Still no Wayland, right?
this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023
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Sadly, no :(
Why is this important?
Security and Wayland compositors run better for me. YMMV, of course.
I would've jumped on this instantly, but I finally landed on a Min21 configuration that works well. New laptop => new hardware => need new nvidia driver => need new kernel.
Which kernel does LMDE currently ship with?
6.1 like Debian 12.
Can someone explain to me how it differs from regular Debian Cinnamon? Is it as secure, with updates and all?
Underneath it's exactly the same and you will get all the same security updates. However Debian will not release any further updates to the Cinnamon desktop until Debian 13. And they don't theme it, your get the basic grey version m
Linux Mint Debian Edition will include the latest Cinnamon desktop and it will be continually updated by the Mint team because they are the creators of the Cinnamon desktop. So you'll likely have a better version of cinnamon on LMDE.
Plus they theme it out of the box. And LMDE includes other Mint utilities like Warpinator and Timeshift. These will also get updated sooner than plain Debian.
And of course you are more likely to get support on Linux Mint compared to Debian
Nice, thanks for the explanation!
I did have really good experiences with LM, notably
- timeshift backups
- unobtrusive updates
- fully automatic LUKS unlock and mount
But it broke for me. Also it wasnt fully Ubuntu, which was a hassle too.
I wonder why it broke? Did you reach out to support? They would have helped you.
I also used to use full Ubuntu but I'm fed up with the snaps nonsense.
I even went so far as to uninstall the snap system, yet somehow on doing apt update, it freaking re-installed it 🤬
That's when I understood what Mint was about and why it's so great.
Moving to LMDE I've taken a full step away from Ubuntu all together.
Random screen freezes afaik.
I dont know the exact package Differences between Ubuntu and Debian, but I think LMDE will be pretty outdated soon, right? Ubuntu is also not really bleeding edge but way better. Until they stop packaging APT packages I guess it should be fine?
Random screen freezes sounds like a graphics card issue. Do you have an Nvidia graphics card by any chance because Nvidia doesn't supply any open source drivers so getting them to work is huge pain on Linux?
Actually LMDE currently has newer packaged and kernel then regular LM because the Ubuntu base is from 22.04 whereas Debian 12 came out with the latest kernel and packages.
For whatever reason Ubuntu never released an LTS this year so Mint has to wait until next year February. I suspect it will use the same kernel and packages as Debian, because it's an LTS, which never includes the very latest stuff.
So we could be looking at a scenario where both LM and LMDE will have the same kernel and packages for at least one year, until the next Ubuntu LTS (25.04?).
But even though LMDE will have the same kernel and packages for 2 years or so, Cinnamon desktop and the Mint apps will still be updated to the latest as far as I know.
If your need the very latest packages then LM is probably what you should use but if don't need that and want stability and not having to update often then LMDE is the way to go.
No actually its said to be a typical AMD problem. Mint actually was Thinkpad T430 intel integrated Graphics, and AMD modern mobile graphics.
Ok thanks, so Debian ≈ Ubuntu LTS?
so what would be the difference between LMDE and Debian with cinnamon DE
Literally the only difference is that regular Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu and LMDE is based on Debian.
So LM will use the Ubuntu repo and any additions to the code Ubuntu made, whereas LMDE will use the Debian repos and their code.
At the moment LMDE actually has a newer kernel (6) than LM (5) and newer apps, but that will change with the next version of Linux Mint when it should catch up.
And finally, LMDE is also available in 32bit as well as 64bit, whereas LM is 64bit only.
Did not answer the question.
Now if it had
- wayland support
- immutable variant
It maaay be a nice option.
I'm not a fan of the immutable distro and I think it goes against the LM philosophy. The user should always have full control over their system.
They are looking at Wayland but for now X works better and with more applications. Reliability is a top priority for LM so they won't just change to Wayland and have users systems break.
I'm sure in a few years they'll have Wayland
You have a lot of control over an immutable system. Linux mint is the noob distro, at least for loots of people. I dont think Cinnamon is really a poweruser desktop, I would see KDE here
Neither of those features are 100% production ready, even on the most cutting edge system.
Even if you are running KDE or GNOME, chances are your apps would still require X.
Why would you want immutable? That would be for either containers or embedded, none of which is Linux Mint's use case.
If you're looking to explore these cutting-edge features, Linux Mint is not for you.
Xwayland
Rpm-ostree works perfectly well for many users. Flatpak is not production ready, but if you do background updates and not that often, you can totally just layer everything you want.
Immutable is not cutting edge, is simply a traced, resettable, secure system. You can reset it with one command. But you can also install as many native packages as you want, simply that updating will take a bit longer then. But updates are done in the background, I dont know if by default, but there is a systemd service.
