Episode 48 Show Notes
Chapters
00:00:00 – Introduction
00:02:10 – Monthly Foibles
00:17:34 – Updates
00:27:08 – Beautiful Failures
00:32:06 – Review
01:18:19 – New Releases
01:20:33 – Announcements
01:22:30 – Acknowledgments
MONTHLY FOIBLES
…wherein we discuss what we did this month…
Moss:
I spent several hours one morning reorganizing my external drives on my Studio machine. When I was done, all my ISOs and my Timeshift directory were all on sdc and everything else – documents, music, pictures, etc. – was on sdb. I refer to these drives as SLOPOKRMRZ and SPDYGNZLZ.
Anything exciting going on with you, Dale?
Dale:
I took a couple of days to work on the cable management of my two desks. After some drilling and a lot of Velcro straps, I have my main desk finished. One nice addition was mounting the 24” TV that was in my company’s truck onto an Ergotron single monitor arm that I wasn’t using. I found myself using my 10” Lenovo Yoga Smart Tab more often.
My second desk is waiting for longer HDMI and DisplayPort cables. I also need to work on routing the network cables for the two desktops under it. Next on the list will be the entertainment center that houses my servers and networking equipment.
My next task was to get my T560 with the Ultra Dock in my bedroom setup and my used Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny. I’m using a spare 24” Dell LCD monitor with the Ultra Dock. I backed up the Xfce settings and wallpapers from my previous desktop. Then installed Void Xfce on the T560 and restored the settings. This is such a great feature of Linux. In less than 30 minutes I had a fully configured and themed computer.
For my ThinkCentre, I bought a Samsung F27T450FQN, which is a 27” IPS flat screen monitor at 1920 x 1080 resolution 75 Hz. It has 2 DisplayPorts, 1 HDMI, and 2 USB 2.0 connections. It supports AMD Freesync and is frameless on 3 sides.
I was going to install Debian 12 with i3. Then I remembered that I wanted to give Fedora Sway a longer look. I am not used to Fedora so this will be a learning experience. I don’t know if I will stick with it, so I am going to use it while away at work. Hopefully, I will have a better feel for it when I arrive home. I want to record this episode on the ThinkCentre instead of my Pangolin.
I did take a look at Wayfire and Sway on Debian 12 before installing Fedora 38. Neither one was configured and I didn’t want to take the time to configure them.
A friend ripped her last contact lens and asked me if I could take her to the eye doctor. We both had errands to do, so we made a day of it. We finished off with dinner at Olive Garden, though we were early enough for the cheaper lunch specials.
I spent the remainder of my time keeping the couch company while watching TV.
Eric:
I haven’t had much time to pursue tech projects other than continuing to use and test the Dell Latitude 5290 2-in-1 tablet PC. I have had it for just over a month and, in that time, have mostly been using Fedora 39 Workstation. It came with Windows 10 preinstalled, which I have upgraded to Windows 11. I haven’t used it very much, except to do some performance and battery life testing. It’s fine I suppose but I’d much rather use something else. I wasn’t getting very good battery life with Fedora which was disappointing.
I have been wanting to test Chrome OS Flex anyway and thought this was a good opportunity. Rather than destroy both the Windows and Fedora installations, I decided to back up the disk first. If you recall, I recently had a not so great experience with Clonezilla so I wasn’t going to use it. Moss had mentioned that he prefers Rescuezilla instead so I tried it. It has a nice GUI interface as compared to the very minimal text-based interface of Clonezilla. I was able to back up the entire disk and then later restore it which leads me to the rest of the update. The restoration wasn’t perfect but got me back to a point where I could get things going again. I think it was more a case of how UEFI works than the way it restored the EFI partition. There are some other options out there for bare metal backup that might work better for my purposes so the hunt continues!
I tried using Chrome OS Flex for a few days and, while it did function well for the most part, I found it limiting when compared to a full Linux distribution. Yes, you are able to install and use Linux software however it is inside a virtualized environment which limits the integration with the local system. For example, I installed Tailscale which is essentially a mesh VPN that allows me to connect to various machines from wherever I am. While I was able to connect to it, only apps running within the confines of the virtualized environment were able to access the connection. There were other things like this as well which really detracted from the experience. Also, even though so much of the software I, and I suspect many people use, is web-based, using “web apps”, which are essentially glorified web browser sessions, leaves a lot to be desired. The functionality and level of integration just isn’t the same as an actual native application. It’s actually more convenient in most cases to just use the site in your main browser. Maybe there are some advantages that don’t apply to my situation but I find it to be more frustrating than functional.
