Linux Mint Forums

asymmetros wrote:Eclipse is not broken in sid and i think it is not broken in testing either. The flow of updates and fixes resolves that kind of problems, usually in days or weeks. Especially sid, is the one that receives faster those fixes. But i understand that you probably do not need LMDE for this.

ps: xfce is splendid!

I'm not trying to use sid or testing, I'm evaluating the LMDE rolling release, which seems pretty useless at the moment with updates wanting to remove "missioni critical" applications instead of updating them.

I myself personally run Linux Mint XFCE and track Debian Testing with apt pinning for some other stuff on unstable. If you really don't like the update packs it really is not that big of an issue. Debian testing is fairly stable in of itself and if you really don't like the idea just add the repository and track the particular packages you want with the apt-pinning. Here'sa bit of documentation how-to: http://wiki.debian.org/AptPreferences

If you have the know-how to learn apt-pinning then IMO there is not reason to complain. Besides, running LMDE means that you have a 'deep knowledge of apt"? For me, LMDE does exactly what I want it to do: it installs a functioning Debian tracked installer where everything works out of the box. Ever tried installing Debian Stable or Testing on a modern laptop? It's absolute hell I tell you. So get to readin' and enjoy Debian in this fantastic, delicious and minty flavor!

Davarish wrote:You people who like the way LMDE works right now because you changed the repos and use testing or sid, we also don't care about it because this has nothing to do with LMDE. We people who installed LMDE because of the "rolling release" advertising, expected certain things that are not getting.

With great sorry, this is my turning point. I installed LMDE just for that. I am going to Xubuntu Precise Alpha and I will probably keep with that 'till the next (X)ubuntu LTS. Have a nice Christmas, everyone.

After trying LMDE last year, ubuntus/ ubuntu based distros are history for me. I am not intending to return there. And, as a conclusion, lmde with u-packs is not a roling distro, lmde without up' s is, but it's not the only way to run a rolling distro.
You can easliy find about half a dozen rolling distros out there, more or less easy to setup. The case is how "rolling guy" is someone. And that's the end in a rolling post

I've sadly changed to testing repos, and aside from 500 meg of updates and breaking my font rendering (weirdly it went back to crappy debian) I've had no problems.
I'm on XFCE though. it still annoys me that gnome issues have caused an abandoning of the update pack concept without communication, particularly for us XFCE users. there's no love.
I think I will be heading back to Ubuntu as soon as I can face my wife with the news. She doesn't like change-which was why I wanted rolling in the first place.
But I'm going Ubuntu because of too many 3rd party issues (Android in particular, but other ppa's as well) that just play better with Ubuntu than debian.
Though Mint 12 with XFCE on top may work.

wormtown wrote:I've sadly changed to testing repos, and aside from 500 meg of updates and breaking my font rendering (weirdly it went back to crappy debian) I've had no problems.
I'm on XFCE though. it still annoys me that gnome issues have caused an abandoning of the update pack concept without communication, particularly for us XFCE users. there's no love.
I think I will be heading back to Ubuntu as soon as I can face my wife with the news. She doesn't like change-which was why I wanted rolling in the first place.
But I'm going Ubuntu because of too many 3rd party issues (Android in particular, but other ppa's as well) that just play better with Ubuntu than debian.
Though Mint 12 with XFCE on top may work.

Ubuntu and its assorted desktops are for the most part worthwhile projects and I am sure you could enjoy you experience. After rereading your seven posts it's sadly obvious that MInt is not your cup of tea so I wish you luck and happy holidays.

sindegra wrote:I myself personally run Linux Mint XFCE and track Debian Testing with apt pinning for some other stuff on unstable. If you really don't like the update packs it really is not that big of an issue. Debian testing is fairly stable in of itself and if you really don't like the idea just add the repository and track the particular packages you want with the apt-pinning. Here'sa bit of documentation how-to: http://wiki.debian.org/AptPreferences

If you have the know-how to learn apt-pinning then IMO there is not reason to complain. Besides, running LMDE means that you have a 'deep knowledge of apt"? For me, LMDE does exactly what I want it to do: it installs a functioning Debian tracked installer where everything works out of the box. Ever tried installing Debian Stable or Testing on a modern laptop? It's absolute hell I tell you. So get to readin' and enjoy Debian in this fantastic, delicious and minty flavor!

