#linux mint debian edition

[sl33py-g4m3r]

Linix-Unix-BSD Laptop Journey~~ (and some questions again)

yet another question~~ tho up to my own musings and uncertainty at this point~~

I'm too afraid to try to install FreeBSD cause I'm worried I won't be able to dig up some needed internet info and that makes me feel dumb~~ is the Domain Name not the Hostname or name of the wifi? or would it be my ISP's website or something?

I like tech but not knowing this makes me feel stupid lol even though I'm probably not~~~ and that's just anxiety lying to me~~~

also is there any point in moving from Linux Mint Debian Edition 6 to Debian 11 disks that I have burned?

the only one with the zoom feature (unless I install something if I can find it) is the Cinnamon Desktop, and at that point I see no point on dropping Mint for pure Debian in that case....

need accessibility for my blind butt (despite also being stubborn and not using it half the time anyway lol)

ALSO none of the debian live CDs that I tried saw my WIFI and idk why~~ and they're all debian 11...

might need to download newer versions and burn them to disk I guess~~

or maybe if I installed one of them anyway, and actually hooked it to ethernet, then installed updates whether it would see my wifi then? idk

found a distro that doesn't use SystemD called PCLinuxOS and thought about giving that a try, but idk if it's good for someone like me, but I got a handle sort of on fedora back in the day.

So currently stuck on linux mint debian edition cause I'm afraid to give freebsd a try due to maybe not having the network information requited and idk where to find it~~ and cause debian just straight up wouldn't see my wifi~~ tho I've also said before in this post that idk if it's a good idea or not to go from linux mint debian, to straight debian.... cause I'm going to be stuck with the Cinnamon desktop anyway~~

like yesterday I spent all morning booting into all the debian live CDs that I had; except for the standard which I think is GNOME, and none of them could even SEE my wifi or ANY wifi

now I hate that I seem like the person that just wants things to work instead of tinker w stuff to get it to work, cause that's part of the fun and frustration of being on linux I suppose~~~ and I really hope I'm smart enough to figure stuff out~~

would be happy to eventually jump to a more unix like OS cause I believe the backbone of the internet is UNIX anyway~~ :)

I like to think I'm a nerd and a techie but at the same time think I'm stupid and don't know anything~~ if I'm being brutally honest w myself~~ but I guess you got to be feeling stupid to learn huh?

tldr; and making the questions more easily found~~ my journey through linux/bsd computer systems so far, and where I'm at....

Is it worth it to install pure debian if I'm already using linux mint debian (and the wifi actually works), should I get away from SystemD and try to install PCLinuxOS? or FreeBSD? am I smart enough to install FreeBSD? What network information do I need and where can I find it?

and yet another random question at the bottom cause I remembered a linux youtube channel where they talked about a bunch of stuff way back in the 2010s I think called "Jupiter Broadcasting" what happened to them?

wanted to go eventually to FreeBSD cause it's more unix like than linux, and i think more cohesive as a whole as opposed to bits and pieces mossaic'd together in linux.... also if it is more unix based, unix as far as I'm aware is the backbone of the internet if I'm remembering correctly~~ and I'd be happy to use it~~~

so idk what I'm doing~~ lol, stay on linux mint debian cause it works? try to get FreeBSD installed, try to find out how to fix debian not seeing my WIFI (I'd hoped that if I installed it and connected it to ethernet that updates would fix that), or install PCLinuxOS that I found? cause it looks neat~~~

more history about myself~~ as dumb as it sounds, or maybe not, my dad was into tech, he'd built his first computer and if it wasn't for him pirating some version of windows, we never would've had it, lol. but ye he was a techie, and he showed me the 1995 movie "hackers". I watched that on repeat through my teenage years for some reason~~ the music was good, and now I learnt that that's not actually bow hacking works, lol it's a cheesy film.... but that sparked an interest in technology and eventually led me to finding linux to begin with. and Unix~~ cause I thought it was something that my dad and I could do together~~~ but we never did...... but the techie interest stuck~~~~ I need to rewatch that film and find the soundtrack CDs I have~~~ been a while~~~~

second guessing it am I even smart enough to run anything other than linux mint anyway? probably yes but I doubt my own intelligence, lol. especially I think anyone irl I've shown my writing to or talked to say that I'm "smart as a whip" but I don't see it.... :(

[autolenaphilia]

LMDE 6 Beta First impressions.

