Sep 7, 2010 13:14 GMT  ·  By

The Linux Mint team has been particularly active in recent months. Having released a Linux Mint 9 version for every popular desktop environment out there, and then some, the team has now released a Linux Mint flavour based entirely on Debian.

"Today is very important for Linux Mint. It’s one day to remember in the history of our project as we’re about to maintain a new distribution, a rolling one, which promises to be faster, more responsive and on which we’re less reliant on upstream components," the team announced on the Linux Mint blog.

"Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) comes with a Debian base, which we transformed into a live media and on top of which we added a new installer," the announcement explained.

Linux Mint Debian Edition ditches the Ubuntu base on which Linux Mint releases have relied on so far. Instead it uses a source further upstream, Debian Squeeze, the next major version of the respected Linux distro. UPDATE: As KirkM points out in the comments, LMDE is technically based on Debian Testing, which is currently Squeeze, meaning that once Squeeze goes stable, LDME will be based on the next testing release.

Note that Ubuntu itself is based on Debian so the Linux Mint team has basically decided to cut out the middle man. The team says there are several advantages to doing this, as well as several disadvantages.

On the plus side, it means that users never have to re-install again, the constant stream of updates will ensure that they're always running the latest software. The Debian-based edition is also billed as faster and lighter than the Ubuntu-based one.

However, the downside of the constant updates is that the packages usually come with less testing and are generally less stable then the ones in Ubuntu. Fixes will come faster too, but users should expect a few more rough edges.

For now, the Debian-based version will come with GNOME as the desktop environment and just in the 32-bit flavour. It is also considered somewhat experimental.

While there are no plans for a KDE or a 64-bit version, those may come if there is demand for them.

It also doesn't mean anything for the regular Linux Mint releases, all supported versions, KDE, Xfce, Fluxbox and LXDE, will continue to be built on Ubuntu, just like before. Linux Mint Debian Edition is available for download here on Softpedia.