Linux Mint Debian Edition 2 Will Be Rolling-Release

jones_supa writes: Following the trend of rolling-release Linux distributions, Linux Mint brings you some news and information about Linux Mint Debian Edition 2, aka. "Betsy." As you might know, the Linux Mint team maintains two distributions: Linux Mint and LMDE. LMDE was a rolling distro for a while and eventually turned into a semi-rolling one. This was good at the time but it also presented challenges: the biggest issue in LMDE was the fact that it required a lot more maintenance than Linux Mint but that it had far less users. This hurt the frequency of updates it received but also the quality of the distribution. Now, LMDE 2 is going back to be continuously upgraded and to occasionally just receive media refresh ISO images. You can check the Roadmap to see the remaining issues. As the quality of Betsy is getting higher and higher, the project is getting closer to QA stage to iron out the bugs and perform proper testing.

Comments

They should switch it to "devuan"

[mrchaotica]

If it includes SystemD, LMDE isn't different enough from regular Mint to be worth maintaining. But if it's more different -- if regular Mint uses SystemD and LMDE doesn't -- then it justifies its existence.

Re:They should switch it to "devuan"

[rubycodez]

Clem already said Linux Mint Debian will NOT have systemD for now, will watch stability of that project for a while

So, it's Debian without the SystemD stink. That's a good thing

Re: They should switch it to "devuan"

[Billly Gates]

Yeah like using 200 line minI programs with logic and data mixed in your init scripts when a few in SystemD can be done because it is event based all because it's hip to hate started by those who fear change.

Their is a reason Ubuntu, Sun, and Apple left init behind years ago.

Re:They should switch it to "devuan"

[buchner.johannes]

The question is not whether a Linux distribution uses systemd or not -- the question is what it uses instead to achieve the goals of systemd (suspend, user switching, daemon monitoring, ...).

Re:They should switch it to "devuan"

[hairyfeet]

I have a better question...how in the hell are the devs gonna do QA, QC, and regression testing when on any given day one or more vital subsystems can change?

This is what I've never been able to get anybody to explain without it becoming politics, how you are gonna take a bunch of teeny tiny fiefdoms, most of whom don't even talk to each other and NEVER check with one another before they start doing major changes, and then allow any part on any given day to change based on these little groups release schedules without it ending up a buggy clusterfuck. I mean do you think Linus calls up the KDE and Gnome guys before making a change to the kernel just to see if its gonna fuck up what they are working on? Think the KDE and Gnome guys have the guys working on Pulse on speed dial so they can call them before they start messing with major parts of their DEs? And then you are gonna add on top of all this lack of communication and "do your own thing" cowboy coding a system where the system you had last week can have multiple critical components changed this week? Who is in charge of regression testing? How many systems is this tested against and how many hardware variations? These should be pretty standard questions folks yet every time I ask them usually what I get is filthy names or just shoulder shrugs.

Maybe its just me but in the decade I've been messing with Linux the feeling I've been getting is that the reason why Linux kicks so much ass on servers and embedded and is such a buggy mess when it comes to the desktop comes down to one of attitude wrt the developers. the guys in server and embedded really care about stability, about QC, about regression testing, they have a very strong "If it ain't broke" ethic and don't just throw out something that works without a hell of a lot of thought and debate. Contrast this to what I've seen in the desktop, where even the so called "stability focused" distros seem to jump on the latest bandwagon waaay too early, be it Pulse or KDE 4 or systemd, ironically with all the rhetoric of Windows and Mac being focused on new releases to generate profits I've seen a LOT MORE of the "just release a new version instead of fixing the old" in the *NIX desktop realm, and to top it off an almost bizzaro hatred of long term stability, see how quickly KDE 3 and Gnome 2 were cast aside even though they were resource light, feature rich, and a good chunk of the major bugs had been stamped out.

So to me the rolling release fad is just a symptom of a larger problem, the "last version bad, new version good, must be on the bleeding edge" phenomena that seems to have taken hold for some damned reason. I mean is there really anything that is so. fucking. urgent. that it absolutely HAS to be released that nanosecond instead of going through the alpha/beta/release schedule that has worked for so long? Or has the insane turnover of mobile infected us to the point that "here this morning, gone this afternoon" is just gonna be the way of things from now on?

