'Linux Mint Debian Edition 7' Gets OEM Support

Linux Mint Debian Edition 7 "will come with full support for OEM installations," according to their monthly newsletter, so Linux Mint "can be pre-installed on computers which are sold throughout the World. It's a very important feature and it's one of the very few remaining things which wasn't supported by Linux Mint Debian Edition."

Slashdot reader BrianFagioli speculates that "this could be a sign of something much bigger." OEM installs are typically reserved for operating systems meant to ship on hardware. It's how companies preload Linux on laptops without setting a username, password, or timezone... Mint has supported this for years — but only in its Ubuntu-based version. So why is this feature suddenly coming to Linux Mint Debian Edition, which the team has repeatedly described as a contingency? In other words, if the Debian variant is merely a plan B, why make it ready for OEMs?
Their blog post goes on to speculate about possible explanations (like the hypothetical possibility of dissatisfaction with Snap packages or Canonical's decisions around telemetry and packaging).

Slashdot reached out to Linux Mint project leader Clement Lefebvre, who responded cheerfully that "I know people love to speculate on this. There's no hidden agenda on our side though.

"Improving LMDE is a continuous effort. It's something we do regularly." "Any LMDE improvement facilitates a future potential transition to Debian, of course. But there are other reasons to implement OEM support.

"We depend on Ubiquity in Linux Mint. We have a much simpler installer, with no dependencies, no technical debt and with a design we're in control of in LMDE. Porting LMDE's live-installer to Linux Mint is something we're looking into. Implementing OEM support in live-installer kills two birds with one stone. It improves LMDE and opens the door to switching away from Ubiquity in Linux Mint."

MS make life hard on ANY OEM that does this!

[Joe_Dragon]

MS make life hard on ANY OEM that does this!

Re:

[karmawarrior]

Wow, some pathetic moderation here. You do know most of the population misses the days Republicans were just people with differing points of view, right?

Re:

[thegarbz]

MS make life hard on ANY OEM that does this!

Citation? MS specifically mandates OEMs following windows certifications have bootloaders unlocked and secure boot configurable, they literally mandate you be able to run alternate OSes on the hardware. Also I can't stress this enough, major OEMs already have Linux PCs on offer, it'll be nice to have Mint as an option instead of Ubuntu.

Re:

[Joe_Dragon]

unlocked is not the same as pre installing non MS os.

Re: MS make life hard on ANY OEM that does this!

[Kitkoan]

Going to need to back that claim up, since the same OEMs that sells Windows machines also sell OEM ChromeOS machines and they aren't having any issues. Not to mention companies that are starting to sell SteamOS machines.

Re:

[MachineShedFred]

Or large OEMs that will happily ship you a system with Linux preinstalled.

Hell, Lenovo will even knock $140 off the price if you choose Fedora or Ubuntu.
Dell has several models you can order Ubuntu on pre-installed.

I'm writing this on a HP notebook that I installed Ubuntu on and everything but the fingerprint reader just works properly. The fingerprint reader apparently has a libfprint driver available for Arch linux that someone figured out [archlinux.org], but I just haven't given a crap about fixing that.

The point is t

Re:

[FudRucker]

i think MS learned to not do that back in the late 1998? 1999? when they killed BeOS and Netscape browser, so they need to play nice, or the OEMs could file a class action lawsuit

Re:

[eneville]

They don't care much about the desktop market as they've got nearly all enterprises onto expensive office 365 contracts and single signon in AD. The price of using the computer has moved to a cloud computer. Their bottom line hasn't changed. Maybe they get to rake in more now through cloud costs and backup storage.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

If they didn't care about the desktop market, they wouldn't be pulling all of these upgrade shenanigans. They need those users because they run the versions of Windows with the most telemetry, and they need user data to sell in order to remain competitive going forwards.

Re:

[Mirnotoriety]

> MS make life hard on ANY OEM that does this!

Like the OEMs having to pay MS for each unit shipped. Regardless asto what OS is pre-installed.

LMDE is superb

[Anonymous Coward]

LMDE is a fantastic Linux distribution.

It is just stock Debian with an added repository for the latest Cinnamon desktop. That's it. The base system is still Debian, no weird changes or hooks added. You get all the benefits of Debian stable, and all the small iterative changes that come to Cinnamon. IMO, Cinnamon is the most competent and unobtrusive desktop environment.

I don't see why they even maintain the Ubuntu derivative any more. Debian has included firmware since bookworm. Its hardware detection is similar to that of normal Ubuntu.

