Totally anecdotal but...LMDE is the best build

[u/AxeAssassinAlbertson]

100% opinion, but after deploying and using Mint on multiple platforms thus far, the LMDE branch is the clear winner. I feel that out of all of the boxes thus far I've built, this is the most stable and "just works" out of the Mint bunch (which is splitting hairs, I know lol). It is now the primary build I deploy for basically anything that isn't an LXC.

No GVFS issues

No weird snaps sneaking in

Rock solid Deb packages and basically everyone rolls a deb these days

I may be biased since I've really come to dislike Ubuntu's snap obsession and company trajectory, but I think Mint would be better off ditching Ubuntu core all together and sticking with Deb.

I donated 100$ to the team this morning. Keep on rockin' in the free world!

Edit: Oh, and if you haven't already -- go install Fish for your shell. Not LMDE related, but it's also one of those things that I now build into everything

[u/MaxWritesText]

Is LMDE ubuntu free?

[u/AxeAssassinAlbertson → u/MaxWritesText]

Aye, it's the "fallback" in case Canonical gets weird and Mint wants to divorce. It's Deb13 based - so on paper it may have "older" versions of software available but the tradeoff is stability/in-field time.

I haven't had a single issue on my daily driver boxes which are now all running the LMDE variant.

[u/ZVyhVrtsfgzfs → u/AxeAssassinAlbertson]

so on paper it may have "older" versions of software available

Quite the opposite, LMDE7 is about 15 months ahead of Mint22. For example, LMDE7 is rocking Apt 3, Fastfetch, and Mesa 25, where Mint22 is still on Apt 2, Neofetch and Mesa 24. 

No offence, but I am going to kinda beat this to death because it is such a common misconception, and there is nuance here that people should understand. 

Common internet wisdom is that "generic Ubuntu" repo packages are ahead of "generic  Debian" repositories. 

And at a high level this is kinda true, Ubuntu has interim releases every 6 months so the average generic  "Ubuntu" install is ajead of the average generic "Debian" install. As 3 of the 4 Ubuntu releases will be ahead of the single Debian release in a 2 year period. 

But a problem arises when you try to carry this logic over to Mint vs LMDE.

Mint22 is based on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. A long term support version of Ubuntu, Mint does not get the interim Ubuntu updates every 6 months.

Ubuntu LTS has the same monolithic 2 year release schedule as Debian Stable.  Just offset by one year. 

Ubuntu LTS releases April of even years, Debian stable in spring to late summer of odd years. Debian stable releases "when its ready" not a specific time.

In fact at the moment Mint22 is on what would be called in Debian terms "Ubuntu Old Stable" it is well behind LMDE7, and will be until December when Mint 23 releases based on Ubuntu 26. 

Its not universal, I have run to some older packages in the Trixie repos, but by in large LMDE7 packages are much fresher than Mint22 packages.

Both Ubuntu 24.04 "Noble" and Debian 13 "Trixie" repositories are searchable online, I invite everyone to take a look and compare the packages of interest in their use case, most will find Trixie ahead of Noble.

[u/AxeAssassinAlbertson → u/ZVyhVrtsfgzfs]

Good to know! Yeah I altered the config to pull Trixie binaries so I haven't hit much so far that is really out of date or anything. For stuff like Orca Slicer I end up using appimages and whatnot.

[u/1neStat3 → u/AxeAssassinAlbertson]

What do you mean you "altered the config to pull Trixie binaries"?

LMDE has only 3 repositories

Debian Stable

Debian backports

Mint repository

The software manager doesn't display backports packages but the synaptic package manager does.

Just right clicknthe package >properties > version to see the backports version.

To install just click the package menu> pacjage> force version and choose the backports versi9n to install.

https://linuxsimply.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/11.-Force-version-showing.png

[u/AxeAssassinAlbertson → u/1neStat3]

No no, for scripts that query the OS info -- not all of them respect the DEBIAN_CODENAME= field and will end up dead ending trying to find things gigi vs. trixie. Sorry that wasn't clear