Re:They should switch it to "devuan"

[morgauxo]

I installed Jesse on an old computer just to see what the fuss was about. I'm still looking. All the commands I was used to using are still there. Service, shutdown, poweroff... they all work. /etc/init.d contains scripts. I don't know, maybe they are just wrappers, I didn't read them. Calling the scripts in /etc/init.d directly or using the service command gets me more information than I am used to seeing. That's kind of neat. I'm coming from Gentoo though, not Debian, maybe Debian's init scripts were always more informative?

I tried starting and stopping services with sysctl. I rebooted with it to. Of course that worked. Just like doing it the old way. Whooptie! I remember reading some set of commands that were for doing these things in Systemd that sounded like long classpaths and namespaces, more like programming than shell commands. I would have hated doing it that way. I am glad to see I don't have to.

I know systemd has it's own way of doing most of Cron's functionality. Cron was there in Jesse, installed and running by default anyway, it worked just like I am used to.

Boot time is fairly fast. The only other install I had ever done on that machine was Ubuntu with Upstart. That was another one I put on just for testing and didn't really use for long so I don't have a good frame of reference for boot time on that particular machine.

Shutdown time is kind of weird. Sometimes it shuts down kind of fast. Other times it is so quick I almost wonder if it 'knew' I was about to press the button and started shutting down early!

Those things being said.. I don't really care about (re)boot time. My main desktop rarely gets rebooted. It is also my development server (to save electricity and maintenance time/effort). My live server is rented. I quit carying a laptop years ago. Grandfathered Verizon unlimitted data on my phone means I can use my Lapdock or iPad to VNC back to home from pretty much anywhere. So what's to reboot?

So... liking the idea of being able to tell the init system to respawn things (I still miss the days when it was considered acceptable to go right to inittab for that!) and also hoping to cure an annoying problem with DHCP not working on startup I decided to convert my Gentoo box to Systemd. There are Systemd profiles for Gnome and KDE. I use the vanilla Desktop profile.(which is only available for openrc) I try to keep Gnome and KDE bloat off my system as much as possible. I was NOT willing to switch to one of those profiles.

Supposedly you can install Systemd on any profile if you are willing to mess with the USE variable enough. I ended up with a huge mess of USE changes, and yet still had a bunch of conflicts. I couldn't find any useful documentation on doing it this way. For what little difference I saw between running Openrc and Systemd I decided it wasn't worth it. I put everything back. Maybe someday there will be a vanilla Systemd profile and I will try again. Maybe not.

I really don't care that much!

For now I'll continue worrying about the X to Wayland migration and fear that I might lose my LAN connected X-terminal. I will not worry about Systemd. It doesn't seem to affect me!

So.. go ahead.. fight on in the init flamewar! It's better than arguing about text editors I guess. Clearly Emacs is the only true contender! Vi sucks! What's to argue?

Re:They should switch it to "devuan"

[Blaskowicz]

I have a better question...how in the hell are the devs gonna do QA, QC, and regression testing when on any given day one or more vital subsystems can change?

By not changing the vital subsystems. Mint 17 to 17.1 brings a new font, a slightly newer version of the file manager and window manager and such other little fixes and things. Such updates will be more mandatory looking with LMDE because they're what is in rolling release mostly.

Re: They should switch it to "devuan"

[Eunuchswear]

A lot of its participants are, to put it nicely, rather toxic individuals. Anyone who has a differing opinion from these toxic individials is labeled a "troll". Immaturity is rife, and many of the participants seem to be involved just to hold positions of "power", and not to create a top notch Linux distro.

What do you expect from a group who largely define themselves by irrational hatred of one person?

Re: They should switch it to "devuan"

[Anonymous Coward]

That's it, the final proof that /. is mostly run and read by a bunch of idiots... I don't belong here anymore so bye bye /.

