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Linux Mint Debian Edition 10: Rolling Release Nirvana
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Comments (21)
1 earlier comment in the full thread.
There's never a last install ...
Ya think? I installed my Debian, like, 8 years ago and the only reason to do that again was a switch from 32 bit to 64 bit. Other than that it's constant rolling testing nirvana ;)
Just broke a personal rule to NEVER NEVER NEVER AGAIN put Debian on a computer in my home network, and put LMDE on my wife's workstation.
Seems pretty nice.
Will have to see how it goes.
> Just broke a personal rule to NEVER NEVER NEVER AGAIN put Debian on a computer in my home network...
Rules were made to be broken, Dino. :)
I need to set up a virtual machine and take a look at LMDE. I've been impressed by Mint itself, and I think I'd like LMDE even better.
Rules were made to be broken, Dino. :)
I need to set up a virtual machine and take a look at LMDE. I've been impressed by Mint itself, and I think I'd like LMDE even better.
My only gripe with LMDE so far is that it's GNOME-only. I use XFCE on my workstation and on the mythbox, so my wife has a different desktop from the other machines.
Its probably quite easy to get xfce, probably just some apt-get's and all is fine.
Then you choose the session on the login screen and you have your xfce =)
@jb:
Oh, I'm sure it is, but I think we'd lose all the "minty goodness", and that's kind of the point.
If GNOME proves too much of a distraction, however, off it will go.
Oh, I'm sure it is, but I think we'd lose all the "minty goodness", and that's kind of the point.
If GNOME proves too much of a distraction, however, off it will go.
@dino, I understand you, I never tried Linux Mint XFCE, but I can guess that there are changes made to the default interface.
And now I have my own LXer nickname, "jb"! Yay :-)
And now I have my own LXer nickname, "jb"! Yay :-)
Using Debian off and on since Etch, I really see the difference between releases. It's not like a six-month release where you're often scraping to find things that are new.
Even though Debian is a "release when ready" culture, for all practical purposes it's a 2-year cycle between releases. From Etch to Lenny and now to Squeeze, Debian (and by extension Linux in general) is getting much easier to set up, maintain and use.
More things work "right" out of the box in Squeeze than in previous releases; I need to do less tweaking with settings in GNOME and in apps.
Even though we all hear about installs of Debian, Slackware and what have you being in place for years and years and going through upgrade after upgrade (and I've aspired to that myself), in a practical sense I'm doing more reinstalls and fewer upgrades than ever.
Aside from lots of breakage (even with Debian in my case, going from Stable to Testing at the "wrong" time), it's nice to start with a clean slate every once in awhile. There are new filesystems to try, different disk setups, and in my case the effort to upgrade is way more than to reinstall.
I've figured out how to bring my browser and mail-client settings, FTP client settings, etc., from one system to another without completely screwing things up.
Re: Xfce ... my last system (Fedora) and the two before that (Ubuntu and OpenBSD) all ran Xfce at one point or other. It's a great desktop. Right now I've got more than enough hardware to be comfortable in GNOME, so that's what I'm doing.
I'm glad Xfce is there in case I don't like GNOME 3 / GNOME Shell, or it doesn't like me. It's very nice to have a full-featured environment at the ready in case things don't work out.
Even though Debian is a "release when ready" culture, for all practical purposes it's a 2-year cycle between releases. From Etch to Lenny and now to Squeeze, Debian (and by extension Linux in general) is getting much easier to set up, maintain and use.
More things work "right" out of the box in Squeeze than in previous releases; I need to do less tweaking with settings in GNOME and in apps.
Even though we all hear about installs of Debian, Slackware and what have you being in place for years and years and going through upgrade after upgrade (and I've aspired to that myself), in a practical sense I'm doing more reinstalls and fewer upgrades than ever.
Aside from lots of breakage (even with Debian in my case, going from Stable to Testing at the "wrong" time), it's nice to start with a clean slate every once in awhile. There are new filesystems to try, different disk setups, and in my case the effort to upgrade is way more than to reinstall.
I've figured out how to bring my browser and mail-client settings, FTP client settings, etc., from one system to another without completely screwing things up.
Re: Xfce ... my last system (Fedora) and the two before that (Ubuntu and OpenBSD) all ran Xfce at one point or other. It's a great desktop. Right now I've got more than enough hardware to be comfortable in GNOME, so that's what I'm doing.
I'm glad Xfce is there in case I don't like GNOME 3 / GNOME Shell, or it doesn't like me. It's very nice to have a full-featured environment at the ready in case things don't work out.
> ...Slackware and what have you being in place for years and years and going through upgrade after upgrade...
While it's possible to upgrade Slackware (Patrick includes directions for doing so with each release), it's not recommended. The recommended way to upgrade Slackware is to back up your data and reinstall.
While it's possible to upgrade Slackware (Patrick includes directions for doing so with each release), it's not recommended. The recommended way to upgrade Slackware is to back up your data and reinstall.
I used to think people were being excessively paranoid by always reinstalling instead of upgrading. Now I'm with them.
That's why if you want to upgrade, you should pick a distro which was designed for upgrading!
I don't like reinstalling, takes too much time to retrieve my data, reconfigure settings and so on. It reminds me far too much of Windows.
