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posted by janrinok on Saturday March 08 2014, @09:35AM   Printer-friendly
from the more-distros-than-I-know-what-to-with dept.

Potato Battery writes:

"ZDNet has posted an overview comparing Debian and three first- and second-generation derivatives. LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) is derived directly from Debian Testing, unlike its more famous Ubuntu-derived relative; SolydXK is somewhat of a spinoff from LMDE; and Tanglu is a new offering based on Debian Testing and the Tanglu development team expects to provide a lot of the testing, integration, packaging and distribution of patches and updates to avoid the long development delays and freezes that Debian goes through in the development/distribution cycle.

Everyone knows Debian, and I've dabbled with the Ubuntu-related Mint, but the other two were new to me. Has anyone put them through their paces?"

 
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  • (Score: 1) by SuperCharlie on Saturday March 08 2014, @05:51PM

    by SuperCharlie (2939) on Saturday March 08 2014, @05:51PM (#13246)

    I decided to make the Linux jump a while back and found that I ran into driver probs with Debian versions while the Ubuntu versions simply worked.. and thus, I ended up switching to Mint/Ubuntu version. Im sure I could research, compile, yada the drivers, but as a noob it just got too hairy too quick on the Debian side.

  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Potato Battery on Saturday March 08 2014, @06:18PM

    by Potato Battery (3535) on Saturday March 08 2014, @06:18PM (#13253)

    I know what you mean. My work is an MS shop, so any Linux experimenting is on my own (limited) time. One thing I've discovered over the years is that sometimes driver problems in a particular area (I'm thinking here specifically of Mac Wi-Fi cards) go away as someone smarter than me scratches the itch and fixes it, so I tend to circle back around every so often to see if something that used to be a problem in a particular distro is gone. As you might imagine, for this hobby live disks are my friend. :-)

  • (Score: 2, Informative) by mrider on Saturday March 08 2014, @09:05PM

    by mrider (3252) on Saturday March 08 2014, @09:05PM (#13304)

    Debian is an extremely conservative distribution, so it's not surprising to have driver issues if your hardware is even slightly new or odd. That's why it's almost guaranteed to get a few "funny" mod points when mentioning how long it takes to get anything into Debian. I wouldn't be surprised if you were able to get everything working in the next major release of LMDE.

    --

    Doctor: "Do you hear voices?"

    Me: "Only when my bluetooth is charged."

    • (Score: 2, Informative) by blackest_k on Sunday March 09 2014, @02:01AM

      by blackest_k (2045) on Sunday March 09 2014, @02:01AM (#13398)

      Debian install discs come in free and non free versions.
      I did a bit of googling for the server I was installing and found that some of the network hardware might need nonfree firmware. So I chose an image with the nonfree firmware included and installation was a breeze.

      On the other hand i just did a mint install on a 'new to me netbook' and had the broadcom problem.

      I got started with ubuntu years ago moved to mint and now am very comfortable with debian
      its not quite so newbie friendly but its good and my first choice of install.

      I almost put mint debian on the netbook but it seems as if it gets infrequent updates which put me off. mint16 cinnamon seems good so far even making it easy to install google search.

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 09 2014, @08:19AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 09 2014, @08:19AM (#13498)

    as a noob it just got too hairy too quick

    8-) As mrider said, Debian is conservative WRT proprietary software.
    If you want the restricted stuff out of the box, distros to try are:
    Mint, Zorin, SolydXK, Sabayon, Pardus, Parsix.
    Countries of origin:
    Ireland, Ireland again, Netherlands, Italy, Turkey[1], Iran.
    Country of origin for Debian: USA. Do I need to say more?

    ...and should a Linux user want to try something different to get better device support than a particular distro has included, there are other kernels [google.com] that can be installed alongside what he has.
    At startup, you just select the one you want [howtogeek.com]. When your needs are met, you can nuke an unwanted kernel.

    [1] The Turkish equivalent of DARPA was instrumental in development but M$ recently swooped in with bribes and the gov't now has dropped official support and is buying Redmond's stuff again. In light of the NSA revelations, I wonder what the rank and file think about that.

    -- gewg_