I've been trying out the Linux Mint Debian Edition 6 public beta for little over a day now, and I have no complaints or bugs so far. LMDE is the version of Linux Mint that is based directly on Debian rather than Ubuntu, unlike the mainline Mint distro. LMDE 6, "Faye", is based on Debian 12. The point is to become as similar in features as the regular Ubuntu version. And it exists as a Plan B in case Ubuntu disappears or becomes unuseable as a base for Mint.

And It's good that this safety plan exists, because Canonical and Ubuntu are not that reliable. The Mint devs has had to rebel against Canonical's decisions multiple times, creating work for them. The Mint documentation has an entire page criticizing Canonical's preferred package format, Snap and why it's not included by default in Mint. The version of Firefox included in Mint is packaged by the devs themselves, since the Ubuntu version of Firefox is a snap (and if you try to install it via Apt, it will install a snap package instead). And ubuntu is moving more and more towards snaps, including an immutable all-snap Ubuntu. If that becomes the default Ubuntu release, derivative distros that don't use snap are pretty much finished.

I started my Linux journey with Mint, but moved upstream to Debian for awhile precisely because I was not comfortable with my operating system standing on such unsure ground. And unlike most Ubuntu-based distros (of which there are many), it's smart of the Mint team to realize that and create LMDE as a plan B. And now I'm on LMDE, because well that moves my computer off Ubuntu, while also enabling me to support Mint, which remains such an important part of the LInux ecosystem for being so beginner-friendly.

So how it is as a distro? How does it compare to mainline Ubuntu? and what does it add to its Debian base?

LMDE uses Debian stable, and as such the packages are outdated, but it's rocksolid stable. I'm running the beta, and because it's debian-based, the majority of the packages were well-tested by the time Debian 12 was released. So I haven't found any bugs so far. And Mint includes flatpaks by default, so you can get newer software in sandboxed containers without sacrificing overall system stability.

Mint adds to the basic Debian experience in many ways, the main addition is the many GUI tools Mint has developed. The software manager handles both debs and flatpaks by default with a slick interface. And the update manager handles updates with friendly non-pushy notifications, I've sang its praises before. Mint also provides tools to manage your software sources (to switch to a local mirror for example) and to create a backup of your home folder.

These tools are what make Mint so famously easy to use, as I written about before. For most common use cases, you never need to see the command line. It's similar to what MX Linux adds to Debian, which I've written about here. I think Mint probably has better looking and more intuitive GUI design than the MX equivalents, although the MX tools have more features. They are both great.

KDE Plasma and Gnome desktops does add somewhat similar functionality to base Debian, but I have reasons not to use those DEs. Gnome lacks customizability and forces a particular workflow, while I found Plasma to be a complete crashfest.

I ended up using xfce, which best met my needs, it's lightweight, easy to use and stable. And I didn't want to pollute it by pulling in bits of other desktops with all its dependencies. It did however require me to use the command line for things like installing and updating flatpaks, and i found running "sudo apt update" and "sudo apt upgrade" easier than using synaptic. I had figured out the command line by that point, so I could make do without the functionality of Mint, but the Mint tools are great to have. Having update notifications is great for an absent-minded person like me.

And they are sometimes objectively better than their Debian equivalents. For example the software sources manager that is in the Debian repos has been broken for months with a bug that leaves your apt.sources.list in a broken state that cuts your OS off from security updates, something I discovered the hard way and I had to manually edit my sources.list to fix it. The Mint equivalent works perfectly fine.

There is a lot of polish for desktop users In LMDE compared to base debian. It does add a lot of value that way.

How is it compared to ubuntu-based Mint (LMUE) though? And as someone who used LMUE cinnamon for months, I have to say the majority of functionality is all there. My experience is basically the same.

