LMDE a sleeping distro?

[GeneC]

The main reason why I decided to switch from my previous distro to LMDE was that it was announced as a rolling distro. However, there is not much rolling going on, it's more like a sleeping beauty. ..............

If you follow Mint "Update Pack Repositories (Latest, or Incoming Testing) this is quite true, and the reason seems pretty clear to me. Too few active developer working on the many Mint 'flavors'. The team seems to bitten off a more that it can handle at the time. Look at all the issues.

1. KDE-
The poor KDE fans have been waiting forever for a new version. I believe Clem said around Dec.
That means LMDE will be on the back burner until KDE is done.

2. Gnome -
Change from Gnome 2.3 to Gnome 3.
Mint mgse extensions.
Mate
xorg problems


I believe it was said the Update Pack 4 will not be released until Gnome 3.2 is ready. That will be a while. I have LMDE tracking SID, and all 3.2 packages are still not ready.
If update pack 4 was released today. There would probably be about a gigabyte download, and well over 500 packages. What will it be like in another month or more likely TWO months for update pack 4.
How huge will that package be?

The update pack idea is a good one, but it needs to be maintained on at LEAST a monthly basis to work effectively. Dont wait for gnome 3.2. Gnome 3.0 is ready NOW in testing. Just hold back the xorg packages if they are a problem.

Personally I gave up on update packs months ago, and run two systems. One tracking 'testing', and one tracking 'SID'. Both have been relatively painless to maintain, updating daily.
I believe the only major problem has been xorg.

I think things will get sorted out in time, or perhaps there are just too few mint developers working on things. That is what it appears to me. Too many projects, too few people.
Perhaps it should be recommended by developers for LMDE users to switch back to testing, until all get sorted out with the other Mint 'flavors', or a less ambitious development cycle implemented.

Lots of real good ideas. Perhaps too many.

[Davarish]

This topic has gathered some very interesting opinions and workarounds. I believe that the questions are many and Clem must come and answer them. For example:
1.) What if Gnome 3.2 stabilizes on Debian on three months from now? We LMDE users are not going to have updates for 3-4 months?
2.) Is the Update Packs system going to work on monthly releases again after Lisa gets released, or not?
3.) Do we really have security issues on the current situation or not?
4.) If we change to testing repos, will we have any problems with conflicts or something like that when the new Update Pack gets released?
5.) When are we even going to get any official answers or any blog articles from Clem about LMDE? We are here too and we are waiting for some kind of briefing. I know that Clem doesn't have much time right now but is it really that hard to give us some info?

[asymmetros]

GeneC and Davarish synthesised perfect the image. A few more thoughts:

...By changing your APT sources and replacing Debian Testing with the Linux Mint Debian Latest repository, you basically point to a Debian Testing that is frozen in time and updated once a month...

(quote from http://blog.linuxmint.com/?m=201107&paged=4 )
So, what is the plan now?

Would you rather have stable updates or breakages because updates have been rushed to fit a time frame?

(see by JeffShepherd on Mon Nov 21, 2011 8:22 am)
Apart from the initial plan, see above, why not have the latest for stability and incoming for the monthly updates?

My worry is that LMDE is considered as a subproject and that the "update packs" will become eventually an excuse for leaving it in the shadows for several months when something else arises (although this was not the idea in the beginning). It's a pity cause i strongly believe that (Mint) Debian and the update packs scheme, are having the potential to become more easy to use even for new users, thus overthrowing ubuntu as a base. But that needs work, time and consistency from the devs.

1.) What if Gnome 3.2 stabilizes on Debian on three months from now? We LMDE users are not going to have updates for 3-4 months?

And Xfce users? Or KDE users -who knows really?

