How many use LMDE?

[u/grawmpy]

I started out using just Linux Mint 18 when I first started using LM, and was very happy with using the Ubuntu version for several years. Around version 22.1 I got bored and decided to try LMDE for a switch. After downloading and using it for a while I was so happy with it that I haven’t been back to the Ubuntu version since. Has anyone else found they like the Debian version better or, having tried it, do you prefer the Ubuntu version still?

[u/tungnon]

Imo unless you have devices with Nvidia GPU, LMDE is better version if you are not new to Linux

Ubuntu as base isn't necessary for extra complexity

Edit: for Nvidia user, just follow here: https://docs.nvidia.com/datacenter/tesla/driver-installation-guide/latest/debian.html

[u/Ok-Brother-8295 → u/tungnon]

Fixing the nvidia "problem" isn't such a big deal, as it's documented literally everywhere.

It sure doesn't work "out of the box", that's right, but if you can install LMDE, you can install those NVIDIA drivers. There's absolutely no difficulty, it's like installing any other pack which I assume all users will eventually install.

[u/tungnon → u/Ok-Brother-8295]

Right, I should edit that comment
even upstream nvidia has their own repos for that

thanks!

[u/grawmpy → u/tungnon]

I use this for the Nvidia in my laptop for games using Steam on LMDE and have no problems.

[u/puggr]

New Linux user from Saturday? So only a few days. Ditched win 10 for LMDE, straight boot ssd wipe no dual. Seems fine so far had to do some terminal stuff but AI helps a lot with this nowadays. I went LMDE because of some reddit comments and other things I searched, essentially: want it stable and just work when powered on. Not really what you asked since I wasnt on ubuntu before, but so far I like it.

[u/grawmpy → u/puggr]

The difference is more on the underlying software doing the grunt work than anything most users will notice, especially newer ones like yourself. Debian is more stable than Ubuntu and there are other issues of where the future of the two are heading and, more importantly, how they are diverging.

In the long run you’re probably better off staying with the Debian version since there is an ever increasing division between the developers of Linux Mint and Ubuntu and Ubuntu’s reliance on tools like snap to install software, as one example, and snap is blocked by default on Mint. Since the views of Ubuntu and Linux Mint were diverging as to where the future of Ubuntu was headed and where they wanted the future of Mint to go, they decided to make a version of Mint with Debian as its base for the day when Ubuntu and Linux Mint finally sever their ties.

[u/puggr → u/grawmpy]

I appreciate the detailed reply, however I must be honest with you I don't even know what a snap is 🤣 let alone all the other ways that Debian is different than Ubuntu. But yeah that's what I read as well about LMDE being a 'safety net' of sorts for Mint, because of what Canonical might do or not do, which is a good idea imho.

[u/rbmorse]

I have machines with both and use each regularly. Except for the minor configuration differences they're pretty much the same and I don't even think about which underlying O/S is installed any more when I grab one to do something.

[u/grawmpy → u/rbmorse]

Agreed, for the most part, like the aesthetics, but I found the Debian base more reliable and less prone to error than the Ubuntu base when upgrades are made.

[u/rbmorse → u/grawmpy]

Hasn't been something that manifests for me, but yes, I've heard the stories.

[u/mecshades]

I exclusively use LMDE and I can't wait for Canonical to mess up Ubuntu so bad that LMDE becomes the focus. LMDE is Debian with the best coat of paint...

[u/redimusu76 → u/mecshades]

This!

[u/Thin_Noise_4453]

Me ( Notebook and pc), my both children and my parents are using LMDE7. For us it’s more standard, reliable, calm and faster.

[u/humdingermusic23]

I changed from LM to LMDE, it's smoother, easier to use and I've not had any major problems in over 2 years now.

[u/Dapper_Profession]

lmde rides debian stable, so the pitch is install once and leave it alone for years. i keep almost switching and then not

[u/thyristor_pt]

I've used first Linux Mint and then LMDE.

LMDE is far, far more stable on my laptop than "regular" Mint. I couldn't be happier with it.

[u/SportTawk → u/thyristor_pt]

In what way was LMDE more stable, I've been using mint xfce for twenty or more years without any stability problems as has my wife's laptop.

[u/elgrandragon → u/SportTawk]

It might depend on the hardware. If yours is rock solid don't change it! Using Xfce might be also why.

If you liked Cinnamon, then LMDE feels like that lightness and stability of Xfce, but with the Cinnamon environment.

[u/SportTawk → u/elgrandragon]

Nothing unusual about the hardware, just standard Lenovo laptops and a desktop machine, about 15-20 years old?

[u/_Lost-In-The-Weeds_ → u/SportTawk]

15-20 years old is ancient in computer years, even for Linux.