How can a post containing nothing but facts be labeled as troll???
There's a real problem with all these systemd haters, because they are 100% emotional and 0% logic, so much as they ignore facts and even lie about systemd if it doesn't fit their hatred. /. community, GFY

My last comment on /. *EVER*

Re:They should switch it to "devuan"

[MMC Monster]

It's good for Linux Mint (any edition) to wait on systemD for now. Waiting for stability is always a good thing.

But... Linux Mint is the type of system where systemD would be best suited for. Desktop/laptop computers with a focus on the end user rather than server maintainers.

Re: They should switch it to "devuan"

[Billly Gates]

You mean you have to make a choice between a cell phone interface or an outdated half decade old no longer updated OS in the windows world? Or go mac and experience the dull, flat, and buggy Yosemite, broken Lion releases, or go back to the good old 2009 days of snow leopard?
L
Change for the sake of change iskilling the desktop. 2009 was when software was good for non linux. Some would argue 2003 and still use XP 64 bit and Office 2003 because it's menu driven

Re: They should switch it to "devuan"

[Billly Gates]

You are more than welcome to use systemd if you so choose. Don't expect everyone else to like it and use it just because you happen to.One of the biggest objections to systemd is that it's not just an init system. It's reached almost 300 thousand lines of code. That should give anyone pause for thought who considers it a replacement for init.

300k? That's it. Seriously.

While 200 lines for an init script is certainly possible that's not necessary. For example postgresql has a 58 line init script of which 14 lines are comments and 8 are white space. It also has almost 10 lines that contain one word. It's really pretty simple. If you can't understand it then you're probably not in position to be changing it even if you wanted to.

That is a lot of code for simplicistic arguments based on events in comparison. What happens if the database is compromised? What if an integrity issue pops up? With an event driven daemon you can put those cases in. You need whole programs in init to monitor and do all sorts of other hacks for equivalent functionality.

Ubuntu is being forced to adopt systemd in future versions because debian has done so.

No they are doing so as the market is favoring SystemD. Note I speak as a Solaris administrator who has actually used SMF. It has it perks but it's not all roses.

No it is more work but if you ask any web administrator who has worked with Apache and older versions of IIS then switched to nginx will tell you the pain in learning sucked temporarily but was worth it for speed, security, and now simplicity with an event driven framework.

What is Apple using for init that makes the Macbook Pro's at work boot so slow (off SSD) when compared to the Dell Lattitudes runing (non-systemd) Linux? Both types of machine have Core i5 CPUs and 8GB RAM...

heh captcha - "screwed"

No Apple switched because of scenarios like lets say your MacBook pro fell asleep at work and woke up in a hotel on a different network. Now what?? In the Linux world there are ugly bloated hacks like Network manager for such scenarios but lets say you want to customize this?

LaunchD is event driven like SystemD. You prre-program conditions and what to do. Much simplier. Yes it is faster too.

Remember in 1985 when init was finalized in SYS V a typically unix workstation had maybe 35 programs at the most and were simple things like Vi, awk, cat, etc. Init was simple to start it and run 1 service with no dependencies. That was what it was designed for. Not modern distros with +4000 apps, daemons, interdependence galore, and conditions that change.

It is 2015 and its time to get with the times. You are free to live in the past too if you like. But I am sick and tired of seeing all this fear of change and foaming at the mouth from people who made opinions based on trolls.

Re:They should switch it to "devuan"

[iggymanz]

Funny, my linux box already does suspend and user switching. Daemon monitoring is hardly a one-solution-fits-all situation, if a daemon crashes that's because something is wrong, blindly and constantly restarting the thing is not the long term solution. In fact, that's what people who use garbage like mysql do.

Re:They should switch it to "devuan"

[Grishnakh]

Similarly, systemd has a fixed (external) API. GNOME and KDE adhere to desktop standards and don't have terribly hard links to the other layers. And so on with the other pieces of software on the system. I know you're not a developer (where is your store anyway?) so I know you're not actually trolling, but it's kind of ignorant-verging-on-insulting to imply that these projects can't keep a stable API. Because if the interfaces actually were being changed every nanosecond, no one would be able to use them for longer than a nanosecond.