[KBD47]

Just as a curious bystander who has only tried out Mint Debian Xfce, and who has used Mepis 11 based on Debian Stable for the past 6 months: Wouldn't it be better to just skip the rolling release, point to the Debian updates in the repository, set up a separate Mint repository to enable some updated software and for Mint issues, and release new versions every 2-3 years instead of rolling releases? Seems like that would be less work for the Mint team and provide stable Mint Debian systems less likely to break yet with security and other updates.
Just an observation.
KBD47

[asymmetros]

Just as a curious bystander who has only tried out Mint Debian Xfce, and who has used Mepis 11 based on Debian Stable for the past 6 months: Wouldn't it be better to just skip the rolling release, point to the Debian updates in the repository, set up a separate Mint repository to enable some updated software and for Mint issues, and release new versions every 2-3 years instead of rolling releases? Seems like that would be less work for the Mint team and provide stable Mint Debian systems less likely to break yet with security and other updates.
Just an observation.
KBD47

Sounds a good idea. If I am right, according to Mint community stats, a great percentage within Mint users are running the (LTS) Isadora edition. Mepis has proved that you can have a user friendly distro that way. Between major releases, Mint devs will have the time for some extra staff, polishing Mint tools, MGSE, etc and releasing them and as updates and as point releases.

And rolling? Keep rolling of course. But that suggests that they won 't be 6months ubuntu-based editions any more: With the "rolling" and the "user friendly" a la Mepis (with the Mint touch and functionality), they will be needed less anyway.

[mockturtl]

I thought Gnome 3.2 had already hit testing? Or was that only partially?

That was 3.0.

I think that idea still holds water, it satisfies those worried about security because day to day updates are done on a day to day basis, it satisfies those worried over bandwidth limits for the same reason, and the update packs deal with the 'difficult' situations that occur but they are never too large and can be held as long as is necessary to make them stable. As far as I can see the only change necessary to make this happen is to change the default upgrade command from dist-upgrade to upgrade - which is not all that difficult.

I am sure, as is usual, I have missed something obvious that makes this a non starter, so OK tell me what it is?

I run wheezy with aptitude safe-upgrade on one machine. It's extremely solid. A dry run will give warnings if things would break:

Code: Select all

$ aptitude --simulate full-upgrade

My workhorse machine is on incoming. If I didn't feel comfortable with repairs, I'd use latest. I need a stable environment with a familiar workflow, and Clem's absolutely making the right decision to hold GNOME3 until he can ship it with MGSE and Mate, and expect the kinks have been ironed out. Nobody wants an update pack that makes their keyboard stop working -- that's what we have in wheezy.

Incidentally, the Lisa desktop looks great, besides being completely original. It was the best possible move under the circumstances (Linus: "unholy mess"). I wish everybody would take a deep breath.

My question is "is there any danger for me to use an outdated version of chromium or there is nothing to worry about ?" If the security flaws are for very specific uses, then OK, I don't care, but if there is a risk (even minimal) that I have security problems because I give my credit card number to trusted sites using chromium or that someone can access to my private information on my computer, then I have a problem. And if it's safe, why is it considered as "high-risk" ?

You'll have to read the individual tickets to assess your comfort level with the security risks. The tradeoff is always stability; someone has to maintain that software. For me, the "dev channel" is the right balance. Upstream is too old and snapshots break too much.

[rhodry]

I think things will get sorted out in time, or perhaps there are just too few mint developers working on things. That is what it appears to me. Too many projects, too few people.
Perhaps it should be recommended by developers for LMDE users to switch back to testing, until all get sorted out with the other Mint 'flavors', or a less ambitious development cycle implemented.

Personally, I have been frustrated by a lack of updates in Latest, yes, but there are a myriad of options to address that; and I have used a few. Wait, run Latest + Sid with apt pinning holding back any updates to Sid (my favorite for stability as well as recent apps), return to tracking Testing. Depending on your level of skill in Package Management, all of these will work. Whilst it is frustrating to some extent, I understand why it has happened and it is not my source of complaint. I support well over 100 installations of LMDE and the COMPLAINT is the rapidly escalating size of the eventual Update Pack 4!!! It will be much bigger than a full distribution install!! That is simply ludicrous for a "supposedly" rolling release. So, my statements are not about me, I can run any hybrid I choose. But, I have 100+ people that I now have to decide whether to leave with a stale distro or move elsewhere. Not happy I can tell you, particularly when I bought them here based on "rolling release"!

