Hi,

I am running Debian Testing and want to add some LMDE (Mint) repos but can't locate their public key, I would be grateful if somebody could point me in the direction please?

I don't want to get into the question of why, suffice it to say that I just want my computer to work how I want it to and Mint has too many packages unnecessarily dependent on others so that it is impossible to remove unwanted packages without losing a lot of other components, which I found out big time when I used:

So I have returned to Debian, Testing this time, and would like access to some of the repos that are created by the Mint team.

Please don't think I am putting Mint down, from a personal perspective I found Mate excellent, Cinnamon great, (why rename file managers and text editors though) and loved the way it just worked out of the box but I need to be able to wield the machete and "Meta Packages" are not for me, but Mint is brilliant way to introduced beginners to Linux with a community, rather than corporate maintained, distro.

There is a reason why I am asking this here, and not on the Mint forums, and that is that I tried to reset my password three times but still couldn't couldn't log in, not sure if it was me or them. I need to get this set up as I have a lot of work to catch up on.

I thank you in advance for your help.

If you can't login with privs to install software, no command we give you will matter.
Even I know that mixing REPOs is bad juju. You're on your own there.

I think you need the package linuxmint-keyring:
http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=861
Might I ask, out of curiosity if nothing else, which packages are available in Mint but not plain Debian?
Edit: I think you can download it here:
http://packages.linuxmint.com/search...la&section=any
Or just search using a different release (e.g. Quiana) if necessary.

Mixing Mint and Debian repositories is a bad, bad idea. Go ahead if you insist, but don't expect help before or after you do it. You're on your own there.

Fellow Linux users, thanks for your replies, as regards mixing repos, I need the function keys to work properly like they did with Mint and I don't know what package(s) provided this. Basically I would like the functionality that Mint provided out of the box with the awesomeness of Debian , which I consider the best OS going. I can't find anything in the Debian repos to do this so I want to add a couple of Mint repos that don't mirror the Debian ones, as for being on my own, everybody deserves some help, and those that like to explore get into strife at times, but that is how innovation occurs, not that I consider myself an innovator.

I'm not doing anything more radical than anybody who adds external repositories to their sources.list, as I am not intending to use Mint repos that provide the Debian core system, just some extras. I will back up the system before I stick my toe in the water so that I can easily undo any major problems I encounter.

Sincere thanks and best wishes.

Sounds like you need Debian backports. Adding the Mint repos will probably FUBAR your installation since the packages in Mint (and Ubuntu) are essentially the Sid or unstable packages for Debian.

External repositories that are designed to work with a particular distribution will usually work fine... with the distribution they're designed to work with.

Debian Stable is always an 'older vintage' than Mint or Ubuntu. That is the main reason it is so much more stable. It's like trying to mix Debian Stable and Debian Sid repositories. It can be done, in theory, but almost always results in an unstable and somewhat unpredictable mess.
You will most likely end up with apt complaining about broken packages. And the only reason most Linux users "won't" help you is because we know from our own experiences that fixing that mess is painful.

The best way is to try adding backports and see if that helps to provide the functionality you're looking for.

Have you looked into LMDE2? a.k.a "Betsy"?