I'm glad to see LMDE is getting OEM support. Maybe this means that it becomes the default Linux Mint soon and we can get the nastiness of Canonical out of Mint.

I mean, yeah but

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu has definitely taken a bit of a poor turn for the reasons you mentioned but the main advantages are that (a) they offer good paid support which is pretty much required for corporate deployment and (b) they do more regular releases. With Debian, you can be running software that's four years out of date (releases come every two years, and they start working on the next one as soon as the last is out the door). Ubuntu updates every six months, they basically rely on Debian Testing rather than any specif

Re:

[Tough Love]

I run Debian Sid. Not only does it have the latest of everything but it gives me less trouble than Ubuntu anything.

Re: I mean, yeah but

[vbdasc]

Running Debian testing is probably a better idea than Sid. It's only slightly less bleeding edge than Sid, while shielding you from the most glaring bugs.

Re:

[Tough Love]

Agree in theory, however in practice Sid is very stable. The number of bugs I hit this year? Zero. The year before that? Also Zero. And the year before that. And the year before that. Come to think of it, the last time I hit a Sid bug of any significance was more than a decade ago.

Re:

[vbdasc]

That's a testament to the quality of Debian (sorry for sounding like a chatbot), but you're surely aware that what you have in Sid is what the package maintainer decides to upload, unfiltered and untested by others. So, you depend solely on the quality of the upstream's work and the package maintainer's keen judgement. While in testing you get the same stuff, but additionally filtered by Debian's rules, automated tools and bleeding edge testers.

Re:

[Tough Love]

For core Debian like apt the pushes are coming from Debian maintainers, this is most of what affects overall stability. For the "big" packages I use like firefox and gcc maintainer quality is high and it is very rare to get a bad push into Sid.

Re:

[test321]

LMDE is a fantastic Linux distribution. It is just stock Debian with an added repository for the latest Cinnamon desktop.

With your description, it should have been named DMLE: Debian (GNU/)Linux, Mint Edition.

Re:

[bn-7bc]

Hello R.dtalman how are you these days?

Pleased with Mint, Cinnamon - MS Recall Concerns

[BrendaEM]

I use Mint/Cinnamon on two computers, and because of Windows Recall, I will set up my other computer for dual-boot. I have to work out restricting MS access to my SSDs.

Do you need bare metal for gaming?

[couchslug]

If not Windows VMs are a more convenient way to have Windows available without the trap of sharing boot drives. Your existing Windows install may be copied as a VM. (I use Disk2vhd but newer methods exist, I've just not needed them).

Windows and Linux VMs make terrific backups as everything will be in a familiar location and you do not lose old installs you may want to revisit.

On desktops a hard drive swap rack is my method of choice since 1999 for running more than one OS properly isolated on bare metal. (R

To b or not to b

[markdavis]

>"So why is this feature suddenly coming to Linux Mint Debian Edition, which the team has repeatedly described as a contingency? In other words, if the Debian variant is merely a plan B, why make it ready for OEMs?"

Because if it doesn't support it, then how can it be a valid or ready contingency/plan B? Sure, it could be added later, but why wait? The sooner it is added, the longer it can be tested/improved. I don't think it has any special secret meaning or spells doom for the "regular" Linux Mint, which is insanely popular (and has been for many years now).

The only major problem with Linux Mint right now is that the Ubuntu base is continuing to erode more and more native packages and replace (not augment) them with containerized packages. The fact that they are Snaps makes it even worse, but it is still unacceptable to have only containerized packages offered. I have experienced this myself in Mint, searching for something I wanted and it is not available as a real [native] package. Mint can't replace ALL those packages with native ones, so they are focusing on the few most important ones (like Firefox, LibreOffice, etc). Won't be a problem with LMDE.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

I've come around to thinking that some packages might make more sense containerized... but not with snap.

You get a mild security boost and a significant convenience boost, from not having to have the OS provided libraries match. This is a significant problem on distributions with crappy multiarch, like Debian, where you cannot even build a WOW64 Wine without changing which packages are installed on the system in between the 32 and 64 bit builds. I finally resorted to using a container to build Wine, because

Re:

[markdavis]

>"I've come around to thinking that some packages might make more sense containerized... but not with snap."

Indeed. Which is why I advocate for having BOTH (native and [non-Snap] containerized). But if only one is provided, it should be native (non-containerized). Choice is good.