The only thing missing I could find is the driver manager, which can be very useful as it detects missing hardware drivers and pulls them in from either online or the installation media. The driver manager is to my understanding tied into Ubuntu's repos for additional drivers. Ubuntu has some of the best hardware support in the LInux distro world. Debian however has compromised their commitment to free software in favor of practicality, and now includes non-free drivers with their installation media by default, so maybe that functionality is not that necessary anymore. I've had no problems with wi-fi and blu-ray drivers on this laptop I'm typing this on, even with base Debian.

Another thing missing in LMDE is a choice of desktop environments by default. You only get cinnamon, the flagship DE developed by the Mint devs primarily for MInt. LMUE also offers Mate and Xfce by default. This is because LMDE is a "Plan B", and supporting multiple DEs on a second base would mean a too heavy workload for the devs. The Debian repos does however have Mate and Xfce in its massive package selection, plus several more DEs, and you can install them manually If you want, and still use the MInt tools, I tried it with xfce myself.

As a derivate distro, LMDE does also drag behind Debian releases quite a bit, when a new Debian drops it takes awhile for Mint to develop an LMDE version based on it. LMDE 6 was a quick turnaround by LMDE standards and it still took like three months after Debian 12's release. LMUE's turnaround for Ubuntu LTS releases is far quicker, because it remains a relative priority for the devs.

Still LMDE 6 is here now, and it's a great distro. It proves that Linux Mint is not relaint on Ubuntu, and adds useful functionalities to its Debian base.

[brandinotbroke]

Linux distros - what is the difference, which one should I choose?

Caution, VERY long post.

With more and more simmers looking into linux lately, I've been seeing the same questions over and over again: Which distro should I choose? Is distro xyz newbie-friendly? Does this program work on that distro?

So I thought I'd explain the concept of "distros" and clear some of that up.

What are the key differences between distros?

Linux distros are NOT different operating systems (they're all still linux!) and the differences between them aren't actually as big as you think.

Update philosophy: Some distros, like Ubuntu, (supposedly) focus more on stability than being up-to-date. These distros will release one big update once every year or every other year and they are thoroughly tested. However, because the updates are so huge, they inevitably tend to break stuff anyway. On the other end of the spectrum are so-called "rolling release" distros like Arch. They don't do big annual updates, but instead release smaller updates very frequently. They are what's called "bleeding edge" - if there is something new out there, they will be the first ones to get it. This can of course impact stability, but on the other hand, stuff gets improved and fixed very fast. Third, there are also "middle of the road" distros like Fedora, which kind of do... both. Fedora gets big version updates like Ubuntu, but they happen more frequently and are comparably smaller, thus being both stable and reasonably up-to-date.

Package manager: Different distros come with different package managers (APT on ubuntu, DNF on Fedora, etc.). Package managers keep track of all the installed programs on your PC and allow you to update/install/remove programs. You'll often work with the package manager in the terminal: For example, if you want to install lutris on Fedora, you'd type in "sudo dnf install lutris" ("sudo" stands for "super user do", it's the equivalent of administrator rights on Windows). Different package managers come with different pros and cons.

Core utilities and programs: 99% of distros use the same stuff in the background (you don’t even directly interact with it, e.g. background process managing). The 1% that do NOT use the same stuff are obscure distros like VoidLinux, Artix, Alpine, Gentoo, Devuan. If you are not a Linux expert, AVOID THOSE AT ALL COST.

Installation process: Some distros are easier to install than others. Arch is infamous for being a bit difficult to install, but at the same time, its documentation is unparalleled. If you have patience and good reading comprehension, installing arch would literally teach you all you ever need to know about Linux. If you want to go an easier and safer route for now, anything with an installer like Mint or Fedora would suit you better.

Community: Pick a distro with an active community and lots of good documentation! You’ll need help. If you are looking at derivatives (e.g. ZorinOS, which is based on Ubuntu which is based on Debian), ask yourself: Does this derivative give you enough benefits to potentially give up community support of the larger distro it is based on? Usually, the answer is no.

Okay, but what EDITION of this distro should I choose?

"Editions" or “spins” usually refer to variations of the same distro with different desktop environments. The three most common ones you should know are GNOME, KDE Plasma and Cinnamon.

GNOME's UI is more similar to MacOS,  but not exactly the same.

