Ubuntu is like windows. Not better, but well-known and perceived as safer.

zapper wrote:

This idea probably died, but to be honest, don't see much use of such a thing, even despite how terrible ubuntu can be according to some of their moral issues, a mint devuan clone, seems kind of pointless too...

Correction.  Not Ubuntu.

"LMDE is a Linux Mint project which stands for "Linux Mint Debian Edition". Its goal is to ensure Linux Mint can continue to deliver the same user experience if Ubuntu was ever to disappear."

I know its not ubuntu silly, I spoke of ubuntu, merely because, they focus on making linux mint in any form user friendly, last I checked.

To be honest, I really don't know why they don't ditch the ubuntu base in the first place.

Wasn't Ubuntu the first distro, to get hit with that huge malware problem?

PPA issues aka...

https://ubuntu.forumming.com/question/1 … comment-21

One reason why ppas are a problem.

Edit: this is one huge example:

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/s … epository/

Even worse:

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/l … nap-store/

lol...

This idea probably died, but to be honest, don't see much use of such a thing, even despite how terrible ubuntu can be according to some of their moral issues, a mint devuan clone, seems kind of pointless too...

Correction.  Not Ubuntu.

"LMDE is a Linux Mint project which stands for "Linux Mint Debian Edition". Its goal is to ensure Linux Mint can continue to deliver the same user experience if Ubuntu was ever to disappear."

Beginners might like it sure, if it is done right, but the only thing different between mint and ubuntu, is that mint has somewhat better standards regarding stuff like snap packaging and other crappy things ubuntu does.

I think of it as a shiny version of ubuntu, that sucks just as much...

Mostly, because they have a stupid policy regarding certain codecs, etc...

Btw, Devuan and its derivatives, as well as my personal favorite, Hyperbola and OpenBSD, are all way better.

As long as they don't do any dumb bundling of crap, aka forcing certain non-free crap onto the install without a choice to say no...

I make exception in this only to OpenBSD, cause that system has a bullseye on security.

They focus on it like an expert sniper focuses on killing its correct targets on the first shot...

apt upgrade -y --download only && apt upgrade -y --download only && apt upgrade -y --download only && apt upgrade -y --download only && apt upgrade -y --download only && apt upgrade -y --download only && apt upgrade -y --download only && apt upgrade -y --download only && apt upgrade -y --download only && apt upgrade -y

is a handy command when upgrading if you have frequent dropouts,

If there ever was a devuan mint, mintupgrade would need to retry it's downloads a few times.

Update manager is always removed from my machines, it's an startup-annoyance. Mintsources is an enemy agent once you've defected. Mintmenu can be made to be mate-menu.

Start with cindy, upgrade to debbie with devuan sources, and all you'll want to keep is the artwork and maybe mintstick.

mint-meta-cinnamon did not seem to add /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories, not yet anyway and the update manager says im all up to date...
I did notice this in /etc/apt/preferences.d/official-extra-repositories.pref

I don't really know about that.  The /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories file was actually created when I opened the Update-Manager and selected "Edit > Software sources".  This action actually created the file, and I then commented everything in it out.  It was this that "fixed" or at least changed the status of the Update Manager from always showing updates available. 

I can confirm that I too have that same file in /etc/apt/preferences.d/official-extra-repositories.pref .  I will be keeping it.

I installed a fresh minimal netinstall of beowulf using expert install so i could leave out contrib, non-free and deb-src repos.

my /etc/apt/sources.list look like below.

deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged beowulf main
deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged beowulf-security main
deb http://deb.devuan.org/devuan beowulf-proposed-updates main

# LMDE - Linux Mint Devuan Edition
deb http://packages.linuxmint.com debbie main upstream import backport

added key apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://pool.sks-keyservers.net:80 --recv-keys A6616109451BBBF2

I then pin systemd in /etc/apt/preferences.d/nosystemd , just in case.

Package: systemd
Pin: release n=beowulf
Pin-Priority: -1

Package: systemd
Pin: release n=debbie 
Pin-Priority: -1

I then created a release preference to debbie in /etc/apt/preferences.d/99lmde ( i hope this is the correct way?)

Package: *
Pin: release a=debbie
Pin-Priority: 900

I then apt update and dist-upgrade then installed mint-meta-cinnamon, xorg, xorg video drivers, lightdm. As suspected lmde repos pulled in the non free iwilwifi firmware i needed.

