With only 4 days left until we’ll fly away to exotic Germanland (in order to enjoy its sundrenched beaches of course) I found out my last change of OS on my netbook wasn’t very satisfactory neither. Seems like I can’t never get used to those ultrasimplified, ultraminimalistic, ultralight desktops. So Manjaro LXQt had to go. Like pØØf! Yes, I know I’m a spoiled brat … ugh, fuk it.
So, what now? Was thinking and thinking and stressing about my next choice; the departure date comes closer and closer and my second-most beloved travel companion isn’t even outfitted with an operating system!!! FFS I should slowly make a decision, no? Yes. So I decided on the safe bet and switched back to my old friend Linux Mint, my fallback and play it save system since years.
And what can I say, it still fails to turn my fukn OrcNet netbook into a racing car but goes decisively faster than Ubuntu MATE … and more importantly, it never crashes! Ubuntu was a bit divaesque as it turned out (that’s NOT saying you shouldn’t install it as your first foray into the wonderful world of Linux, god no!!! It’s all sorts of perfect if you’re not on a strange computer like my little OrcNet). So, ok, Mint it is for our next adventure!
BUT! But then I remembered the good guys at Linux Mint have also made a version based on Debian. Whoa! If it’s any good it should be just the ultra comfy Minty godness and MATE familiarity plopped upon a ultra stable and fast Debian base, right? So even better for my purpose. Best of both all worlds n stuff.
Since the standard Mint is running quite nicely on OrcNet right now I installed LMDE2, codename Betsy, on MiniMe – my secondary desktop system and distro tester – for more abuse testing, before I’ll put that on OrcNet.
LMDE2 sits happily on MiniMe, installation was a breeze, modding to my liking even easier, and afaik all the out of the box software on the system should be newer as well. That’s cool. Since LMDE follows a rolling release model it doesn’t need to wait for the next Mint 18 release but can put all the new shiny and fun stuff directly onto my computer. Great, eh?
Oh, you see what I see? The blue icon with the “i” on the panel’s lower right hand side? YAY, it tells me there are updates already waiting for me. Boy oh boy, I have a really good feeling about this. 😉
Thar She Blows! 
[…] Change of Plans. Yes, Again.
[…]
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One thing I never understood about all these Debian distros.. not derivatives like Ubuntu and Mint (Mint, not LMDE) is if I was going to put Debian proper on my box, just cut the crap and get Debian.
Get the Debian daily net install..choose the graphical expert install..and then you get to choose your desktop and I wanna say Cinnamon and MATE are 2 of the choices along with the standard.
I made the move to Antergos Openbox. It was a choice between Fedora and Antergos. The reason Antergos won is I want a rolling release with little to no surprises. Last thing I want is Fedora to pull an Ubuntu and decide that a desktop has to go because they wish to push another desktop down my throat. 🙂
and no the wallpaper ain’t going anywhere 🙂
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it’s a nice wallpaper Debian sounds to much like deviant to me hihihi
but I like mints so do the horses down the lane xxx
I’d like to meet that wallpaper in world👌
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Not like deviant but Debian is a mix of Debbie and Ian the original makers of this distro. Guess I just reported about Ian here …
https://orcaflotta.wordpress.com/2015/12/31/more-sad-news/
… and there …
https://orcaflotta.wordpress.com/2016/01/01/more-newness-about-debian-murdock/
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Debian is a great system, but with Ubuntu/Mint making it easier, and adding things like PPAs, there really to me isn’t much sense running Debian on a desktop. If I ran a server then you’re damn right I’ll run Debian, not Ubuntu/Mint.
The only problem with Mint I have is the consistency. While I don’t like some of the decisions Ubuntu/Canonical makes, at least they are predictable and consistent. You know that barring any problems that releases come out in April and October and that every even numbered year, there will be an LTS release.
Mint is still on 17.3 using 14.04 repos. We’ve had 16.04 out for a week and no sign of any indication of the next release of Mint. Also it’d be nice if Mint could offer lighter desktops experiences out of the box for people.
That was one of the nice things with the Antergos installer. 6 desktop choices plus a CLI option.
Glad you like the wallpaper…here it is without the desktop icons and such in case you want it.
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But Linux User, the problem with Antergos is that their integration of my fave DE, MATE is so shabby, the whole desktop became unusable for me. So I went back to Manjaro. Also tried Architect but that turned out to be too much labour for lazy little me. Manjaro is a much better overall package than the vanilla Arch you get from Architect.
And Fedora? Pleez no. They are too close to Red Hat, for my taste, too capitalistic, too American. Guess I once tried to install Fedora to my test machine but failed since it was so fukn complicated. Same with Debian, I never managed to get it installed. But that’s nothing to be ashamed of since even the great father figure Linus, the man himself, failed the Debian install. With LMDE it was a breeze.
And Mint always hanging around one month behind the Ubuntu mothership ain’t a big problem I guess. Sorting out the kinks and eliminating the problems takes a little while, it’s system imminent I guess. Problem is solved now with LMDE, where the slowness of evolution is a virtue rather than a handicap. 🙂
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Yeah some of my friends run MATE and I’ve heard that there’s a few distros that seem to not make a good MATE DE.
You know there’s nothing wrong with wanting an easier setup and more options. That’s why Ubuntu and Mint are as popular as they are. Only elitists and purist snobs give a shit about such small things like how something installs. If Manjaro provides and easier install and provides in the end a better overall package than vanilla Arch then I say vanilla Arch is the one with the problem. This isn’t a popularity contest or egos or anything. This is simply running a computer.
Fedora can definitely be a bitch to install. It’s actually gotten easier since I last paid attention to it (Fedora 12) The only thing I really don’t like abou Fedora is SELinux and that problem is solved very easily. As far as installing Debian, all I’ve ever done is use the netinstall version with the graphical expert install. Can see and choose every element of the install, and you know the software is up to date because it’s a daily build and it’s a netinstall so it’s downloading packages from the net. No apt-get upgrade needed.
But because of my experiences, I will never go back to a system that doesn’t have rolling release. I’m going to be learning how to install vanilla Arch in case something happens with Antergos and I have to switch, but I have a feeling I won’t need to. This group gives me the impression that they’re not interested in fixing things that aren’t broken and such. I saw somebody request LXQT be put into the installer as one of the options and if I recall correctly, somebody told him that it wasn’t that high priority. Tells me either they truly have more meaningful things to do to improve the system than that..and/or they don’t have a very big group of devs that they have to prioritize their efforts. Either way is nice to hear.
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