So with apt-pinning, is it possible to track testing and pin the Gnome-3 desktop updates so that I get all updates except Gnome-3? Can you provide some instructions on how to accomplish this if it is possible?

TIA

wormtown wrote:I've sadly changed to testing repos, and aside from 500 meg of updates and breaking my font rendering (weirdly it went back to crappy debian) I've had no problems.
I'm on XFCE though. it still annoys me that gnome issues have caused an abandoning of the update pack concept without communication, particularly for us XFCE users. there's no love.
I think I will be heading back to Ubuntu as soon as I can face my wife with the news. She doesn't like change-which was why I wanted rolling in the first place.
But I'm going Ubuntu because of too many 3rd party issues (Android in particular, but other ppa's as well) that just play better with Ubuntu than debian.
Though Mint 12 with XFCE on top may work.

If you google "ubuntu fonts debian", you'll run into a number of hits to deal with this. In the latest XFCE spin, Clem was applying the Ubuntu fonts (a patched libcairo file). See this for some perspective: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 42#p478242

When I googled, I ran into this: http://noz3001.wordpress.com/2011/07/01 ... an-wheezy/

Downloadand apply the latest fontconfig-config_2.8.0-3ubuntu2_all.deb from here: http://packages.ubuntu.com/oneiric/all/ ... g/download

I have been using Microsoft's TrueType core fonts with full aliasing, so I forgot that going testing would knock out the Ubuntu font rendering with the updated Debian files. But I just tried the Ubuntu font rendering on Debian Wheezy & Sid (above link), and it seemed to get the job done.

If you do this, back up your /etc/fonts folder.

Let us know if that worked. I don't have anything to compare it to, and there are a lot of workarounds on the net (Debian Forums has a bunch), but the result looked pretty good, and from what I've read, there's no need to patch libcairo2 any more.

If that does it, great, but you may also want to check out http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 10&start=0

If LMDE is a sleeping distro I say fine. I'll stick with what works.
Heck; with straight Debian my audio would not work and display
was only 1024x768. Amazingly wireless worked.
In this day and age something as basic as that to not work is
unacceptable. -imho

Cheers.

T.

Toontwnca wrote:with straight Debian my audio would not work and display

I'm using Debian and everything work out-of-the-box ! Sometime with hardware you need non free modules to use it. As Debian is using stricly FREE things, they extracted non free modules from kernel and you need to install them separatly. It take approximatively 5s to install them (but you need to know which one).
However, if you are trying to use stable, your hardware can be too recent to use with Debian (you'll need to install backported kernel and up-to-date video driver; it's easy but more complicated that just "apt-get linux-firmware").

Ubuntu and mint don't care about free / non-free modules. That way, the desktop is always usable out-of-the-box, but the philosophy of linux isn't respected

dbkblk wrote:

Toontwnca wrote:with straight Debian my audio would not work and display

Ubuntu and mint don't care about free / non-free modules. That way, the desktop is always usable out-of-the-box, but the philosophy of linux isn't respected

Hogwash.

And it has nothing to do with newer hardware.
The issue has been ongoing for years. And its mainly older stuff I've tried it on.

Toontwnca wrote:

dbkblk wrote:

Toontwnca wrote:with straight Debian my audio would not work and display

Ubuntu and mint don't care about free / non-free modules. That way, the desktop is always usable out-of-the-box, but the philosophy of linux isn't respected

Hogwash.

And it has nothing to do with newer hardware.
The issue has been ongoing for years. And its mainly older stuff I've tried it on.

I think it is a bit of both. Sometimes a newer kernel will have a FOSS driver for newer hardware that older kernels lack. Some manufactures never release FOSS drivers no matter how old the hardware is, so if your computer has one of their chips you will always have to work at making it work. I have a motherboard with an ethernet chip that straight Debian (Wheezy) would not touch. I can download the non-free deb with another machine and use a USB stick to copy it across and use dpkg or gdebi to install, but a newbie would just give up. And some people, shock horror, only have one computer. But, Debian insist on free only drivers. Fine when it works and a pain when it doesn't.

That is what is great about LMDE and why I started using it. Install it and it works. It is still Debian, but without the hassles. Mine is far from a default Linuxmint as I now use Sid as my base and Gnome 3.2, and I have removed some of the Mint stuff so it is more Debian than Mint. When does LMDE cease to be LMDE and become "just" Debian? Does it matter?