So, after a few days of using Chrome OS and being frustrated by its approach to apps and limited Linux integration, I restored the disk back and went back to Fedora. After a few more days, I decided to replace Fedora with something from the Debian/Ubuntu realm. I went with Ubuntu 23.10 since they usually provide a well-rounded desktop experience, particularly on laptops. I also have been enjoying using Gnome 45 and Wayland, both of which are provided by Ubuntu 23.10 Minty Minotaur. So far, things seem to be working well. I have quite literally just started using it as I write this so time will tell if I stick with it.
Besides the software changes, I remain extremely impressed with the hardware situation. I find it difficult to believe that I am enjoying using an older, supposedly lower powered system, as much as I am. The 8th gen Intel quad core eight thread i5-8230U processor hits the sweet spot of performance and low thermals to work well in such a small form factor. Yes, the small fan will come on occasionally, especially when using Windows (surprise, surprise…I know) but almost never does on Linux. Of course, it will if I was pushing it which is great because it means the system is scaling as needed and will use the power available and turn up the fan rather than remaining throttled and reducing performance. It’s a privileged perspective I’m sure but 16 GB of RAM has become the minimum I prefer to run since I like having lots of headroom to have tons of apps open, including memory hogs like Firefox and virtual machine software.
Lastly, Black Friday is almost upon us and I’m sure many will be looking for those deals they wait all year for. I don’t have many things on my list but I may pick up some odds and ends if I see a great price. Do you guys have anything you’ve been waiting to buy on sale?
UPDATES – (Where we discuss what we have learned about distros we’ve already reviewed)
Moss:
I have installed Bodhi 7 AppPack on my studio computer. There have been further upgrades in theming, including the main theme. I am told by Stefan that he will be installing a key combination to turn off touchpads, which is one of the two main issues I continue to have (and ignore) in Bodhi.
Dale:
Slackel 7.7 “Openbox” has been released. It includes Linux kernel 6.1.57 and the latest updates from the Slackware “Current” tree. Includes fairly recent popular applications like Firefox 118. Appears that it is the only updated edition. The Mate and KDE editions haven’t been updated in close to 3 years.
I saw this article about Buddies of Budgie getting help with Wayland from the Xfce team. It was an interesting article discussing the state of Wayland in EFL (Enlightenment Foundation Library) to a soft (temporary) fork of Mutter 43 called Magpie.
Eric:
I have been using Linux Mint as my daily driver on my main laptop for a while now. I have also recently been using Wayland with Fedora and Ubuntu as previously mentioned. That led me to wonder what the state of Wayland was in regard to the Cinnamon desktop environment developed by the Linux Mint team. With the larger renewed community interest in Wayland development and adoption, the Mint team recently announced on their blog that they are working on Wayland support for Cinnamon.
From the Linux Mint Blog:
The work started on Wayland. As mentioned earlier this year, this was identified as one of the major challenges our project had to tackle in the mid to long term. Priority had been given to ISO tools and Secureboot over new features for 21.3 already, we felt it was time to invest some resources into Wayland as well.
We don’t expect it to replace Xorg as default any time soon, not in 21.3, not in 22.x, but we want to be ready all the same.
Cinnamon 6.0, planned for Mint 21.3 this year, will feature experimental Wayland support. You’ll be able to select between Cinnamon (the default session, running on Xorg) and Cinnamon on Wayland from the login screen.
The Wayland session won’t be as stable as the default one. It will lack features and it will come with its own limitations. We won’t recommend it but you’ll be able to give it a shot if you want to and it’ll be there for interested people if they want to give us feedback.
A board was set up to keep track of Wayland development. It’s available at https://trello.com/b/HHs01Pab/cinnamon-wayland
As you can see on the board many things are missing or broken but we’ve got a functional session with window, application and workspace management. We’re able to log in, run most apps, manipulate windows, workspaces, nemo, the panel etc..