KDE Plasma looks and feels a lot like Windows' UI, but with more customization options.

Cinnamon is also pretty windows-y, but more restricted in terms of customization and generally deemed to be "stuck in 2010". 

Mint vs. Pop!_OS vs. Fedora

Currently, the most popular distros within the Sims community seem to be Mint and Fedora (and Pop!_OS to some extent). They are praised for being "beginner friendly". So what's the difference between them?

Both Mint and Pop!_OS are based on Ubuntu, whereas Fedora is a "standalone" upstream distro, meaning it is not based on another distro.

Personally, I recommend Fedora over Mint and Pop!_OS for several reasons. To name only a few:

I mentioned above that Ubuntu's update philosophy tends to break things once a big update rolls around every two years. Since both Mint and Pop!_OS are based on Ubuntu, they are also affected by this.

Ubuntu, Mint and Pop!_OS like to modify their stuff regularly for theming/branding purposes, but this ALSO tends to break things. It is apparently so bad that there is an initiative to stop this.

Pop!_OS uses the GNOME desktop environment, which I would not recommend if you are switching from Windows. Mint offers Cinnamon, which is visually and technically outdated (they use the x11 windowing system standard from 1984), but still beloved by a lot of people. Fedora offers the more modern KDE Plasma.

Personal observation: Most simmers I've encountered who had severe issues with setting up Linux went with an Ubuntu-based distro. There's just something about it that's fucked up, man.

And this doesn't even get into the whole Snaps vs. Flatpak controvery, but I will skip this for brevity.

Does SimPE (or any other program) work on this distro?

If it works on Fedora, then it works on Mint/Ubuntu/Arch/etc., and vice versa. This is all just a question of having the necessary dependencies installed and installing the program itself properly. Some distros may have certain prerequisites pre-installed, while others don't, but you can always just install those yourself. Like I said, different distros are NOT different operating systems. It's all still Linux and you can ultimately customize it however you want.

In short: Yeah, all Sims 2-related programs work. Yes, ReShade too. It ultimately doesn't really matter what distro you use as long as it is not part of the obscure 1% I mentioned above.

A little piece of advice

Whatever distro you end up choosing: get used to googling stuff and practice reading comprehension! There are numerous forums, discord servers and subreddits where you can ask people for help. Generally speaking, the linux community is very open to helping newbies. HOWEVER, they are not as tolerant to nagging and laziness as the Sims community tends to be. Show initiative, use google search & common sense, try things out before screaming for help and be detailed and respectful when explaining your problems. They appreciate that. Also, use the arch wiki even if you do not use Arch Linux – most of it is applicable to other distros as well.

[bjsmall]

15.03.25

I tried out Zorin OS Linux on Distrosea.

https://distrosea.com/

Zorin OS started its development in 2008 by co-founders Artyom and Kyrill Zorin. The company is based in Dublin, Ireland.

Main site:

https://zorin.com/os/

Wiki link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zorin_OS

Like Linux Mint, it is based on Ubuntu, which in turn is based on Debian and uses the current Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS base release.

It features the GNOME 3 and XFCE desktop environments and is available in Lite, Education and Core editions.

Due to enhanced performance optimizations in the Core, Pro, and Education editions of Zorin OS, the Lite version is being discontinued.

However the XFCE desktop packages will still be available through the official software repositories:

https://help.zorin.com/docs/getting-started/getting-zorin-os-lite/

I chose version 17 and selected the 'Core' edition.

This version (Core64) features the GNOME desktop and a few more apps. I clicked 'Try' when the Linux distro booted up to the install wizard. The distro performs a md5 sum check before boot-up to check the security of the .iso file.

The distro can be easily customised to echo Windows or MAC-OS, as well as being tweaked to the users preferred layout.

Software can be installed through Zorin's Software Store. applications are available to install in APT, dpkg, Snap and flatpak.

Windows software can be ran using Wine, a compatibly layer for running Windows only programs on Linux, MAC OS and BSD systems.

Zorin OS 17 also comes with various menu layouts from a Windows Classic/7 layout, Windows 11 style layout, GNOME menu and full screen menus. Some of the menu layouts are only available in the paid for Pro edition.