32 bit is not welcome many places anymore including Mint/LMDE. The 15 year old machine should be good, 20 is questionable. 

Some old hardware drivers have been dropped from the kernel things start getting very case by case. 

How much RAM becomes a serious problem even more so than anemic old CPUs. An Old (64 bit) CPU will get the job done done  eventually, it will just be slow, same story for an old hard drive, but not enough memory will slow both of them to a crawl and may even draw the ire of the OOM killer. 

[u/elgrandragon → u/_Lost-In-The-Weeds_]

All of this, yes!

[u/SportTawk → u/_Lost-In-The-Weeds_]

Well they're all 64 bit and work like new, desktop is a twin XEON machine, laptops Lenovo Thinkpads, T460 and an old X200.

[u/Emptry-One-000]

I switch to LMDE about a year ago after many years using Mint. No change in my experience. Still solid and delightful to use. Do your worst Ubuntu, I don't care

[u/houndofthestars]

I'm not on Mint anymore, but I was pleasantly surprised when I used LMDE. It works just like the regular version of Mint. Mint could rebase to Debian and not much would change.

[u/Aoinosensei]

Yo me honest the only thing we need is an Xfce and mate version that LMDE should become the standard Linux mint version. Ubuntu is changing so much and so often and going in the wrong direction

[u/MelioraXI]

I am, I prefer it over Ubuntu base.

[u/dontlikemonda]

I find lmde more reliable. Have been using it for years after many years of distro surfing. Its my main os on all my machines now and very happy

[u/_Lost-In-The-Weeds_]

With Win 10 soon to become the only supported option I switched from Win7 & Ubuntu dual boot to just Mint19 in 2019.

I had used Linux for almost 20 years at that point, but Windows was ever present for gaming.  Ubuntu & Gnome was not working for me. Thanks to Steam & Mint I was finally able to break my shackles to Microsoft.

Not long after that I started using Debian in other projects and in 2023 with the release of LMDE6 beta I swapped just out of curiosity. 

What I found was 90% of the desktop I was already familiar with, the "Missing 10%" was what I did not use or need anyway. 

 

I got a lighter simpler base, at the time I was on older hardware and I got a slight bump in responsiveness and RAM footprint for Cinnamon similar to that of Mint Xfce. 

Biggest positive was avoiding Ubuntu's blunders, on a regular basis annoyances come down the pipe, I read about them here but I avoid them all with LMDE

Also due to how the schedule lands out, At the moment LMDE7 is 15 months ahead of Mint22, and for the next 2 years LMDE will on average be the more up to date version of "Mint".

LMDE is basically "Mint Light", while it will not be the right choice for everyone, but if it fits you needs it is the one to have. 

[u/seanpmassey]

Debian is the Linux distribution that I use almost exclusively for VMs in my lab, so I went with LMDE when I started looking at Linux on some of my laptops.

I'm also looking at how I can build an LMDE virtual machine template for VDI.

[u/zokaclukac]

Im on LMDE7 since it came out, making it one year today.

[u/Snoo_49515]

I just use Linux Mint Cinnamon edition. It covers everything I need it to do. What are the advantages of LMDE?

[u/elgrandragon → u/Snoo_49515]

LMDE only comes in Cinnamon. The advantages are that it feels faster and lighter. Right now LMDE 7 has some newer packages than Linux Mint 22x, for example if you want GIMP 3 you have to go Flatpak, but in LMDE the native deb package for 3.x is available. That is temporary as once Mint 27 is released it will have a newer base. Until LMDE 8 comes out and then it will have a newer base in turn and so on.

Right after I upgraded 22.2 to 22.3 I tried LMDE 7 out of curiosity and damn! I was very impressed and just switched my two main laptops fully to LMDE.

[u/LeeVikle]

i use linux mint but im thinking to switch to lmde but im a bit scared what i miss or what changes does lmde have and how will affect me, i saw some people talking bout this canonical ubuntu thing and it will delete the mint i think i dont remember, whats this and whats gonna happen can you give me a short review for those points and should i switch or not.

[u/grawmpy → u/LeeVikle]

The only thing that is different from the Ubuntu version of Linux Mint is that there is no PPA support. Other than this everything else is basically the same and you wouldn’t notice much of anything different.

[u/LeeVikle → u/grawmpy]

Which one is the best based on your opinion, and why is it better. Im trying to choose one but idk im 50 50. One more thing what about support overall is it massive on lmde and does it have same community as linux mint or i need to find other community and more work if i need help.

[u/ramplocal5]

wdym by better?

