little poor, what I meant was: why does Mint base itself off Ubuntu and not Debian. I understand for an end user Debian has a steeper learning curve than Ubuntu, but as a base for Mint, I'm not seeing the benefit of Ubuntu over Debian.

Its history. Mint arose as a reaction to an unpopular decision by Canonical i.e. shipping without media codecs pre-installed.

As time went by Clem & the team added gui tools which made DESKTOP users lives easier.

Mint then reacted to the decision to ditch Gnome 2 for Gnome 3 by forking Gnome 2 into Mate & creating a more acceptable GTK3 based desktop in the form of Cinnamon.

By continuing to base off Ubuntu they retain the benefit of the newer packages & tweaks which Canonical supply. LMDE has always been offered as an eneegency fall back in case Canonical do something REALLY weird lol.

The advent of Snaps has provided Mint another opportunity to differentiate itself as a refusnik DESKTOP which very deliberately removes Snap support. LMDE soldiers on as the emergency fall back.

I believe it would be a ton of extra work for Mint to rebase solely off Debian however I also believe that Snap is here to stay & unlileky to fail unless Canonical does something *really* idiotic.

An example of a really slick Debian based desktop distro in the style of LMDE is Spiral Linux. They take Debian and apply many of the niceties provided by Canonical.

https://distrowatch.com/table-mobile.php?distribution=spiral

I suspect Mint will remain Ubuntu based for the forseeable future because its just easier for them frankly.

Cheers!

[sb56637]

An example of a really slick Debian based desktop distro in the style of LMDE is Spiral Linux. They take Debian and apply many of the niceties provided by Canonical.

https://distrowatch.com/table-mobile.php?distribution=spiral

Cheers!

Hi there, SpiralLinux creator here. Thanks a lot for the recommendation. Although I wouldn't say that SpiralLinux applies niceties provided by Canonical, as it's built directly with unmodified Debian packages from the official Debian repos. At the bottom of the SpiralLinux website there is a list of the projects that differentiate it from vanilla Debian, most notably Antynea/grub-btrfs, Snapper, jrabinow/snapper-rollback, and Calamares, none of which are from Canonical.

[boPt]

Hi there, SpiralLinux creator here. Thanks a lot for the recommendation. Although I wouldn't say that SpiralLinux applies niceties provided by Canonical, as it's built directly with unmodified Debian packages from the official Debian repos. At the bottom of the SpiralLinux website there is a list of the projects that differentiate it from vanilla Debian, most notably Antynea/grub-btrfs, Snapper, jrabinow/snapper-rollback, and Calamares, none of which are from Canonical.

Thanks for the clarification! I worded that badly. I think I meant 'similar to' rather than 'provided by'. The perils pf bashing out responses on a phone eh? How's the rebase off Debian 12 progressing btw?

[sb56637]

Ah, sorry, I also later realized that was what you meant. ;-)

How's the rebase off Debian 12 progressing btw?

Quite well, it's probably 95% there. It's just the last 5% of polish and testing that takes 80% of the development time.

[boPt]

Ah, sorry, I also later realized that was what you meant. ;-)


Quite well, it's probably 95% there. It's just the last 5% of polish and testing that takes 80% of the development time.

Awesome. I'll find time to stop by and see what I can do to help. Bon chance!