Because of the slower updates, we should call LMDE a "strolling" distro.

dritzominous wrote:Because of the slower updates, we should call LMDE a "strolling" distro.

NIce idea, but not quite accurate. If a had a zimmer frame and two artificial hips I could still stroll faster than that

It makes Debian Stable look like a sprinter on anabolic steroids.

I think it should be renamed "Comatose Linux"

viking777 wrote:

dritzominous wrote:Because of the slower updates, we should call LMDE a "strolling" distro.

NIce idea, but not quite accurate. If a had a zimmer frame and two artificial hips I could still stroll faster than that

It makes Debian Stable look like a sprinter on anabolic steroids.

I think it should be renamed "Comatose Linux"

Sadly, i have to agree...

What it does show is that the days of Ubuntu being based on testing are long long gone. However LMDE is still a generation ahead of Debian Stable and it does update continuously, just a step or two or three behind the bleeding edge. Plus the LMDE update packs do make for a level of stability.

You can fiddle the repo list in sources.list and throw away the safety blanket. That makes LMDE a flexible strolling distro. Mine is LMDE/Sid and there is a forum thread for those of us who like to move ahead. You can also sidestep the update packs and just run testing if you want to sit in between. Then for the really adventurous you can easily pull packages from experimental. LMDE runs apt slightly differently to Debian in that you can just add experimental to sources list and install packages normally (you do not have to tell it to use experimental it just grabs the newest). With experimental open one false system update can hose your system in minutes. There are times when Ubuntu is ahead of experimental and times when it falls behind even Sid. Then they bring out their six months dist-update and it starts all over.

So LMDE is a very flexible strolling distro with three forward gears!

Please Clem don't forget LMDE users! I it's a great distro! but requires more updates...

antolieztsu wrote:Please Clem don't forget LMDE users! I it's a great distro! but requires more updates...

I think he's mainly working now on LMDE, especially on the KDE side. On the Gnome side, the work involved in the porting of MGSE & MATE to the slippery debian testing base is much more than "simply" releasing another update pack. I believe this long wait will be paid back by a top-level LMDE offering in terms of desktops and technologies. After wich I hope the regular update pace will resume, at least until Gnome 4 or KDE 5...

Endogen wrote:

viking777 wrote:

dritzominous wrote:Because of the slower updates, we should call LMDE a "strolling" distro.

NIce idea, but not quite accurate. If a had a zimmer frame and two artificial hips I could still stroll faster than that

It makes Debian Stable look like a sprinter on anabolic steroids.

I think it should be renamed "Comatose Linux"

Sadly, i have to agree...

Okay, let's name LMDE the 'sleeping snail" -to honour and this thread. "If it works -do not upgrade" will be the moto.
But LMDE with up's is probably the most newbie's friendly distro: many windows users do not upgrade for years -with LMDE they 'll feel at home.


Happy new year to everyone!

PS: lmdeman, i am not sure that Clem is "working now on LMDE, especially on the KDE side". The KDE edition he prepares will be based in ubuntu.

I don't think you are quite right lmdeman, Clem simply had too much on his plate - linux mint has got too big for him, he's a hero right enough but he is not a superhero, and something will have to give, it will either be his health or some part of the multi-faceted linux mint. I hope for his sake it is the latter that gives way first. No small team distro can EVER manage this amount of alternatives without cracking up.

In my opinion, if Mint is to continue then it needs to drop most of its desktop alternatives. Mint Main and LMDE with gnome 3 and cinnamon desktops is all they can ever hope to keep up with, everything else will have to go, KDE, Fluxbox, Xfce, Lmde, Mate the lot, if he tries to keep that many balls in the air at the same time the whole lot is going to come crashing down and Mint will die.

That is not to say that other people can't produce 'mintified' desktop environments, but the thing is that Clem will have to relinquish control of them and therefore, in order to preserve the quality control that he obviously takes seriously there cannot ever be a 'Mint KDE' or 'Mint Fluxbox' or whatever that is downloadable, there can only be a Mint main or an Lmde and anything else must be an un-guaranteed add on. In that way any 'failures' in those add-ons cannot have any impact on Mint itself since they are not part of it and protecting the integrity of Mint in that way is vital to its continued success.

Just my opinion you understand, but based on a lot of Mint and Linux experience.