For more about the various layouts and a review see:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/zorin-os-demonstrates-exactly-what-a-desktop-operating-system-should-be/

The panel (referred to as a taskbar) is also highly configurable in size and appearance and can be changed to match the desktop layouts.

Various window management set-ups are featured for tiling windows to the sides of the screen.

I like the operating system as it is both familiar to me as a Windows user, but also is very configurable, features a polished user interface and is easy to navigate. Also Zorin comes with some very striking desktop backgrounds and colours!

However, I couldn't get the VM to connect to the internet, so I couldn't browse Firefox or try out any additional software.

This is just the way that it has been set-up on Distrosea. For test purposes though, it works very well.

It also feels very speedy, even in a virtual machine over the host internet!

[ntrlily]

I have been considering getting into Linux but the only thing holding me back is game support really, as I'm primarily a PC gamer. How difficult would you say dual booting really is (as in, "how difficult is it to achieve" *and* "how difficult/quick is it to swap between OSes")? Does specific distro affect the difficulty? Do you think it would be worth it?

Also, what are your favorite or recommended distros? I've been told about a few mainly on fedi but haven't looked too far into many. Mint gets frequently recommended, for instance.

Thanks!

I have actually never dual booted before, so opening that up to anyone reading who has! I don't think it's more difficult with one distro compared to another, probably. It is fairly easy to set up as far as I'm aware, your install disc should have an option to set dual booting up for you, nothing too arcane. But anything past that, I don't know much about.

Personally vanilla Debian is my favorite but Ubuntu-based distros have the advantage of being the distros that Valve targets, like the build of Steam on their site is specifically built for those distros. You can get Steam running on other types of Linux though, but that is still an advantage for gaming stuff. (Among other things, it's not uncommon for "game with a Linux build" to really mean "game with an Ubuntu build")

Mint is Ubuntu-based, but the defaults for it are more user-friendly so imo it makes a good distro for gamers.

I personally consider it worth it, some of it is my personal philosophy and some of it is more basic practical stuff like Linux running faster, having better UI customization, not having all the bloat and adware that comes on a fresh install of Windows (although there are means to remove that bloat, of course)

Also not having to reboot and lock my computer to update, oh my god.

Extra notes for gaming, now that I have a Linux gaming setup to reference from:

The current thing I mainly have issues with is MMOs with client-side anti-cheat, some of them really don't want to play with Linux compatibility tools. There are people who have gone to efforts to get these running on Linux but it's a pain in the ass and I don't care enough to do that.

Proton GE can be really helpful for some games. I run most of my games through vanilla wine, but I did end up needing GE to run FF7R. If you're not already a Linux user with Existing Ways You Do Things, just running things through Steam+Proton is generally going to work out just fine for you. You can play pirated Windows games this way too, just add them as non-Steam games and run them through Steam.

If you have very recent hardware, and are going with Mint or another Ubuntu-based distro, go for the edge edition. The old kernel on the standard edition can be kinda finicky with brand new hardware.

[soup-mother]

hi soup-mother can i ask you a question about linux. about distros? basically it's : why run debian-mint instead of ubuntu-mint ? and then why run the mint version of either, like why debian-mint instead of just debian? (wasn't ubuntu originally based on debian as well or am i misremembering)

i'm curious about your preferences/opinions basically

thanks bye

it's kinda a tricky one and also i am not an expert i literally just read things.

people like LMDE (linux mint debian edition) over mint (ubuntu version) either because they like that it's not reliant on ubuntu and won't potentially run into issues with canonical (company that runs ubuntu) doing weird things that fuck up distros based on ubuntu, or because they feel that it's more lightweight and responsive than regular mint.

people like Mint over ubuntu because of the ease of use and similarly to windows, the cinnamon desktop and because it doesn't have some of the weird design decisions ubuntu has (like using snaps for packages).

people like mint over debian because a lot of ppl see it as more beginner friendly and familiar, and because of the cinnamon desktop. so when someone likes debian but also likes mint, they'll sometimes use LMDE to "get the best of both worlds" kinda. and also to my understanding mint is updated way way more frequently than debian and so gets a lot of quality of life improvements faster, and ppl like the software packaged with mint.

incidentally there's a lot of reasons to prefer debian over mint especially if you want to use the KDE desktop but that's neither here nor there.