We wanted to have a clear picture of the work involved, so we wanted to start now. In terms of timing we don’t think we need Wayland support to be fully ready (i.e. to be a better Cinnamon option for most people) before 2026 (Mint 23.x). That leaves us 2 years to identify and to fix all the issues. It’s something we’ll continue to work on. Whenever it happens, assuming it does, we’ll consider switching defaults. We’ll use the best tools to do the job and provide the best experience. Today that means Xorg. Tomorrow it might mean Wayland. We’ll be ready and compatible with both.
That’s great news and I particularly like that they are taking a very pragmatic approach, giving themselves plenty of time to create a solid Wayland experience on Linux Mint and Cinnamon.
BEAUTIFUL FAILURES –
(What we tried, and failed, to install or run this month)
Moss:
I have amazingly had zero failures this month. Unless you count my Moto G phone. It still works but needs frequent reboots in order to function.
Dale:
My failure this month was trying to dual-boot Fedora 38 with LMDE6. After installing LMDE6, os-prober wouldn’t see Fedora. When I rebooted into Fedora, it was able to detect LMDE6 and added it to its Grub menu. I did some searching and couldn’t find any definitive answers to this problem. I looked back through past episodes where I had issues with dual-booting distros. What I came away with is the following.
They each used either BTRFS as the main filesystem and/or a separate /boot partition scheme. Where /boot uses Ext4 and /boot/efi/EFI uses FAT32.
I tried a default install of Debian 12 and LMDE6. There were no issues with LMDE6 seeing Debian 12 and adding its entries to the Grub menu. Debian 12 uses a single /boot partition using FAT32.
Out of curiosity, I have done the following.
I installed Debian 12 using the partitions that Fedora created. I used BTRFS for root, Ext4 for /boot, and FAT32 for /boot/efi/EFI. LMDE6 wouldn’t see Debian 12.
Staying with Debian 12 doing a default install with the exception of using BTRFS instead of Ext4. LMDE6 wouldn’t see Debian 12.
Next, I installed Fedora 38 and did a custom partitioning. The only change I made was to use Ext4 instead of BTRFS. I then installed LMDE6 again selecting the /dev/sda1 EFI partition that Fedora created for the EFI boot partition. Upon reboot, LMDE6 saw Fedora 38 this time and booted to the desktop. Oddly, after a reboot to boot into Fedora, I saw these errors.
Error: bad shim signature
Error: you need to load the kernel first
I think LMDE6 when it wrote its shim somehow affected Fedora’s EFI shim.
Since Fedora 39 was released, I tried it with no changes in my results.
From what I have determined. I don’t think the multiple /boot partitions are the issue. I believe the issue is with BTRFS. This is a very puzzling conclusion given that it is fully GPL-compliant and an in-kernel tree filesystem. When you add in the issues with it not being compatible with GNU Toolkit packages like df and du, it makes you wonder why. At least I was finally able to get to the bottom of the issue. There is a silver lining though, I am getting pretty good at using the Anaconda installer. Unfortunately, it doesn’t mean I like it any more than I did before. So with that disappointment, let’s move along to Eric.
Eric:
My biggest failure this month was not accomplishing much of anything. I didn’t have the time I normally do for projects and extracurricular activities. I spent some time in the hospital and a good bit at various doctor’s offices. It’s nothing that unusual for me, yet somehow it still catches me off guard. There’s nothing to do but hope that it’s behind me now, and I can get back to “normal”. But hey, as one of my friends says, any day spent above the dirt is a good day!
REVIEW
DISTRO NAME: Linux Mint Debian Edition 6 “Faye”
INTRO:
Dale: LMDE is Linux Mint Cinnamon on a Debian base. It has been the contingency plan for Linux Mint if they ever had to switch away from Ubuntu. Considering all the changes Canonical has made with Ubuntu over the years, Mint is still using Ubuntu. LMDE started in 2010 based on Debian Testing. Starting with LMDE2 on April 10, 2015, it would be based on Debian Stable. All future versions would be based on the current Stable branch of Debian and follow the Debian Stable release schedule.
Eric: I recognize the importance of having a contingency plan, but have never quite understood the ongoing nature of LMDE. As a parallel project that is just different enough to the more mainstream offering, it has essentially become its own thing. I’m not convinced the contingency will ever come to fruition, and have to wonder exactly how long the Linux Mint team will continue to support both. I suppose one of the reasons that LMDE can exist on the side like it does is having a much smaller user base and, I will make the assumption, a more self-sufficient technically-focused one that doesn’t require a large effort to support.
