Thanks for the input- very helpful! I installed LMDE on an older laptop. Got a little too comfortable with the do everything installer and installed grub to sda1. Ooops, at least I was able to recover the Windows partition. Good to know if I do install to the desktop. I like it overall. Some of the things done for me are a little annoying (the beep when MDM is ready, and, not really knowing how process the init process does things). However I'm finding the things I don't like I can change easily or figure them out quickly. On another note, I also found a bug with the Mint theme and font sizes, but was able to search and fix it (there was a bug report already in) within 5 minutes. I was catching up on Slashdot and found another Arch based disto, Manjaro (http://blog.manjaro.org/), which is based on Arch but simplified (can still compile packages and work on my user repo contributions). Looks promising, may try that, but for now I'll keep testing LMDE on the laptop. Also toying with XFCE4, may be a better route to take for the gui since Mate is a still questionable on whether or not it will be supported for the long haul. Thanks again for the insight ;-) -- Jeremy MountainJohnson Jeremy.MountainJohnson at gmail.com On Sun, Sep 9, 2012 at 9:32 PM, Brian Wall <kc0iog at gmail.com> wrote: > > On Fri, Sep 7, 2012 at 6:43 PM, Jeremy MountainJohnson > <jeremy.mountainjohnson at gmail.com> wrote: > > LMDE (Debian Mint)? > > > My questions for LMDE users: > > * If you're a more advanced linux user, what don't you like about it? > > Nothing. Mint just works, and even though I'm an "advanced" user of > linux sometimes it's nice when things just WORK, and I don't have to > spend hours figuring out how/why. Yet, I can still pop the hood and > muck around as I please. > > > * Are there custom kernel options that are pre-compiled (for example, > > I use a pre-compiled Intel -ck package for Arch; have not had time for > > custom patching / compiling kernels for about two years now)? > > I'm too lazy to compile my own kernels any more. Mint just works :-) > > > * I noticed some of the packages are a couple weeks behind compared to > > Arch repos (for example, Firefox). Is this because more testing is > > involved before releasing updates as stable? > > Aren't they just pulling from Debian testing? I've been a Debian > testing user for 6-7 years and I don't mind being a step behind, it's > a lot less broken. > > My thoughts on Mint are that it's a great desktop distro if you just > want stuff to work. You're not limited in fiddling with things and > tweaking your OS and compiling your kernel and whatever it is you want > to do, but you certainly don't have to. I like that they have an XFCE > distro pre-rolled so I don't even have to mess with window managers. > When using a linux desktop I like light, fast distros that just work, > and that's why I run Mint XFCE. > > If I have to build something custom-ish, I still fall back on Debian > testing because I can build from the ground up. > > Brian > > > > > Thanks for any insight! > > > > -- > > Jeremy MountainJohnson > > jeremy.mountainjohnson at gmail.com > > _______________________________________________ > > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list