i am wondering about who uses the mint debian version and what you think of it - pro's and cons too. thanks.

wow - i am surprised - i figured maybe a few would be running it. Thanks anyway.

Pretty sure the userbase is tiny - no real advantage, IMHO, to running it over pure Debian. I think, and I may be mistaken, but the Mint folks were or are considering changing the base from Ubuntu to Debian so this is a test bed for that.

i understand - but i guess that is why i was curious. also as to pure debian vs the lmde version - --- a comparison. not knowing very much but struggled with linux for 15 yrs. i have always been curious about debian. that is all.

Debian works well, at least the times I have used it it did. The installer isn't bad, but for someone new, perhaps not the easiest. Mint installer is very good, but can't speak to the LMDE one because I've never used it.

When you say "struggled with Linux", are you installing on a laptop? Most major distributions (OpenSuse, Mint, Ubuntu) too many others to list, have good installers, but laptop hardware can be problematic because laptop vendors always use different, proprietary components. Most are supported but there can be issues with some things. Just look through the forums here and you'll see a lot of laptop issues. That's not to say all laptops are bad, but you may have more challenges.

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thanks seven - yes i used to many years ago - but after linux developed more and some distro's sorted some of the stuff out and i also only use thinkpads now all is a whole lot better. but a long time ago - wireless was always an issue and printer support and a couple of other things. it has come a long way.

thanks again. since ubuntu and mint and bodhi which i have run for years now are all based on debian in their own way as a base i was curious. :-)))

Got it, understand. Linux has come a very long way, but you are right: some hardware you need to do research on before you buy. I have been using Linux as my desktop since 1998, until last year anyway, and always research before I buy hardware. Just something I've forced myself to do. Worked fine so far!

by the way - i was also interested in bsd or free bsd but figured it was way out of my league. this has been a struggle enough as i have said. i have used linux 100% for about 3-4 years now - used to have a macbook pro and osx as a backup - but since then i made the leap when i saw what apple and the drm stuff was doing - now i only use linux.

have a good one....

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I think it's more of a plan B (or part of the rationality for it is anyway). If Ubuntu eventually goes in a direction that Mint doesn't like, the Mint developers can fall back on their direct-from-Debian experience with LMDE.

More here:

https://www.networkworld.com/article...inux-mint.html

I once installed Mint temporarily on a laptop because I wanted to take advantage of Mint's good coverage of proprietary drivers. A good thing I did, because that machine had a Broadcom wifi card that wouldn't work without the b41 driver. Mint makes that kind of thing a doddle to install and once you've got it, you can save it to use in any other distro.

I chose LMDE rather than standard Mint because I trust Debian more than Ubuntu. Perhaps other users feel the same way.

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that was kind of my thought too

hemlocktree, you might want to post your question on Mint's LMDE forum (https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewforum.php?f=244). That way you should get more responses from people that use LMDE.

thanks but i hate signing up for all types of forums... just been there and done that. just many personal reasons -

i was curious enough to recently signup to a debian forum and when i saw people treating everyone so rudely and arrogantly nasty and swearing etc., and said enough and left. i had some guy here who started on me and i said something and i was handed an infraction whatever that means and the guy who was nasty and started stuff had breakfast in bed. i realize he was an exception since most people here are really nice but i hate forums. before this one i was on bodhi and a tractor forum. that was and is it. maybe this answers your question. the pm seems not to work here so i could not say it private.

by the way - i am most pleased with bodhi - so that is not the issue. just really wanted to know more about debian. do not have an extra laptop to install it on and have never run stuff virtually - just not into that either sorry to say.

I'm curious about your Debian experience. Was it the official Debian forum or the breakaway Debian Users Forum that you went to? I suspect the latter if you found a lot of bad temper there!

You don't need an extra machine to install another distro. You can dual-boot two or more Linuxes without needing any kind of virtualisation. I've been doing it for years.

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