Linux Mint: A system based on Debian

Source: http://www.linuxmint.com/blog/?p=1467

If this means a departure from Ubuntu's onerous repository update policies... yes, please.

 

Well, I had installed Debian Squeeze (=testing) in Virtualbox some days ago (I deleted it again in the meanwhile), and I'm afraid that your hopes might be dashed. Firefox was included with version 3.5.10, and you could only get 3.6.3 (!) by adding the experimental repo. What's the difference to adding a ppa in Ubuntu (which is, btw, more up-to-date)?

The same might apply to other packages but I haven't tried Squeeze long enough to tell. But it is quite clear that Debian Testing is definitely more up-to-date than Debian Stable but not as up-to-date as Unstable (and there is surely a reason why it's called unstable ) or the Ubuntu ppa's.

In other words: I'm afraid that a Debian Testing based Mint will not meet your specific requirements.

 

... Rats.

Hopefully Mint will consider running their own repo(s) to fill in the gaps in Debian/Ubuntu repos, even if only for a handful of major, high-profile packages. This could be a good idea in more ways than one - trying to update to the version of Firefox from the mozilla-* PPAs, for instance, leaves you with an Ubuntu UA string. Not very nice.