Clem et al brought some of this on themselves by adopting the Update Packs in reponse to some crying about a breakage or two. Their desire to have LMDE look like regular Mint in terms of stability vs timeliness led to the Update Packs. They were totally unnecessary in my opinion. LMDE was always advertised as being for people who wanted a true rolling release version of Mint. (Mind you I personally don't think Testing is a true rolling release - Sid is) .If you took that on without knowing the consequences for your Package Management effort, then, live with it. All this effort is detracting from KDE versions, better development of other Mint tools like Mint Menu and is not delivering its goals anyway.

I am not waiting around forever for a solution for my 100+. Some I am taking back to Testing, some to Sid (although that is not really running LMDE anymore) and over half of them to other distros, which is certainly not what I wanted.

Very very disappointing all round.

None of this detracts from my respect and thanks to all the developers; that doesn't mean you have not made a mistake though.

rhodry.

[clem]

There's no valid argument here. Anybody can switch from Latest to Testing, that's a choice anyone can make.

Be aware that Gnome 3.0 isn't compatible with 3.2 extensions, including all the ones in MGSE. Be aware also that MATE isn't ready for LMDE yet, so when you do your jump towards Gnome 3.0, it's without MGSE and without MATE as a fallback. Be aware also that the situation in regards to Xorg and binary drivers is tricky upstream.

Now with all that said, if you feel like you're ready for the challenge, then go on and jump to Testing, but there's no grounds for you to ask us to push Update Pack 4 now and make everybody make that jump.

When there's a nice 3.2 with MGSE and MATE and we're happy things work well upstream, that's when update pack 4 comes out. How big it is and how long it takes, it doesn't matter. If it does to you, you can follow testing on daily basis. The choice is there and if that's what you want you don't need to wait for Update Pack 4.

[lmdeman]

... and Clem's absolutely making the right decision to hold GNOME3 until he can ship it with MGSE and Mate, and expect the kinks have been ironed out. Nobody wants an update pack that makes their keyboard stop working -- that's what we have in wheezy.

+1 for me.
Also, the Clem's clarification above said it all.
If you use your desktop for everyday tasks like browsing the web, watching videos, writing documents and whatever else then LMDE+UP3 is great as is. On the other hand, if you like the challenge of experimenting with updates, breakages, workarounds, repair and reinstalls (it may be funny after all) then you have the choice: go with Testing, even though it will gradually de-mintify your system.
(just my 2c)

[barryp]

Hi all,

I just want to add my voice to those who are happy with how things are with LMDE. I started out on Testing, I pointed at Squeeze for a bit & now I'm using Latest. I'd say stability & productivity are my priorities & BTW, LMDE flies like a rocket on my old Tosh laptop. I accept that LMDE is in some ways a sub-project & may go on the backburner when the main edition requires a lot of work as it currently does.

If I wanted a rolling distro then I'd go to Incoming or Sid. If you're an LMDE user surely you understand these issues? It's not hard to change repos for the cutting edge rolling experience if that's what you want. Personally I'm happy with Latest for now.

Thanks & respect to Clem & all the team. I've been with Mint longer than any other distro & see no reason to start looking for anything new. Bravo!

Barry

[edgarkls]

If I wanted a rolling distro then I'd go to Incoming or Sid. If you're an LMDE user surely you understand these issues? It's not hard to change repos for the cutting edge rolling experience if that's what you want. Personally I'm happy with Latest for now.

Just to clarify: Incoming is on hold, too, hence no alternative. Thus the choice is rather that between LMDE (latest AND incoming) and testing or sid.

Also, the size of the update remains to be an issue. There are some, like me, who have slow connections and limited bandwith. Downloading upgrade packs that exceed a few gigabytes is therefore simply out of the question.

[clem]

Incoming is there to test what is set to go in latest, it's not there to offer yet another rolling branch. As for the size, if you were to follow Testing you would end up downloading more data than Update Pack 4 when this update pack is ready. For instance you would have to update to Gnome 3.0, and then Gnome 3.2, effectively downloading the updates for Gnome twice over the period. But again, it's your choice, and choice is there for everybody.