I've played around with a bunch of distros but I use mint on my laptop and desktop and don't really have any reason to change to anything else. i think the cinnamon desktop environment is my favourite and it doesn't look as good on normal debian, i do like debian I just don't really have a reason to use it over mint. (keep in mind that look and feel matters a lot to some people and they base their decisions mostly on how the distro looks way more than their actual use case)

I've not played around with LMDE but most ppl I've seen say there isn't really much of a noticeable difference so i guess it's mostly a philosophy thing about not being tied to ubuntu. (oh also yeah ubuntu is based on debian, a lot of distros are in the debian family tree, it's a pretty solid base and well supported)

hopefully that's helpful! again there's a big old [citation needed] for some of this but that's my thoughts on the matter. there's not much of a difference between mint and LMDE, and Debian is fairly solid as a distro but updated much slower 👍

[linuxscoop]

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📺 Tutorial Link: Watch the Full Tutorialink

📸 Take a peek at the before-and-after screenshots to see the transformation! Swipe left to see the magic happen. ➡️➡️

And guess what? Our help doesn't stop at Linux Mint! We've got documentation ready for other popular distros too! 📚 Whether you're a Debian devotee, Fedora fanatic, or an Arch Linux/Manjaro maven, our guides will assist you in bringing the Gruvbox magic to your preferred setup.

🔗 Download Documentation: Get the Docs Here

Get ready to transform your Linux desktop into a warm and inviting haven with the Gruvbox Color Theme!

🌄🎉 Let the aesthetic journey begin! Remember, Linux customization knows no bounds, and we're here to help you explore every pixel of it.

[frozenbassist]

In general, there are always free and open source alternatives out there to almost any program. LibreOffice and Only Office are both good, free, open source alternatives to the subscription-based Office 365. Out of these, Only Office has a very similar interface to MS Office and LibreOffice has far more features.

For image editing, there's GIMP. For drawing, there's Krita and Inkscape. For 3-D design and rendering, there's Blender, and for video editing, there's Kden Live. All are 100% free and open source.

Now, as far as the OS goes, there are many good alternatives to Windows, and all of them are Linux distros. In 99% of use cases, Linux will do anything that Windows does and more. Even gaming is now easy in Linux thanks to Proton (for Steam games) and Lutris (which is a WINE frontend for non-Steam games). There are games that don't work, but these are usually ones with invasive kernel-level anti-cheat and usually have toxic communities.

Now look at these 2 screenshots. Notice something? Well, they're both taken on Linux made to look exactly like Windows 7 and XP, respectively. More specifically, on Debian with the KDE desktop environment.

If you're a Windows user transitioning over to Linux, look for a Distro based with the KDE or Cinnamon desktop environment. Kubuntu and Linux Mint are both very good options for former Windows users.

I'm going to sound very old and very tired here for a second, but iIt is so dystopian to me to have ads on my computer.

Ads used to be on the internet. And that's that. The things that were installed on my computer did not show me ads.

And that goes even beyond the questionable practice that free versions of programs such as Avira now show you lil ads in the corner of your screen like once a day.

You used to have free games on your computer.

I was in the mood to play a game again, a very rare mood for me, and I opened the game center for the... first time since I had this version of Windows (as I said; very rare mood).

And there's ads. You play the "free" games that live on your computer and there are ads left and right and beneath it and between levels there is just a 20 second ad break.

You can go premium to no longer have ads.

That's dystopian to me.

When things that used to be fully free and just part of something are now riddled with ads and to get the ad free experience that, again, used to just be the experience, you have to pay.

And it's not even a one-time-payment.

Back in the day, you used to pay for something and then you owned it. You used to pay for a program or a game, and you owned a physical CD that you put in your computer to install the thing and it was just yours. It belonged to you, because you paid for it.