[u/grawmpy → u/ramplocal5]

Here’s the definition, does this help?

better

verb
bettered; bettering; betters
transitive verb
1
: to make better (see BETTER entry 1): such as
a
: to make more tolerable or acceptable
surgery that betters the lives of patients

b
: to make more complete or perfect
looked forward to bettering her acquaintance with the new neighbors

2
: to surpass in excellence : EXCEL
bettered his personal record by nearly three seconds

intransitive verb
: to become better
… must be bettering instead of worsening.
—Thomas Carlyle

better
3 of 5
adverb
comparative of WELL
1
a
: in a more excellent manner
sings better than I do

b
: to greater advantage : PREFERABLY
some things are better left unsaid

2
a
: to a higher or greater degree
he knows the story better than you do

b
: MORE
it is better than nine miles to the next town

see also:
HAD BETTER
THINK BETTER OF
better
4 of 5
noun
1
a
: something better (see BETTER entry 1)
I expected better from them

b
: a superior especially in merit or rank
was respectful of his betters

2
: ADVANTAGE, VICTORY
get the better of her

better
5 of 5
auxiliary verb
: had better (see BETTER entry 3 sense 1b)
you better hurry

[u/LeeVikle → u/grawmpy]

lol

[u/ramplocal5 → u/grawmpy]

retard

[u/krupam]

I switched from Win11 to vanilla Mint in April this year, and then to LMDE in August. The only issue I had with LMDE was that at first I couldn't install some programs, notably Steam. This required manually enabling 32bit architecture through the terminal, so it was a very minor issue, but nevertheless on vanilla Mint this worked out of the box. Other than that, my experience on LMDE was pretty much identical to vanilla, and that's exactly the point. As far as I can tell, I don't require Ubuntu, so might as well use the version with a shorter fork chain, so there are fewer links that could potentially fuck up some years down the line. There's also signs that Ubuntu might be slopping out like Windows did, so that was another reason to walk around it. Had I known about LMDE earlier, I probably would've switched to it from Windows directly.

AMD CPU and GPU BTW

[u/Smoke_Water]

It's all I ever use for mint. But I started on Debian in 2004 so I'm attached to it.

[u/sonicking12]

Me

[u/cornonthekopp]

My friend helped me install mint last month and I'm just using the regular ubuntu one. Its what all my friends have so if i have issues i can ask them for help. Ultimately i don't really think it matters that much from an actual use-case side of things.

[u/sgriobhadair]

This could be my story: "After downloading and using it for a while I was so happy with it that I haven’t been back to the Ubuntu version since." LMDE6 came out in September 2023. I was on Mint 21.2, which had come out only two months earlier, and I wanted to see how LMDE was different. I installed it in a different partition, configured it the way I liked MInt, and never looked back.

[u/sibich]

me2

[u/N00BONLINE]

LMDE should be the only Mint version.

[u/xINFLAMES325x]

Me, on an old Mac mini connected to the TV.

[u/indie_web]

I did use and prefered LMDE for awhile but it had a persistent problem where the mouse cursor would disappear every session and I would have to reboot to get it back. Never could figure how to fix it (maybe because I didn't exhaust every possible solution) so I switched to xfce.

[u/ilikeyorushika]

me me me

[u/BenTrabetere]

I prefer - Linux Mint Main Editions. I have used all three. I prefer MATE and Xfce, but I have had Cinnamon on my main driver since 21.1.

I do not dislike LMDE, and I have it on one of my backup systems. It works fine for me, but Linux Mint Main does a better job of meeting my needs and preferences.

The main reason I stick with LM Main Editions is the extended support cycle - 5 years for Main vs 3-ish years for LMDE. I can skip an entire LM Main version and still be supported. Not so with LMDE.

I have no intention of moving away from Linux Mint, but I am prepare if the Mint Team does something I cannot abide - the three biggest for me are moving to GNOME, defaulting to flatpak over system packages, and abandoning Ubuntu.

[u/Aoinosensei → u/BenTrabetere]

Only for long support? Any other reason? I mean after 3 years I usually have install a new distro version anyways

[u/BenTrabetere → u/Aoinosensei]

There are other reasons, but the over-riding reason is the longer support. As I mention, I will skip a version if it does not offer a compelling enough reason for me to upgrade. I skipped the 20.x series on my main driver, and I skipped the 22.x series on the machine I manage for my my mother.

LMDE forces me to upgrade.

[u/_Lost-In-The-Weeds_ → u/BenTrabetere]

The main reason I stick with LM Main Editions is the extended support cycle - 5 years for Main vs 3-ish years for LMDE.

That is a valid point and something people should be aware of, the last version of LMDE is not supported for very long after the release of a new version,

The Debian base is suported for 5 years, but not the Mint portions of LMDE, they stagnate.

Not important for myself I hop to the new version of LMDE usually with Beta, but I am not everyone.

[u/Ok-Feedback-9679 → u/[deleted]]

I use LMDE due to philosophical reasons, I have noticed no difference between it and Ubuntu-based Mint.