Moss: We have previously reviewed LMDE 3, 4 and 5 on this show. In those cases, it was decided that this distro was a good backup plan but was not yet ready for prime time usage. I am fairly certain that Canonical will continue making “good business decisions” which help Ubuntu but which undermine many of the things other Ubuntu-based distros are doing, so I’m equally certain that this is not a throwaway project and will continue. With the positive growth in Debian, this could wind up being the way to go.
OUR HARDWARE:
Eric: I used my desktop which has an AMD Ryzen 5 5600 (6 cores, 12 threads), 16 GB of RAM, 2 TB of storage spread over four different drives, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 with 6 GB of VRAM.
Dale: I used my Lenovo ThinkPad T460. It has an Intel Dual Core i5-6200U 2.8 GHz CPU, a 14″ display using Intel HD Graphics 520, 16 GB of RAM, and a 500 GB Samsung 860 EVO SSD.
Moss: I ran LMDE 6 with Cinnamon on my test computer, the T540p I talk about every month. I also loaded it on my studio computer, the Lenovo ThinkCentre M700 Tiny, but changed the desktop to MATE completely removing Cinnamon, using instructions supplied by Londoner. The M700 has an Intel Core i5-6500T running from 2.50 GHz up to 3.10 GHz, 4 single-threaded cores, with 16 Gb DDR4 RAM, Intel HD530 graphics and a 512 Gb Samsung 850 EVO SSD.
INSTALLATION EASE AND ISSUES:
Dale: The installation is the same as with Linux Mint. There is an option to encrypt the home folder. You also have the option of using LVM (Logical Volume Management) where you use multiple drives to appear as one. Another feature you don’t see on other distros is the ability to write random data to the drive. This is a way of wiping the data so it can not be recovered.
I selected the manual partitioning which opens a window showing the current partitions and a link for GPartEd. Once in GPartEd, I split the available space in half because I wanted to dual-boot Fedora Sway to get familiar with it while away at work. I created an Ext4 partition and 4 GB swap for LMDE6 since Fedora uses Zram for swap. I applied the changes and exited GPartEd. Once back at the current partitions screen, I clicked refresh. From there I assigned sda4 to root, sda5 to swap, and sda1 for boot/efi. Which is the EFI System partition that Fedora created. Oddly, it was identified as Mac OS X.
I confirmed my choice and started the installation. Once completed I was instructed to remove the USB stick and press enter. I pressed enter and nothing happened. I waited a couple of minutes and pressed enter again. After another minute I held the power button down to force the T460 off. During other installations, I removed the USB stick and pressed enter. Which did reboot the laptop. In other installations, I removed the USB stick and it rebooted on its own. Very odd behavior indeed. Upon reboot (after it locked up), I didn’t see Fedora listed as a boot option. This opened quite a rabbit hole as to why it didn’t detect Fedora. I will not elaborate any further since I mentioned it in my Beautiful Failures.
In the end, I installed Fedora Sway and LMDE6 without installing Grub. I let Fedora’s Grub boot both Fedora and LMDE6.
Eric: LMDE uses a different installer than the main edition, which uses Ubiquity. LMDE uses one called simply live-installer and it differs in a few ways.
It looks and functions slightly differently but performs the same function. I think the team preferred not to use Ubiquity because it is built and maintained by Canonical and the point of LMDE is to not use Canonical’s software wherever possible.
Here are the basic steps to install using each installer.
Ubiquity
– Language
– Keyboard layout
– Install codecs (choice)
– Partitioning
– Timezone
– User account
– Installation
live-installer
– Language
– Timezone
– Keyboard layout
– User account
– Partitioning
– GRUB location
– Show summary
– Installation
As you can see, they both do the same things in basically the same ways, albeit in a slightly different order and with a slightly different appearance. The end result was the same as with the main edition, a reasonably fast installation routine leaving you with a ready to use system. For what it’s worth, LMDE’s live-installer was about 20% faster but they both finished in a matter of minutes so it really doesn’t make a huge difference.
Moss: OK, well it just felt like what I was used to, so I assumed it was Ubiquity. Shows I wasn’t paying attention.