Now everything is a per month subscription, which is just so sinister because many look like oh, that's not that much money! Sure, I'll pay 1,99€/month to play games ad free. Every single month sums up, and it sums to a lot over the years though, for something that used to be free. (And I've complained about subscriptions before, in the context of Adobe, which isn't just dystopian anymore, it's actually plain evil to demand 25,99€/month to use a singular program, that you can now no longer buy to actually own.)

And I know - I know - you can find free games online to download or play in browser (already did that for mahjong) - but I'm talking about the principle here. The principle of getting ads on your computer, directly, and to have to pay to no longer have ads and use something that had been a part of the Windows experience since... forever.

[sl33py-g4m3r]

this is so surreal~~

No reblog this time cause I thought that it was too long at this point

are you telling me I've been installing linux on this computer wrong this entire time??

WE BACK ON LINUX BABY~~!!

all I had to do on install was just......

make grub boot from dev/sda1 instead of dev/sda

dev/sdb was the hard drive all of my data was stored on and if I didn't touch that, nothing would happen.

the cool thing here is that mounting the device here is password protected to actually mount and view the data. as opposed to windows having it mounted at all times.

this was simpler than I thought it was and now I feel really stupid...

Linux mint debian edition 6 lets go~~~~~~!!

I'm so excited~~!! come to find out that I've been installing the grub boot loader in the wrong place this entire time.....

*happy screaming*

now idk if I'm smarter than I think or dumber than I think. cause it could be both....

I didn't need to tinker with the bios at all~~ tho I am curious as to what it looks like now. maybe the windows boot loader isn't there anymore and is just the linux one?

[autolenaphilia]

I'm no longer a Linux Mint user, I moved upstream to Debian, the distro Mint is based on. Now Debian was part of Linux's forbidding reputation of being difficult to install and use for non-tech-savvy users. Now this wasn't entirely unearned, as this video of trying to install a 1999 boxed edition of Debian demonstrates. Part of this was Debian's commitment to free software, so they didn't include proprietary drivers for hardware in the install, so you had to figure out how to get your wi-fi card to work on your own if you installed Debian on your laptop for example. They are actually one of the distros that call it "GNU/Linux"

The point of both Ubuntu and Mint back in the 00s was to take what Debian did well, but make it more user-friendly. And it worked, Ubuntu nowadays has declined with the Snap pacakage format, but it did do a lot for making desktop Linux user-friendly and more viable (Mint today is essentially what Ubuntu was pre-snap). Debian remains one of the biggest server OS out there, but on desktop Ubuntu by all accounts became way more popular.

However Debian has learned over the years and the latest release from June 2023, Debian 12 "Bookworm" is a massive improvement in user-friendliness. The install process is easy. There is both a slightly more complicated "net-installer" with all ISOs, and a simplified Calameres installer included with live systems that can be run off usbs to test things out. And even the net-installer is quite a simple process that is good at explaining what it does, and having sane defaults it encourages you to pick if you are unsure. This video about Debian 12 is a good counterpoint to the Debian 2.1 video linked above.

It did involve being more pragmatic about their approach to free software and including non-free firmware, so things like wi-fi now work without any problems for the end-user. Now I'm against proprietary software and hardware manufactures should have open source drivers for their shit, but I can't argue with how my laptop's wi-fi and bluetooth worked entirely without hassle.

Now Debian still requires more of the user than Mint does, like you have to figure out how to enable flatpak support and I did have to go into the terminal to install all the packages I wanted. That was a leesser part of the experience with Mint, I only had to do that to install 32bit libraries for my retro games and speciailized things like that.

(And you do want flatpak, the one thing you need to know it's a form of software package that works on basically all Linux distros, so a lot of developers package their programs as flatpaks instead of creating multiple versions for for all the various Linux file systems. So you get a lot of variety in software, and there are other positives as well)

I was happy for having a few months of training in how Linux works from Mint, it taught me how packages work. why flatpaks are useful (they are included by default in Mint and its package manager), how to use the terminal and other useful stuff. So if you are completely new to Linux, Mint is still the distro I recommend. I recently installed Mint on the computer of a 70-year old friend of mine, not Debian for a reason.