Actually, you're wrong about GNOME. It does not have a stable API, and gtk (maintained by the Gnome devs) is constantly changing, which is why some projects (Razor, I think?) have abandoned it for Qt which does have a stable API. The Gnome devs don't care about having a stable gtk API because they solely control it and don't really care about extensions, so people who write them have to change them every time a new release comes along. It's a mess, but that's the Gnome project for you.

But you're right about everything else: they use stable APIs to interface with each other.

Breaking an API marked as stable is a huge no-no for a developer. Implying that this is a common thing among Linux software projects would be insulting if it were actually credible.

Well it IS common with Gnome, which was the pre-eminent desktop DE for Linux until Gnome3 came out and made so many people jump ship for other DEs. Why any non-Gnome developer would bother messing around with the cluster, I have no idea.

Re: They should switch it to "devuan"

[hairyfeet]

Uhhh...you haven't actually TRIED Windows 10 yet, have ya Billy? Its Windows 7 with the increased speed of Windows 8. You want a standard desktop? That is what you get OOTB, hell I can't even bitch about the little live tiles on the start menu as a LOT of people are into the whole FB/Twitter/social shits and it takes less than 60 seconds to turn it off if you aren't.

Hell Billy you want it in the dull grey classic that has been around since Win 95 you can add it in like 3 minutes with a couple of reg tweaks or if you can't be arsed you can spend the whole $30 on AstonShell and have back your beloved XP Luna if that is what floats your boat. BTW I highly encourage you to go check out Aston as you buy it once you get updates for life and they have every major DE from Windows 95 to OSX to KDE 3 and switching between shells is as easy as "clicky clicky".

But I've got the latest release of Windows 10 running on my netbook and every.single.thing. that you liked about Windows 7 is there or can be added in a couple seconds. Like Aero? By default it has the Aero see through Windows and taskbar, only thing they didn't keep was those animations that were always too damned slow. Want the old start menu with "all programs" functionality? Already there by default. Hell you can even run all your old Windows 7 gadgets by just installing 8gadgetpack which is actually BETTER than the gadget system on Win 7 as you not only get the choice of the Win 7 floating gadgets or the gadget strip from Vista but OOTB it comes with the most popular gadgets in the newest releases so you don't even have to go hunt down your favs from Win 7, they are already there.

As for Linux? they've adopted all the bad habits of mobile, insane release schedule, quickly abandoning old versions, without the upsides like apps easily usable between versions and old apps running on new releases without a shitload of fiddling or recompile. there are just too many cooks, too many little fiefdoms "doing their own thing" without regard for the OS as a whole, and too much focus on new versions just for the sake of being new instead of fixing what you have. I have argued for years this is why a volunteer OS ultimately will be a bloody mess, humans just won't do shitty jobs like bug fixing, QA and QC, regression testing, all the mundane dreary day to day shit required to play in the big leagues as creating something new will always be more fun than fixing old bugs.

Re: They should switch it to "devuan"

[rubycodez]

what nonsense, your desktop isn't running 4000 apps. My desktop is running a couple dozen apps after boot. There are already much simpler solutions than systemD for parallel start, monitoring, hierarchical start. Those alternatives are built in the modular unix way and not a massive monolithlic mass of bloated bad code than SystemD.

They should switch it to

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't agree. I use LMDE precisely because it's semi-rolling and compatible with Debian repos. I avoid the regular Linux Mint because it's tied to fixed Ubuntu repos and releases. This is certainly enough of a differentiating feature - pretty much the only difference I care about.

Re:They should switch it to

[geantvert]

Semi-rolling? I used LMDE on one of my servers for a few months and packages updates were pretty much non-existent. Semi-frozen would be more accurate. I gave up on LMDE because of Shellshock that was left unpatched for several days.

     

Re:They should switch it to

[Anonymous Coward]

And vice versa: I use Mint 17 because it's not full of breakage and promises to remain stable for at least another year - plus it's free of systemd blight, probably another major contribution to stability. And I love the PPA option for the many things that Debian simply doesn't offer, or doesn't offer in a recent vintage.

Re:Update carousel? Or a Russian roulette?

[Anonymous Coward]

"emacs is a nice operating system but I prefer unix"

Re:Fine, but please

[SeaFox]

LMDE, as the name implies, is based off Debian.
Sounds like you have a complaint that needs to be directed upstream.

