Nice review of LMDE6



@kc1di

I remember quite a few years back, one of the hacks described Mint as "the operating system Ubuntu should have been."... nothing changes
 
all the components Mint offers fit together nicely, making the distribution greater than the sum of its parts.

Mint has been a user friendly, capable member of the Debian/Ubuntu family for over a decade and a go-to distribution for people who want a beginner friendly experience.

Ubuntu Cinnamon is also Ubuntu with the Cinnamon desktop on top of it (making the distribution's name blissfully accurate), but it doesn't have any of Mint's custom utilities or polish. It's the same base, the same desktop, and mostly the same packages with a few pieces missing.

Linux Mint 6 "Debian Edition" is another solid release from the Mint project with a lot of polish and friendly touches put into it

Ubuntu Cinnamon 23.10 offers the usual, friendly Ubuntu base, but (apart from looking nice) doesn't manage to offer a particularly good experience with the Cinnamon desktop.
 
Interesting review. I "had" LMDE 6 on three laptops but had trouble with upgrades from 5 on two of the three and then on going issues on all three. The worst problem was kernel panic on my daily driver, issues with regular upgrades and installing software from software manager on all of them.

I personally would not call LMDE 6 "rock solid". Of course, like everything, it comes down to individual experience.

Since then I've moved one back to Neptune Linux which has been a markedly better experience on that machine. The other two are still LMDE 6. One now works well but the other still throws up occasional update issues.

I love LMDE so I'm rather sad the latest release does not seem to work as well for me, as its predecessors. I've been using LMDE solidly on one of my main machines, since it was first released.

I will say I don't like Debian 12 Bookworm. I have tried it and had all manner of bugs on a pretty solid machine. So in fairness, i wonder if that is part of the problem here?

Never tried Ubuntu Cinnamon. I will say, I think aesthetically, it does a better job than Mint out of the box but the not inconsiderable stability issues mentioned, raise concerns for me.
 
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It was only to throw down Ubuntu. I don't think Jesse even tried to install Ubuntu Cinnamon, just went ahead using what he's comfortable using anyway. This is to have two weeks of people flinging their crud at Ubuntu and whoever fully supports it. Simply rewording a portion of the review sure makes others here feel better though...

Yeah we get it, Snaps suck for a lot of people and there are going to be other decisions taken which are going to be unpleasant. But if someone is going to do a comparo, please do it right. Really make an attempt to go deeper with one as well as the other. If there is any favoritism, leave it to someone else who isn't inclined toward both of them.

That said, Ubuntu Cinnamon ran slowly on my machine. I dare say it was the best looking out of anything Cinnamon. At the other end of the spectrum... LOL Debian Cinnamon "Bullseye" which didn't let me uninstall Libreoffice and Firefox and therefore forgettable.

I don't do Ubuntu if it's not LTS. So it's my surprise why a few persons on Distrowatch Weekly comment board reacted to what Jesse said about the v23.10. It's true -- Canonical Ltd. are about to go into full swing with their "N" which will be the next LTS. It's also true the desktop is not a priority for them. This has been the case for a while now, probably since they were forced to switch back to GNOME from Unity.

Will the LMDE remain "genuine Mint" to some people holding on to Mint? Will it still have to be based on Ubuntu so it's considered "genuine"? What is it about betraying one master for another? Definitely a change was needed, but how will it affect the popularity of the distro?
 
Weeellllll, I just went through the same exercise. I bought a used Dell 7490 and ditched windows 11 looking for a distro to live with. I've been a linux user since around 1998 or so, using Ubuntu first, and then almost every distro you can mention.
I installed UC on my machine and it is beautiful, but sketchy indeed. The tools are kind of disjointed and stability on my laptop was similar to what was mentioned above. Lots of error messages, crashes and loopy behavior like bluetooth dropping my mouse now and then. After trying Fedora 39 Cinnamon (beautiful and very good), LM 21.2 also great, Elementary, Evdeavor, Manjaro, Solus, MX, POP, and a few others I can't remember, I tried LMDE 6, and stopped there. I had one issue, that I had one issue, which I also had on several of the other distros. Libre Office tool bar not shoing up correctly, which only requires a uninstall and reinstall, that's it. It is fast, solid so far and very good looking.
I quit using Ubuntu when they went Unity and never went back except to try out a distro. They just don't seem to be interested in regaining their former "top distro" status. The are ok looking for the most part, but nothing special and I've had major issues with most of the versions I've tried in the interim. I'm not a fan of Snaps, but that wouldn't keep me from using Ubuntu if it would work like intended. I must admit, full disclosure, I'm a long time user of LM Cinnamon for many versions, and it has been the only day to day distros I could live with. Now, LMDE is my go to, as long as it stays as it is now.
 
LMDE 6 will only continue to improve, under Clem's tutelage and its closeness to Linux Mint
 
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