[twa]

barryp

If I wanted a rolling distro then I'd go to Incoming or Sid. If you're an LMDE user surely you understand these issues? It's not hard to change repos for the cutting edge rolling experience if that's what you want. Personally I'm happy with Latest for now.

Thanks & respect to Clem & all the team. I've been with Mint longer than any other distro & see no reason to start looking for anything new. Bravo!

fully agree with U 100%

again, thanks to Clem & team

[Davarish]

Ok! Yesterday I posted these questions to sum up with everything asked here
1.) What if Gnome 3.2 stabilizes on Debian on three months from now? We LMDE users are not going to have updates for 3-4 months?
2.) Is the Update Packs system going to work on monthly releases again after Lisa gets released, or not?
3.) Do we really have security issues on the current situation or not?
4.) If we change to testing repos, will we have any problems with conflicts or something like that when the new Update Pack gets released?
5.) When are we even going to get any official answers or any blog articles from Clem about LMDE? We are here too and we are waiting for some kind of briefing. I know that Clem doesn't have much time right now but is it really that hard to give us some info?

Now question 5 was answered by Clem finaly coming here and replying.
Question 4 was answered by various posts. The conclusion is that if someone uses the testing repos LMDE will slowly get deMINTfied.
Question 2 was also answered with Clem saying "No, we are going to give you UP4 when it is ready" so this once per month system will not going to work again. This should not be on the blog cause it is false and untrue info and it leads new users to false expectations
Question 1 was answered with Clem saying yes.
And I leave question 3 for the end with one suggestion. Since Clem didn't bother to comment anything about security one could suppose that there is no problem. We see that browsers, mail clients and torrent clients have released STABLE versions newer than ours that have tons of security fixes. I will not analyse the fixes here, if anyone wants to read about them you can read them changelogs on their websites. There are also some other programs like Banshee from were you can buy music electronicaly that have more recent STABLE versions with better security. Also on many of the programs that we use on LMDE the more recent STABLE versions have tons of bugfixes. So here comes a suggestion to Clem. Is it possible to do an UP4 after the release of Lisa, that will contain only the latest STABLE versions of the apps and programs and then wait for Gnome 3.2 on UP5. No Xorg or anything else that will cause problems and risk the stability of LMDE current system. This way we will have a more secure and bug-free LMDE and we will wait for UP5 and Gnome 3.2 with more petience. What do you say?

[clem]

Firefox is out of the scope of the update pack. In other words, it's very likely you'll see Firefox updated to its latest version before you get Update Pack 4. In regards to security updates, you need to be more precise... which security issue in particular are you eager to see patched?

[peterih]

I think if the most visible applications like Firefox, Thunderbird, Libreoffice and maybe a few more, were kept fairly current, most people wouldn't care if UP4 was six months from now.

[Miloose]

Firefox is out of the scope of the update pack. In other words, it's very likely you'll see Firefox updated to its latest version before you get Update Pack 4. In regards to security updates, you need to be more precise... which security issue in particular are you eager to see patched?

I pointed as example chromium, but as mentionned by peterih, there are others.

So, I will give a simple example and I'm wondering what are the real risks for a basic use of internet. The version of chromium-browser in LMDE is version 13 (I don't remember the numbers after the . and I'm not at home to check, but whatever). Since that version, there are some high-risk security issues that has been corrected (here, here and here). The first one is from 6 October, the last one is new and even not yet corrected in Sid, but should be soon I guess. And I suppose there are other flaws in between.
My question is "is there any danger for me to use an outdated version of chromium or there is nothing to worry about ?" If the security flaws are for very specific uses, then OK, I don't care, but if there is a risk (even minimal) that I have security problems because I give my credit card number to trusted sites using chromium or that someone can access to my private information on my computer, then I have a problem. And if it's safe, why is it considered as "high-risk" ?

I don't need a distribution with latest versions, but I'd like to get automatically security updates, so I don't have to bother with. If you tell me that there is no risk to live with these high-risk security issues, I'm also happy, even if I would find this strange...
And for the rest, I'm grateful for your wonderful job !