Flatpak is more mature than you'd think. It also seen more adoption than Wayland (not exactly apples to apples...).
Immutable concept may not be new, but the current implementations are. Even the pioneers such as NixOS, Fedora, and openSUSE are still ironing out quirks as we are having this discussion. Even NixOS, the current top leading, is having performance issues.
Linux Mint have snapshot system. It is not perfect (certainly won't beat immutables), but ot certainly works well for its use cases. Once again, being the latest and greatest is never its use case.
Flatpaks lack:
- plugin support (Audio stuff, Video)
- drag & drop xdg portal
- "share" xdg portal
- local networking (KeepassXC, KDE Connect, KDE Plasma Integration, this citing program)
- persisting portals (this is huge, there is no GUI way to allow the Flatpak to perma-access certain locations like on Android)
- good minimalist runtimes, not needing 7GB of them
- a package manager in the container
They are already better in
- cross-distro app support
- official application adoptions
- installing crappy browsers at your system without any nonfree repos (Edge, Chrome, Opera, ...)
- being user-maneagable
- container stuff: listing, managing, updating, copying resetting (just remove the user appfolder)
- having GUI permission settings (better than SELinux, Apparmor, firejail)
- ....
Never heard of performance issues of immutable OSes. Why should there be.
- updates slowing down the system in the background
- binaries, no custom compiled software (normal in all regular repos apart arch or gentoo)
- needing to wait when installing new software to your main system (something nonexistent on Android and iOS since forever, so this layering could be completely removed on for example ChromeOS)
Linux mints shapshotting works for avoiding errors that happened in between two versions of the OS, during a single update.
If the issue happened over time, or you already updated two times with the error, its useless.
Rpm-ostree allows to:
- install apps to your system
- update all the system apps according to the git repo and your layers
- reset the OS to the exact image of another OS or itself in fresh form
- allows to monitor exactly the changes you did to the current system.
I think a well-managele system could and should also be possible to do without all that image-creation. Having two seperate systems is not needed if you know exactly whats the difference between your two images.
Wayland probably has more things it lacks. Again, it's not apples to apples comparison.
The performance is more toward manipulating system packages. Since it's not supposed to be changed, a new system image tends to get created everytime user makes modification. At least that's the issue with Nix.
While that rpm-ostree sounds nice, it is not required for Linux Mint's use case.
Yeah, I don't think Linux Mint is for you... Perhaps NixOS would fit you better.
Don't get me wrong, I am interested in the prospect of immutable systems. I just don't think it is a silver bullet for every problem out there.
I think Wayland is the future. In fact, I've been using it as a daily driver. However, it's still a long way to go until it can truly replace X11. For starter, it has some issues that can be dealbreaker for some people (having all the applications terminated upon crash is one). Also, XFCE, MATE, and all the others got some catching up to do.
You may have your opinion, but there are reasons those two features are not as widely adopted (yet?).
I am already on Fedora Kinoite. Not sure if their immutability model is actually suited for rolling Distros though:
- OS packages are traced by OSTree
- updates come from another repo using OSTree (afaik). So you have a "wanted" "vanilla Fedora KDE" image on their servers, and your client has older packages, downloads just the diffs
- the OS does atomic updates. I guess this can't be done differently. Updating works fully in the background, a new system image is built. If you dont like it,
sudo ostree admin cleanup 0. Btw wheel can do rpm-ostree stuff without a password prompt. - when rebooting, without any second of delay, you boot into the updated system. In grub you can see both options though, if you something may break
- as the system is image based, you can rebase to any other system images. These are like Docker/Podman images.
Its a really superior technology and the best overall solution. I was mind experimenting with an only traced system that is not immutable but uses OSTree to manage updates. Only when something breaks you would create a new clean image, or rebase. As most updates work normally since forever.
Because in the process of generating the image, locally the complete OS is build on every update. Not downloaded. But copied etc. This takes a lot of resources, which works fine on monthly updates like on Android, but not so well on daily rolling updates.
To "Linux mint does not require OStree". Rpm-ostree or apt-ostree not. But ostree I think yes. It may be stable and all, but what if its not? And you dont want to reinstall everything? There needs to be a way to reset the system to work again. All rpm-ostree does is remove "it works on my machine though" bugs. Its the only thing newcomers should use.
You are not meant to add tons of RPMs to your system, but you can. Updates can be done in the background, no problem. So you could literally "layer" (thats what its called) any huge piece of software, that doesnt work locally. You can add proprietary drivers, install media codecs and all.
Various ways to make media playback work on RPM Firefox
Ublue really shows the potential of rpm-ostree. Use Fedora as base, to kernel mods, layerings, replacements how you like, and ship the "working out of the box" image for exactly your hardware. Its brilliant.