Re:Fine, but please

[aliquis]

Please don't roll us LMDE folk into the festering shithole of Systemd.

Calm down, relax, breath and just give a little resistance which you then give up over and over and it's soon over and systemd will be installed.

There's no reason to fight it because it will happen.

Freudian read

[Chrutil]

I saw Linux Debian, but all my mind read was Lesbian...

Re:Update carousel? Or a Russian roulette?

[uvajed_ekil]

Update carousel? Or a Russian roulette?

Can't decide what describes the "rolling releases" best.

In the case of the current iteration of LMDE, the best American comparison would be to an Amtrak train, or a Greyhound bus - because it is soooo sloooooow to get any updates at all. When newly updated packages are released, you might get there, eventually, someday... - just like on Amtrak. I liked LMDE at first, but I recently switched back to Mint's main edition for this reason. (Of course I'm being unfair - LMDE does not smell as bad as a Greyhound, and does not have a sticky floor.)

I suppose I'll try LMDE again at home when it goes back to full rolling, but I'm thinking of moving away from Mint to something different for a change, maybe Arch. Even then I may stick with Cinnamon though, the Mint team's best product.

Re:worst summary ever!

[uvajed_ekil]

the writer of the summary either did not read the Segefault article or has no clue what it says. time to read and understand

Great job correcting it then, AC. Way to bring something useful to the table.

Try harder next time, and post under your own name if you want to call someone out like that.

Opposite of the summary

[Anonymous Coward]

The article actually says the opposite of what the title and summary say. Clem is confirming in his post that LMDE will be based on Debian Stable (which was originally announced a month or two ago). This is just confirming LMDE will be based on Debian's Jessie branch once Jessie becomes stable. This is the opposite of a rolling release.

Re:Opposite of the summary

[Sudline]

"LMDE 2 would be continuously upgraded". In the article. But based on Betsy.

Re:Fine, but please

[iggymanz]

Nope, no SystemD. It's Debian without the SystemD suck.

"LMDE 2 'Betsy' received a lot of updates this week and its 'Mint' packages are now almost on par with Linux Mint 17.1 Rebecca. The next step is to adapt the Debian Jessie base and port all the changes and fixes already applied for Linux Mint 17.x on top of Trusty. This should take a week or two and we might be in a position to open up a BETA some time in February and to start welcoming feedback from people interested in helping us test this new distribution. Similar to Linux Mint 17.x, LMDE 2 'Betsy' will be using the traditional sysvinit. The move to systemd could happen with Linux Mint 18 and LMDE 3, giving this new technology and the Linux ecosystem 2 years (or more) to mature and to iron out integration and compatibility issues. Cinnamon in particular is built without systemd support by default and the development team is planning to change this in version 2.6 to give the DE the ability to switch at runtime between systemd and consolekit/upower without the need to recompile anything." -- Clem, Linux Mint Blog 16 Jan 2015

Unlike many distributions, Linux Mint cares about its users and doesn't cram untried new and shiny down their throats

Re:Fine, but please

[ChunderDownunder]

I'm running jessie with sysv init/openrc right now. Systemd *is* installed but not as an init daemon and only pulled in by KDE as a dependency.

Thus systemd hasn't *yet* taken over debian but it's up to Mint and others to 'upstream' the required manpower to keep alternatives afloat if the core debianistas only focus only on systemd.

systemd is Linux only, so Hurd and freebsd will require an alternative so long as they're port targets.

Re:Fine, but please

[Eunuchswear]

"core debianistas"?

There are around 950 active debian developers.

Jumping the gun a bit

[bblakeny]

Per the post from Clem:

"As I said in the previous chapter, we're "considering" doing that... it's not set in stone yet."

So to be clear, what they are proposing is, LMDE lke Linux Mint would keep the Jesse code base for the next 2+ years, enabling the Mint team to put more effort into improving the desktop experience and user applications. But LMDE would get these improvements on a rolling basis, so LMDE would actually get new software before the Ubuntu based Linux Mint, which would continue to get those updates through point releases.

This is what is being considered, it's not decided yet.