The problem with containerized is that it orders of magnitude more disk space/download time/upload time, harder to manage and configure, and has its own [different] security issues.

snapd is Ubuntu's Windows Vista moment

[pjrc]

Pretty sure it was snapd that drove this decision. It's truly horrible for real daily desktop usage, causing many seconds lag for app startup and certain operations like selecting files to attach to email in Thunderbird.

Snap / snapd is pretty much like Windows Vista when the world was so used to Windows XP.

FWIW, I've used various Linux distros for my main desktop machine since 1994. Never in all these years have I seen anything like snapd which makes a high end desktop feel so sluggish.

Re:

[StormReaver]

Never in all these years have I seen anything like snapd which makes a high end desktop feel so sluggish.

I was willing to give snaps the benefit of the doubt for a while, but they have proven themselves to come with their own set of problems that sometimes make them worse than regular packages.

LMDE is "it".

[eriks]

I've been using LMDE 5 (and then 6 since it came out) as my daily driver for a few years now, having been a decades-long (desktop) windows user. Debian gives me warm fuzzies, and Ubuntu decidedly does not, even though it's (for the most part) an adequate OS. I think cinnamon is about as close to perfect as it's possible for a *nix WM to be at this point for a general purpose desktop, especially for soon-to-be windows refugees. I'm about to install it onto a bunch of machines to replace win10 before it go

Re:

[drinkypoo]

QEMU is great, and I use it, but it's also not a wonderful replacement for running on the metal unless you also set up GPU passthrough. QXL is just too slow for a lot of purposes, like running anything graphically intensive. For example, running Photoshop in a VM is painful. VMware has fairly tolerable graphics performance, but ugh. Even if you're willing to deal with them at all, you still then run into the problem that they don't support recent kernels. I found the third party patched kernel modules which

Re:

[eriks]

Totally, though my previous win10 image has an old version of photoshop on it, that I have used a few times, and it's totally fine on my Ryzen 5600G (with no other GPU in the system) -- it's nearly as usable as it was running on my (AMD A10) machine natively -- I struggled a bit to get the drivers set up initially, but once I finally got it all hooked up right, QXL seems fine, at least for my needs. I was even able to do some light gaming in the windows VM inside QEMU and the performance was acceptable, th

Re:

[markdavis]

You are doing it "right"- the real switch requires also moving most of one's workflow to Linux-native apps as well; like you are doing with GIMP, LibreOffice, and Darktable.

The typical home MS-Windows user seeking to jump ship is not going to be able to set up, debug, and use virtual machines. Or might get it started but have a poor experience. And probably nothing is going to make it much easier in that regard.

It has been getting better over the years to jump because there is more and better FOSS options

Re:

[eriks]

Yeah, you're probably right that it's still not for everyone yet, but with a at least a little up-front configuration support, a lot of people could make the switch now and barely notice, since many people only need a browser and maybe office apps anyway. It's a heck of a lot easier to install, customize and manage a linux desktop now than it was even 10 years ago. Maybe still just out of reach for most non-techies without support, but it's tantalizingly close.

Re:

[bn-7bc]

Unrill some killer apos ( read adobe and vs, gaming is allmost there ) run out of the box on linux with sam or better performance I'm afraid that linux us dead as a desktop os to quite a few people. And no not alternaves that ara as good ascadobe dtc, the actual sw suires people ate used to using, unfortunately most people don't like change in the sw they use every day, look at the absolute roar of discontent that happened when ms office changed from the traditional ui to the ribbon, and you will have the s

Re:

[bn-7bc]

All that said, seing wider oem support for linux is great as they say "every little helps", so maybe just maybe, the year of desktop linux might really be justba decade away. I just hope the said oems don't just use libux as a " cheao" os on low end devices ( see early 2010s netbooks), thos did not help linux adaptation at all if younask me

No that big news

[allo]

The news is good, but it sounds bigger than it is. Linux Mint with Ubuntu basis has OEM support for a long time.
In the end this does not mean much more, than having the option to finish the installation without setting a hostname and creating a user, which is then done at the first boot. So the seller installs Mint and the buyer finishes the installation. A nice feature and good for selling PCs with preinstalled Mint, but no technical revolution of any kind.

BuyEU

[nicubunu]

LMDE looks like the most obvious OS choice for the Europeans wanting software independence from US. The second pick would be openSUSE.

Contingency plans

[fph il quozientatore]

Recent events have shown that it is unwise to depend 100% on a billionaire. Just in case Shuttleworth decides to follow the steps of a certain fellow South African tycoon.