POST-INSTALLATION HARDWARE FACTS & ISSUES:
Moss: Everything looked and felt the same as I expected from regular Linux Mint. But I noticed a few things. When I installed LMDE, many of the Firefox extensions, including ProtonVPN, were not available. What was interesting was, they got enabled about two weeks later. Another interesting thing is that the Workspaces looked normal on the default installation, but on my desktop, where I installed MATE Desktop, they are about half the normal width.
We did find out, just before recording this show, that Discord does not push good volume. It sounded like we were talking through cups on strings. So that is a minus for now.
Eric: Both versions greet you with the familiar Welcome screen to help you configure your new system. They offer almost the same options except that Mint has a Driver Manager option while LMDE does not. LMDE shows an option for Multimedia Codecs because the installer doesn’t give you the option to install them at that point. I assume this option would show up if you chose not to install them as part of Mint’s install process, although I didn’t test this so I may be mistaken. Otherwise, the Welcome process is the same as the preinstalled applications, with one exception I could find. Mint has a Font Manager while LMDE doesn’t. I’m sure it’s easy enough to install but it seemed oddly specific and worth mentioning.
In terms of available software, both come with Mint’s software center which includes support for native repo packages as well as Flatpaks from Flathub. The software available in the repos varies between Ubuntu and Debian so you can expect some differences there. Regardless, I was able to either find everything I wanted in the repos, as a flatpak, or by downloading a deb file.
Cinnamon is the same between the two so you get the same first class experience from Linux Mint’s flagship desktop environment. It’s a top three choice for me so I have no complaints.
One possibly significant difference between the two is the kernel. Mint uses LTS kernels, 5.15.0-76-generic as of writing this while LMDE uses the much newer 6.1.0-12-amd64 kernel. I think for most people on most machines, the 5 series kernel with hardware enablement will work perfectly fine. If not, there is the Cinnamon EDGE iso which comes with the 6.2 kernel. My hardware is well supported by any of these so I had no issues.
Other than that, I didn’t notice any practical differences between the standard Mint release and LMDE.
Dale: One thing I have always liked about Cinnamon is the familiar interface to that of Windows. Finding the application or setting that is needed is much easier compared to Windows. It doesn’t change from one release to the next like Windows. I think Linux Mint is one of the best at onboarding a user. Many distros are using a welcome screen but many are not to the level of detail as Linux Mint.
The welcome screen logically walks you through everything you would want to do on a new installation. Setting the theme and colors, configuring the BTRFS Snapshots, installing updates since the ISO was created, system settings, and installing applications.
The welcome screen eliminates the thought of ‘Now what do I do?’. The names listed in System Settings are aptly named. The search box at the top is great for when you don’t know where I specific setting would be. The Software Center is well presented with a search box of its own. Each application clearly shows where it is sourced from, for those of you that want to know.
One thing that always bugs me about GUI Software Centers is when you are installing an application. There is no feedback as to how far along it is during that process. Which is why I prefer using the command line. The Linux Mint Software Center has a small bar that shows the progress of the download and installation. Many of the most popular applications are listed removing the need to search for them.
I tried adding QRedshift which is one of the many Spices. It is an app that changes the color temperature of the screen. It installed, but when I went to configure it. It was disabled with a warning that it could cause instability issues. I looked on the Mint forums, and someone already had this issue. I followed all the suggestions that fixed their issue. Which were to remove Redshift-gtk and disable the Systemd service. Neither of them were found on my installation. Further into my search, I found a comment from 4 months ago on the Spices website for Linux Mint stating that it wasn’t working anymore. So I gave up and removed it.
One great improvement is in the Software Manager. The Flatpak integration is very good. When searching for an application, Flatpak packages are identified in the lower left of the description box. The native packages don’t have anything shown. After clicking on the package listing, There is a drop-down menu next to where the button is to install it. This drop-down menu allows the selection of a native package or Flatpak.
Another nice feature is the option to switch to a faster mirror. The Software Manager, when set to the default site, will ask if you want to switch to a faster mirror. The test is automated, the only required action is to select the one you want. Upon closing that window, the repository cache is updated automatically. Then you are able to install the updates. The following screen shows what packages are being removed, upgraded, or added to satisfy any dependencies. A window appears showing the status of the upgrade via the moving progress bar, with the option of seeing the terminal output. If there are any Flatpak updates, the window changes to show it is updating Flatpaks. In my opinion, that is pretty good attention to detail. If more GUI package managers were this informative, I could be swayed away from updating using the command line.
