After the announcement of the new (and awesome) Linux Mint Debian Edition, I realized something: Ubuntu has been, for all intensive purposes, replaced.

Think about it: Ubuntu came into being because of Debian's absurdly long release cycle. Mint came along with various enhancements, mostly focusing on user-friendliness. It has been called Ubuntu improved. With an edition utilizing Debian as a base, Mint has become Debian improved... exactly what Ubuntu intended to be.

I now use PCLinuxOS, but I gave LMDE a go and was impressed. It is certainly faster than the Ubuntu-based versions. After some of the fallout I witnessed with the coming of Lucid, Ubuntu may be on its way out as the most popular Linux distro.

Debian has this "absurdly" long release cycle for a good reason.
However, I tested it also, and i think its a good throw, it has the chance to become the number one distro for beginners and people who don't want to tinker with their systems. For such people in the past I recommended Ubuntu, will switch that to Mint Debian in future. I think the main advantage is that its a rolling release type of distro, so that you never have to reinstall.
I personally will stick to Debian for two reasons: First, why should I use the Debian Edition of a distribution if I can use the original? Second, I like Debian, because I love to tailor my systems to my needs, which can be very good accomplished with it (I think also with Arch) and has a great learning effect.

I don't think Linux Mint Debian Edition means the end of Ubuntu. I love Linux Mint because of its user-friendliness and speed, but Ubuntu has the Canonical marketing machine behind it, and they are VERY good at marketing their product.

I think it's a good thing for Linux Mint to adopt a rolling release based on Debian testing, or at least in one of their "editions", but I wouldn't call it an Ubuntu-killer just yet.

The stability of "stable" is unmatched, but out-of-date repositories and software was enough for me to search for an .rpm-based distro. Don't get me wrong, I love Debian, but it's a pain in the butt to try and get stable up to speed with the rest of FLOSS.

True, but Mint claims second place in the Linux world where the size of its user base is concerned-- all without a marketing machine.

This is where Backports is useful,if you use Debian Stable.

Just use testing, it as stable as it could be. I run two systems with unstable and hardly ever have problems.
Where did you get this from?

Mint's website claims it to be the 4th most used operating system in the world-- Windows, Mac, Ubuntu, Mint. Not sure how they got their numbers, but I find it believable.

Many core packages (Firefox and the linux kernel come to mind) are newer in Ubuntu than in LMDE so I imagine users who enjoy having the latest stuff will not be making the switch.

Sure, if they say so it must be true. I believe that there are more Debian users than Mint users, but sadly nobody has the numbers.

I don't think that Firefox is a core package. Besides that, as LMDE is Debian with some extras you can use Iceweasel 3.6.9 from the experimental repositories. I do it and had no problem so far. And if you change the underlying Debian repositories in Mint from squeeze to sid, most applications should be newer than Ubuntu, because Lucid Lynx is based on squeeze. And you have rolling release, so you will be cutting edge. That can be done with LMDE, but not with Ubuntu.

From Wikipedia:

I think Mint is pulling from the Distrowatch page hits, which are notoriously inaccurate in terms of measuring popularity.

As far as Iceweasel goes take your pick:


# apt-cache policy iceweasel
iceweasel:
Installed: 3.5.12-2
Candidate: 4.0~b5-0
Version table:
4.0~b5-0 0 ( same as the current Firefox Beta)
500 http://mozilla.debian.net/packages/ ./ Packages
3.6.10-1 0 (Same as the current Firefox release)
101 http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ experimental/main i386 Packages
3.5.13-1 0
500 http://mirrors.kernel.org/debian/ sid/main i386 Packages
*** 3.5.12-2 0
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

BTW most packages in Debian unstable are newer than the current Ubuntu release, and without having to add a million and one PPAs.

Never saw the need for Ubuntu or Mint, Debian already does it all.

And now they are more popular than Debian...

Why should I choose my favourite distro by popularity? With this logic you must be a Windows user, it is much more popular than Ubuntu and Mint together.

That is merely because Debian testing is frozen in preparation for a new stable release right now. Most of the time Debian testing has much newer packges than what can be found in Ubuntu.

Evo2.

That's not what I was saying. Debian does, indeed, "do it all," if you're willing to get it up and running yourself. For someone who wants an operating system that "just works," Ubuntu (and now Mint) are better choices.

I think Debian is great, and using it has helped me learn more about Linux and how an operating system works. But for day to day use, I want an OS that is already configured properly.

Windows is more popular because... well, let's not get into that.