[Davarish]

Well Clem...I don't really know. Most of the programs just write "tons of security fixes" on their changelog. They don't really write down the bug fixes either. They just say "tons of bug fixes". The security..well I don't know exactly how can anyone exploit a gap on my firefox for example cause I don't know what are the gaps, but when I read that there are security fixes then I understand that I have security gaps. And since my version of Firefox is 5 and the latest stable is 8 I understand that there are really more than too many known security problems gaps that I still offer to anyone who would like to exploit them. FIrefox is just an example of course. The same story goes with everything else...banshee, thunderbird, deluge, libre office
You would make us very happy if we could at least get the latest more secure and more bug-free stable versions of the main programs of LMDE

[gosa]

Hi all,

I just want to add my voice to those who are happy with how things are with LMDE. ....
I'd say stability & productivity are my priorities ....
I accept that LMDE is in some ways a sub-project & may go on the backburner when the main edition requires a lot of work as it currently does.

Thanks & respect to Clem & all the team. I've been with Mint longer than any other distro & see no reason to start looking for anything new. Bravo!

Barry

Couldn't agree more. When I came to Linux Mint and learned about the idea with LMDE I immediately liked what I read. I've previously given Chrunchbang a shot, but found that it - even though I really like the idea with the distro - wanted a bit more tinkering to be done than I was willing to give it.

Then I came to Mint, and even though I might be a bit to "fresh" in the Linux world for a rolling distro with it's included breakages I started my "real" 24/7 mint experience with the "original" LMDE tracking Debian Testing. And I did quite well for being so inexperienced - probably thanks to the wonderful support from the Mint community, but I still felt that following the "LMDE breakages"-thread to counter possible problems got a bit too much of my attention. In the end I am a previous/occasional Windows 7 user looking for an OS that I can keep with me for some time without having to dig deep into my wallet every time it's time for an upgrade.

Then when this idea with update packs was presented I felt that "Perfect - this is something for me. I can continue learning Linux at my own pace while still running an OS that will last for years". So now I'm following "Latest", I have my Update Pack 3 installed, and I don't have to worry about any problems except for the ones I'm creating on my own. This gives me time to experiment a bit more (don't know how many different virtual hard drives I've set up with different Linux Mint installs) and I've recently installed LXDE on top of the XFCE-version of LMDE - both on my netbook and on a virtual hard drive. I'm reading about openbox and looking for ways of "trimming" the install on my netbook even more even though I might scrap it all and start over again if/when the Fluxbox version of LMDE comes out. I've even got my partner to run LMDE as her primary OS, and her sister also got it installed (by me) on the old Compaq Desktop box we gave her. And all this while I'm trying to be a good father to my 3 months old girl at home.

This I would never have been able to have time for while tracking Testing. And all I'm really missing right now is an updated web-browser, and that is only because there are things with regards to syncing with Windows versions of Firefox (running Windows at work) that is so much easier when you're on the same version number in all computers.

Don't get me wrong here, I do understand people that areworried about the size of the next update pack, but for my part I'm as happy as can be like it is now.

And with that I'll just join in thanking The Mint Team for their continuous effort in making Linux Mint into what it is. What is a bit of time if that time mean getting things done right?

/gosa

[gosa]

I think if the most visible applications like Firefox, Thunderbird, Libreoffice and maybe a few more, were kept fairly current, most people wouldn't care if UP4 was six months from now.

Having written all that long text in my previous post saying that I personally have no problems with things as they are right now I still feel I have to say that You're probably right. A few updated key components would probably keep most of the people happy. I suppose it's a completely different question it can be done in a safe and trouble free way. We did have a few issues with compatibility back when the update pack did not include the multimedia repos. (I had to wait quite some time to be able to install Handbrake just because of that kind of inconsistency)

And as an addition - I have to say that I don't understand the stress for running latest of the latest of software. Ok, I understand the thing with security issues - but aren't many security issues that gets patched of the kind that they've only been found running test environments/never been used/needs so many variables filled that they almost don't pose a problem?

And also - Isn't the biggest security problem really the guy/gal sitting behind the keyboard? (and that one is not as easily patched )