One of the pro's of Linux over Windows is you can use it like a house, expand, built, keep it tidy and upgrade. No need to store all your personal belongings in the garden, wipe your house and rebuild. Apart from that, of course you might not have the time to rebuilt your house because there is more in your life that wiping your house and rebuilding it all day and night. No, that Windows-like behaviour doesn't work for me; it was one of the reasons I left that platform.
I don't like reinstalling, takes too much time to retrieve my data, reconfigure settings and so on. It reminds me far too much of Windows.
One of the pro's of Linux over Windows is you can use it like a house, expand, built, keep it tidy and upgrade. No need to store all your personal belongings in the garden, wipe your house and rebuild. Apart from that, of course you might not have the time to rebuilt your house because there is more in your life that wiping your house and rebuilding it all day and night. No, that Windows-like behaviour doesn't work for me; it was one of the reasons I left that platform.
Even in "designed for upgrading" situations, I've run into problems. I think for Debian, if you start with Stable or Testing and immediately upgrade (from Stable to Testing or Testing to Sid) before you start messing with it, things might go well.
In my case, I had a Stable system for a long time and wanted to upgrade it to Testing (this was more than six months ago, when Squeeze was that much farther from it's nearly Stable status now), and it went horribly wrong. The move to Udev killed me. Had I know that I needed a newer kernel before doing the upgrade, I would have gotten that. I imagine that now the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze takes care of this, but at the time it didn't. I ended up with a broken system.
I don't think Debian officially advocates upgrading from Stable to Testing at any given point and does make sure that Stable to Stable upgrades work, so I'm not blaming Debian in any way. There's a perception out there that a dist-upgrade of Debian cannot fail, and that's just not my experience.
However, I went into the upgrade as I always do, with full backups of my user files, so I was able to get a working system going the same day.
In the future I would prefer not only to have the user files backed up but also an image of the whole drive so I could restore things just as they were if the upgrade goes badly. I've never imaged a whole system drive (aside from the Mac, where I use Superduper, which does this) using Clonezilla, but that's something I'll definitely be looking into in the future.
Now that I'm running Squeeze (installed about a month ago), I'm in excellent shape, and if I can manage to incorporate Backports where needed, I could stick with it for longer than usual.
I don't think I've run anything more than six continuous months, and usually I'm good for one to three months if a distro/project is working out.
In my case, I had a Stable system for a long time and wanted to upgrade it to Testing (this was more than six months ago, when Squeeze was that much farther from it's nearly Stable status now), and it went horribly wrong. The move to Udev killed me. Had I know that I needed a newer kernel before doing the upgrade, I would have gotten that. I imagine that now the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze takes care of this, but at the time it didn't. I ended up with a broken system.
I don't think Debian officially advocates upgrading from Stable to Testing at any given point and does make sure that Stable to Stable upgrades work, so I'm not blaming Debian in any way. There's a perception out there that a dist-upgrade of Debian cannot fail, and that's just not my experience.
However, I went into the upgrade as I always do, with full backups of my user files, so I was able to get a working system going the same day.
In the future I would prefer not only to have the user files backed up but also an image of the whole drive so I could restore things just as they were if the upgrade goes badly. I've never imaged a whole system drive (aside from the Mac, where I use Superduper, which does this) using Clonezilla, but that's something I'll definitely be looking into in the future.
Now that I'm running Squeeze (installed about a month ago), I'm in excellent shape, and if I can manage to incorporate Backports where needed, I could stick with it for longer than usual.
I don't think I've run anything more than six continuous months, and usually I'm good for one to three months if a distro/project is working out.
Phooey on wiping/reinstalling Slackware. I've run -current for years now, and in the last few years I've been keeping /home and its backup in separate partitions (on separate drives, for safety). Technically, I could wipe and re-install just about anytime, but I've never had a need to.
The only tidbit of advice I'd give about running -current, is to keep stuff that's package-managed, separate from your own stuff, especially what's in /etc, /usr/local, and /var/www. The /etc files generally aren't touched after the first install, but they'll be a hassle to recover after a hard drive crash.
The only tidbit of advice I'd give about running -current, is to keep stuff that's package-managed, separate from your own stuff, especially what's in /etc, /usr/local, and /var/www. The /etc files generally aren't touched after the first install, but they'll be a hassle to recover after a hard drive crash.
> I've run -current for years now...
Well, if you're running current, then obviously the upgrade vs. reinstall debate is rather immaterial. :)
I usually upgrade if I'm keeping the same machine and reinstall if I'm upgrading my machine. But then, I don't run current.
Well, if you're running current, then obviously the upgrade vs. reinstall debate is rather immaterial. :)
I usually upgrade if I'm keeping the same machine and reinstall if I'm upgrading my machine. But then, I don't run current.
Your lucky 'jb'..dino has given others nicknames that were not as 'mundane', or printable..lol.
Love you dino..
Scott
Love you dino..
Scott
>Love you dino
That's what my wife says, but she backs it up!
That's what my wife says, but she backs it up!
@Scott: Well, then I should thank dino :-)
Thanks dino!
@jb:
You're welcome. but be advised: I reserve the right to change it at any time.
Which reminds me -- haven't seen scrunchedupoldchihuahuaface around here lately...
You're welcome. but be advised: I reserve the right to change it at any time.
Which reminds me -- haven't seen scrunchedupoldchihuahuaface around here lately...
@dino, of course! I'll be good, no grievous errors for you anymore :p
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