Linux Mint Debian Edition 5 (LMDE) is now available. The Linux Mint team has released the new version of the distribution after months of testing to the public.
Linux Mint Debian Edition is a fallback option for the entire project. Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu by default and the last release of the Ubuntu version dates back to January 2022. The team released Linux Mint 20.3 to the public in January 2022. All three flavors of Linux Mint — Cinnamon, MATE and Xfce — were released with Linux kernel 5.4 and an Ubuntu 20.04 package base.
The new release introduced improvements across the board, including a new document manager Thingy, search functionality in the Sticky Notes application, an updated look and more.
The main goal of Linux Mint Debian Edition is to guarantee that Linux Mint continues to be available if something happens to Ubuntu. While that seems unlikely, the team wants to be prepared for all eventualities. Linux Mint Debian Edition is that fallback. The team aims for feature-parity with the Ubuntu-based Linux Mint versions.
LMDE is a Linux Mint project which stands for “Linux Mint Debian Edition”. Its goal is to ensure Linux Mint would be able to continue to deliver the same user experience, and how much work would be involved, if Ubuntu was ever to disappear. LMDE is also one of our development targets, to guarantee the software we develop is compatible outside of Ubuntu.
LMDE aims to be as similar as possible to Linux Mint, but without using Ubuntu. The package base is provided by Debian instead.
The blog post on the Linux Mint website lists download links for 64-bit and 32-bit ISO images. Systems that do run LMDE 5 Beta may be upgraded to the final version in the following way:
- apt install network-manager-config-connectivity-debian plymouth-label pipewire plocate
- apt remove mlocate brltty
- sudo updatedb
Upgrade instructions for upgrading earlier versions of LMDE will be posted at a later point, as the team is working on improvement the upgrade tool that both Linux Mint and LMDE use. Linux Mint users may not upgrade their systems to use LMDE instead. A new installation is required to do that.
The release notes list known issues only at the time of writing, but the new version should match the features that Linux Mint 20.3 supports or introduced. The new version is using Debian GNU/Linux 11.2 as the package base and the Linux 5.10 LTS kernel.
Now You: do you use Linux Mint? If so, which version and flavor, and why?
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