EASE OF USE:
Eric: I reviewed the current release of Linux Mint, 21.2, in episode 44 back in July of this year. I had been using Mint prior to that review and have used it many times over the years. It has always been one of the more consistent distributions and is particularly easy to use. I rarely run into issues that I myself didn’t cause, although that’s not to say it’s perfect. No software is but the Linux Mint team focuses squarely on the end user and making it easy to use as well as reliable. Nothing has changed since July and I don’t suspect it will change anytime soon.
Moss: I have had few issues since sometime in the 2nd week of using it, when they fixed the Firefox plugins issue, and then just today noticed an issue with video on Discord.
Dale: I didn’t have any issues, mostly it was cosmetic. I changed the mouse pointer to a black arrow. I thought the default pointer was too big, at least to me. I also slowed down the pointer speed, though this is a specific issue with using the TrackPoint. If I had to use a TouchPad, I would do the same thing. I think the pointer speed is fine for a TrackBall or traditional mouse.
There are some pretty nice dark themes and are pretty uniform across applications. Having accent colors is a nice touch.
During my use of LMDE6, I really couldn’t tell I wasn’t using Linux Mint Cinnamon. That is something previous versions of LMDE couldn’t pull off. There was usually something that required opening a terminal and using a command from the Debian forums or wiki.
MEMORY AND DISK USE:
Dale:
15 GB of space used on the SSD
1.1 GB of memory used was reported by free –hm.
Moss:
13.6 GiB of space used on the SSD
7.8 GiB reported using df -h
1.1 GiB of memory used was reported by free –hm on my studio machine
36.9 GB of space used on the SSD (including Timeshift?)
1.2 MB of memory used was reported by free –hm on my laptop
Eric:
7.3 GB of space used on the SSD using df -h on a fresh install. It was over 8 after running updates.
1.1 GB of memory was reported using my usual while true; do free -hm; sleep 10; done routine.
EASE OF FINDING HELP:
Moss: Finding help should be as easy as finding the Linux Mint forum. It’s Debian plus Cinnamon plus extra Mint tools, nothing to see here.
Dale: There are many great people who hang out in the mintCast Telegram and Discord messaging communities. Along with the aforementioned Linux Mint forum.
Eric: Borrowing from episode 44, Linux Mint is a long-lived distro which has a massive community. There are quite a few ways of finding help or otherwise getting in touch. These include the community forums, a community portal website, Github, Facebook, Twitter, IRC Chat, Reddit, Discord, and local communities. They also have an excellent documentation hub which, for example, includes an installation guide available in 24 different languages and a variety of file formats.
PLAYS NICE WITH OTHERS:
Dale: If you are using a distro that uses Ext4 you will not have a problem. Which is what most distros use. Fedora and some Arch-Based distros use BTRFS. Though Fedora detected other distros when the Arch-Based distros didn’t. This is very puzzling considering most are using Grub and OS-Prober. Even if the Arch-based distros are using a newer Grub, it still should function like the previous version. Of course, that could be a mistaken assumption that there wouldn’t be a feature regression. Maybe the next disruption in Linux will be the migration away from Grub to Systemd Boot.
Moss: Fedora and Arch use a different kind of GRUB, but it should play nicely with any Debian- or Ubuntu-based distro. Even so, that’s enough to knock a few ticks off the score. I have had Manjaro find all my distros so long as they controlled GRUB, but if I gave the GRUB to another distro they would not find Manjaro.
Eric: Linux Mint will automatically find other distros and OSes that are installed, at least for me when using EFI.
STABILITY: If anything, it is probably more stable than LM 21, due to the Debian base. There are no fears about running sudo apt autoremove, because, unlike (for instance) Arch, Mint saves the originally installed kernel and the latest two even after autoremove.
SIMILAR DISTROS TO CHECK OUT:
Linux Mint 21.x
Debian 12
Q4OS
SolydX/K
Ubuntu Cinnamon
RATINGS:
Ease of Installation new user 9/10
experienced user 10/10
Hardware Issues 10/10
Software Issues 8/10
Ease of Finding Help (Community, Web) 10/10
Ease of Use 10/10
Plays Nice With Others 8/10
Stability 10/10
Overall Rating 9/10
FINAL COMMENTS: So here we are. Are we ready to answer the questions? Is LMDE 6 ready for regular use? What would you need to see changed in order to use it as your daily driver? Would it hurt any to remove Mint 21.2 from your system permanently and run LMDE 6 instead?