Still, It's nice to be at the distro that is the source rather than two steps downstream. Having to set up my Debian, instead of all the things the Ubuntu and Mint devs have added on top (even if what the Mint team adds does make for a smoother out-of-the-box experience). Again I'm not that technically proficient, but I find some enjoyment in tinkering. So setting up things like flatpak in Debian was a fun little challenge for me to do, made quite safe and easy by all the guides there are for such things.

I'm probably going to stick with Debian stable. I like long-term support distro way of doing updates, where you get important security updates, but other updates are released only after being tested for bugs. This ensures sytem stability. The other way is rolling release, where updates are constant. Package updates are released as soon as they are available, which might lead to bugs and other forms of system instability.

LTS does mean you won't get flashy new features for awhile, but I'm usually quite happy with the way I currently use my programs, my current workflow. Despite being a transgendered ultra-leftist, I'm creature of routine and habit (it's the autism), so LTS distros fit me quite well. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. So i'm probably not going to use arch btw, not because I'm afraid of not figuring it out, it might even be a fun challenge, but because I don't care about rolling release cycles.

And Debian is the best of LTS distros, the one most off them are based on. Also Debian is for lesbians.

[linuxiarzepl]

LMDE vs MX Linux

Linux Mint Debian Edition vs MX Linux. Dzisiejszy artykuł z serii Distro vs. Distro postanowiłem poświęcić porównaniu dwóch popularnych dystrybucji Linux bazujących na Debianie: Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) i MX Linux. https://linuxiarze.pl/linux-mint-debian-edition-vs-mx-linux/

[bjsmall]

07.05.25

I tried out two Linux distributions on my test laptop today.

Before I started the task, I updated Linux Mint Cinnamon with the update manager to receive the latest updates for the system and installed apps.

I can also use the terminal to update everything by typing the APT command 'sudo apt-get update'.

'sudo' elevates root (admin) privileges, 'apt-get' receives the packages needed and 'update' checks for updates. I then type 'sudo apt-get upgrade' and press enter to upgrade all the applications and the system.

System up to date!

Firstly, I downloaded Debian from: https://www.debian.org/distrib/

I chose the Debian Live MATE desktop environment.

I then went to download Linux Mint from: https://linuxmint.com/download.php

I chose the Mint MATE Edition desktop environment.

Debian MATE was 3.1 Giga-Bytes and Linux Mint MATE was 2.9 Giga-Bytes to download.

Once they had downloaded, I located them in Downloads and opened the built in USB writer application.

I wrote the ISO files to the sticks to create two bootable USB sticks.

After this step I booted Debian 12 MATE.

I selected 'try' on the boot menu screen.

Here it is in action! I played around with the user interface and tested the sound, which worked brilliantly!

Next, I booted Linux Mint 22.1 MATE.

Again, I selected 'try' to boot up the live environment.

Here it is in action! Again I tested the sound, played a YouTube video in Firefox and customised the panels and themes.

Both MATE desktops in both distros were very interesting and seemed even snappier when compared to the operating systems I have installed on this laptop, which are Linux Mint 22.1 Cinnamon and Ubuntu 24.04!

I found Debian with the MATE desktop to be the most stable environment however.

See blog below to learn more about the modern take on the classic GNOME 2 experience!

[ericvanderburg]

'Linux Mint Debian Edition 7' Gets OEM Support

http://i.securitythinkingcap.com/TK7YFp

[igurugr]

Ο επικεφαλής του Mint project, Clement L...

[sasapurin]

Linux MintでTverRecを使ってTver動画を保存

TverRecはGitHubで公開されているOSSのソフトウェアです。yt-dlpとffmpegがコアエンジンですが、それらを活用してTverに特化した自動保存を実現しています。

マルチプラットフォームのソフトウェアですが、WindowsではGUIが使用できるものの、Linuxでは目的とする動作に応じてスクリプトを実行する必要があります。設定関係でも若干わかりにくさは感じます。

Linux Mint Debian Edition（LMDE6）で無事に動作させられたのでブログに記録しました。PowerShellの導入が第一関門ですが、公式サイトに情報があるのでdebian系だけでなくUbuntu系やRedhat系でも大丈夫そうです。

[jvkings]

Upgrade to Linux Mint Debian Edition 6