I dont know much about linux mint but it did not install a login manager so installed lightdm?

nixer, mint-meta-cinnamon did not seem to add /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories, not yet anyway and the update manager says im all up to date.

I did notice this in /etc/apt/preferences.d/official-extra-repositories.pref should i keep this as is ?

Package: *
Pin: origin "build.linuxmint.com"
Pin-Priority: 700

edit: scrot or it didnt happen.

when i do this it will be from a minimal installation of devuan via netinstall. I may leave out contrib and non-free and see what lmde wants to drag in.

I dont like using the gui synaptic installer, im more accustomed to the terminal way of install/update/upgrade etc. I believe i can see more of what is going on and i can take more control of what gets installed that i do not need.

Its good that you mentioned the /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories issue.

This is an interesting issue.  I have been messing with it and I "think" that it is part of the problem with the Update-Manager always showing updates available as reported in the article linked to above. 

To give this a test, I installed the package "mint-meta-cinnamon" on my second update, which pulls in all the mint related programs.  It added a lot of programs, I did not copy and paste the actual number.  After this large install, and a reboot, the update manager showed updates available and when I looked into the update-manager, it showed a "corrupt apt configuration".  I looked in the sources.list file and saw no duplicate entries and then looked into the /etc/apt/sources.list.d folder and I did not see that file named "official-package-repositories".  I know that originally the mint update put it there in my first test update in another install, but now it is not there.  I was baffled and confused.

Within the Update-Manager program, I clicked on Edit > Software sources, and there it was.  I actually saw the file created within the sources.list.d folder.  I had the file manager open to that location in another window, (-; .  I opened that file and saw the debian sources, and a duplicate of the mint "debbie" repo line.  I removed "all" of these lines by commenting them out.

On a final note, I thought that the system was totally up to date with a dist-upgrade.  But after commenting out the lines above, I did an "apt update" and "apt dist-upgrade" and it showed 5 or so packages still to be updated.  I do not know if removing these lines had an effect, but I suggest one final dist-upgrade to make sure all is updated.

I rebooted, and the update-manager is running fine and it does not show any updates available.  All is "up to date".  I guess that soon I will know if it is working.  Or I may just not use the update-manager at all and manually update occasionally like I am used to.

I can not find anything that is not working correctly, yet.

Edit:  I have installed it onto a spare partition on a physical drive.  The grub install worked fine and now is labeled as LMDE and not debian.  It seems responsive and fast.  It has been a while since I have used the Cinnamon desktop, so I may not be the best tester to provide feedback.

I wouldnt mind giving this a try, how would one get the lmde source.list, im unsure where to look?

I am the "Devuan User" person mentioned on the link mentioned above.  I played with this and found it to be easier than what was mentioned by the author.  This is what I did.

I started with a refractasnapshot of my current personalized Beowulf install, and installed this in a virtualbox VM.  I added the LMDE "debbie" repository in sources.list:

Added the signing key as noted in the article,

then, in synaptic, I changed the release preference to "debbie" by navigating to  Settings > Preferences > Distribution.

I then did an "apt update" and "apt dist-upgrade".  All went well and it did not try to delete anything of any importance, which was a surprise since the article mentioned that some stuff would be removed.  I will also add that I already had lightdm installed.

Finally, I had to alter a sources.list addon because I installed the big "mint-meta-cinnamon" package.  This "debbie" "mint-meta-cinnamon" package added a file /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories .  I commented out all of these lines, all of them.  It consisted of the "debbie" line which I mentioned earlier to sources.list, and it added the debian repositories, which we do not need, and will cause all kinds of problems.

Now, with that said, I did mess with the grub so now it shows as "Debian" on the grub page and not LMDE.  After the install, it worked fine but I had three entries instead of just one all labeled as LMDE - along with the Recovery options.  I looked at the grub configuration files and I found some "proxy" entries which may be left over from when I tested "grub-customizer" some time ago.  I may have not totally removed its proxy entries.  So this may be my error.  At any rate, I removed and reinstalled grub and it fixed the number of entries to only one - with the recovery option, but it is now labeled as Debian. 

I hope I got these steps right without omitting anything.  This did work and was much easier than I thought it would be.