Linux Mint based on Debian and Ubuntu are competing

Dec 13, 2015 17:50 GMT  ·  By

The main Linux Mint flavors are based on Ubuntu, but the developers are also working on another version based on Debian. It’s not the main focus of the team, but from what they are saying, it’s already catching up with the Ubuntu version.

The two major version of Linux Mint, one based on Ubuntu and one based on Debian, have coexisted for some time, but the main focus of the team has been on the Ubuntu one. Their explanation has been a very clear one. The Ubuntu version is much more downloaded and used than the Debian one.

To be fair, the two flavors are not identical, and some of the features still need to make their way into the Debian version. The team had some hardware problems last week, and their work on Linux Mate Debian was delayed for a short time. The more interesting piece of news is that it looks like LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) is finally starting to catch up with the Ubuntu version.

Debian won’t replace Ubuntu anytime soon

When the Linux Mint team decided to only use the Ubuntu LTS versions for their development, they also explained that they didn’t plan to switch from Ubuntu to Debian anytime soon, but they would continue to improve the latter one.

“LMDE 2 'Betsy' started to catch up and received updates for some of the Mint tools as well as MATE and Cinnamon yesterday. This was interrupted by a server issue, and we’re hoping to resume work on this tomorrow. Betsy should then receive more updates, including the new MDM, mintdesktop, and overdue updates on Flash and Thunderbird,” Clement Lefebvre, the leader of the Linux Mint team explained.

The fact that LMDE is catching up is very interesting, and it looks like the two flavors will soon reach feature parity. It remains to seen then which will be the more used version of Linux Mint.