Dale: I mentioned in my review that I couldn’t tell that I was using a Debian-based Linux Mint. The only potential issue I could see is with out-of-kernel tree graphics driver support, namely Nvidia. However, I had problems when I used Linux Mint Cinnamon in 2018 with the Nvidia card I was using on my desktop. So I can’t fault there being a potential issue with the driver installation support in LMDE. Now that I am all AMD, I don’t see a problem using LMDE as my daily driver. In fact, I am seriously considering it over Debian with Xfce or Cinnamon, for that matter, as my go-to for stability and usability. It would take some configuration time to get vanilla Debian to the level of LMDE.
Eric: As I alluded to in my introduction, I understood when the Linux Mint team set about creating LMDE. Canonical has been known to make decisions that result in some issues for downstream distros, sometimes just producing a few ripples and others a tidal wave. It can be an uncomfortable and uncertain position to be in for a developer. It threatens to undermine what might be a tremendous amount of work on your part. I don’t necessarily fault Canonical for making changes when they are the right thing for their business. After all, they provide a heck of a lot of bandwidth to millions of users that they otherwise wouldn’t have to if they weren’t so free and open with their work. While all these things are true and continue to be so, I find the perpetual state of limbo that LMDE exists in to be an odd juxtaposition of riding the wave of success that Ubuntu affords while simultaneously holding it in contempt. While the threat of making a change, either in code or politics, that the Linux Mint team finds unacceptable is always there, Canonical hasn’t yet stepped over that line in the thirteen years since the first version of LMDE was released. Maybe I’m one of the few that still sees LMDE as a contingency plan while others just see it as an Ubuntu-free alternative. I’m happy to stick with the main release and I suppose there is at least some small comfort knowing that, if things do take an unexpected turn, LMDE will be there as an alternative.
Moss: My biggest question was, can I run this full time instead of regular Mint? Until we tried running our Discord video chat, my answer would be YES. But now… hmmm. Better wait until LMDE 7.
Now let’s move on to New Releases.
NEW RELEASES THIS MONTH:
from 10/19-11/22
Bluestar 6.5.7
openmamba 20231021
Plop Linux 23.5
Regata 23.0.18
TrueNAS 23.10.0 “SCALE”
OSGeoLive 16.0
ArcoLinux 23.11.03
Snal 1.30
GhostBSD 23.10.1
FuguIta 7.4
ALT 10.2 “Simply”
Garuda 231029
Gnoppix 23.11
Tails 5.19
XeroLinux 2023.11
SmartOS 20231102
Arch Linux 2023.11.01
NuTyX 23.11.0
BigLinux 2013-11-03
Slackel 7.7.1
openmamba 20231106
TUXEDO 2-20231106
Clonezilla 3.1.1-27
Relianoid 7.0
UBports 20.04 OTA-3
BackBox Linux 8.1
MakuluLinux 2023-11-09
AlmaLinux 9.3
KaOS 2023.11
FreeBSD 14.0
Mabox 23.11
SmartOS 20231116
KDE neon 20231116
EuroLinux 9.3
pfSense 2.7.1
EuroLinux 8.9
Oracle 9.3
Berry 1.38
CachyOS 231118
Rocky 9.3
EndeavourOS 11-2023
FreeBSD 14.0
AlmaLinux 8.9
Regata 23.0.32
Rocky 8.9
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Moss: For chatting with us further, you may choose to join our Telegram group or our Discord channel.
Dale: I’m @Dale_CDL on Telegram and Discord. My email is [email protected]
Eric: I can be reached on just about every social media and chat platform under my full name, Eric Adams. For example, I’m on Mastodon, Discord, Telegram, Matrix, and so on. I can be emailed at [email protected] . You can also see and hear more of me on mintCast, Linux OTC, LinuxLUGCast, and Linux Saloon.
Moss: And you can hear me every week on Full Circle Weekly News and mintCast. My email is [email protected], and I’m on Mastodon as @[email protected], plus you can find me, Dale and Dylan, at Its MOSS dot com.
