The Linux Mint Debian Edition 7 beta, based on Debian 13 Trixie, was released last week.
I had been planning to do a clean install, replacing my LMDE6 install and reinstalling the apps I needed, for a lot of reasons — putting the install on my system’s NVMe, LMDE6 was originally installed on an Intel i5 machine and now I have an AMD processor — and I was going to wait until LMDE7 hit final, but I went ahead and started working on it last week, migrating my (generally unused) Windows 11 install off the NVMe, making what would be a /home partiton and moving my files over, and installing a 2 terabyte drive strictly for music storage.
I downloaded the beta iso in the middle of the week, Thursday, I think, and I kicked the tires on it in a virtual machine. Then, yesterday morning I installed then off and on throughout the day worked on tweaking this and that, getting things installed, etc., etc.
I had a little trouble getting my virtual machines up and running, but they’re good now.
I also installed Wine, the Windows compatibility layer, which I had not done on LMDE6, and I migrated my Wine directory (with installed programs) from a Mint 22 install. I did not play it last night, but I fired up my twenty-five year old copy of Microsoft’s Age of Empires II and it launched, so all it good with the world. (Yeah Write!, a word processor I used to use, has not worked in a while. It launches, but it’s a white window.)
One thing I did not do, in installing everything, was to run this command…
sudo apt install network-manager-sstp network-manager-sstp-gnome sstp-client freerdp3-x11
That would install all the software I would need to access Diamond’s computers. This would be followed by a script to set up the VPN connection, and I would run a different script whenever I needed to access my remote desktop.
I wrote a whole manual for work. It’s 35 pages, complete with illustrations. I gave it to the head of IT in late 2023 to the resounding clamor of crickets. I thought it might’ve come in useful; there would be people at Diamond who didn’t want to buy a new computer just because Windows 10 hit EOL.
No one ever told me I couldn’t use Linux, but I was on my own.
For the moment, I have not installed Conky. I began toying with it, after I decided a few months ago I was going to do a clean install of LMDE7, and I have a configuration ready to go, but I don’t feel I need it.
My CTWM configuration didn’t work correctly. The problem is that there’s something weird about window geometries, and an X offset of 0 causes the application to go to the left side of the screen, not the right. Meanwhile, a Y offset of 0 is perfectly fine. So I had to fix the geometries in the config, and now it’s almost fine; there’s a one-pixel empty space between my side panel on the right and the screen edge. I suppose I could put the panel on the left…
The experimental Wayland session works, but there’s no usable desktop — no icons, mouse clicks don’t respond, no wallpaper. But, the clock desklet works. Google searches show this can happen — there’s some suggestion it’s an Nvidia problem, but I don’t have an Nvidia card — and there was the suggestion to create a new user, which I tried, thinking there might be something in my configuration, but no, there was no change. No Wayland for me. This is an X11 household!
Otherwise, it’s good. I’ll update new packages in the next week or so and be up to date.
The desktop wallpaper, by the way, is of the Rock of Cashel in Ireland, the historic seat of the High Kings of Ireland. While I’ve used the Rock of Cashel as a wallpaper — there’s a moody image in Microsoft’s Ireland wallpaper pack for Windows 7, which I used to use at work — this image is courtesy of the Irish photographer Mark McGuire.
It was always a little irksome that Microsoft didn’t have a Scotland wallpaper pack…
LMDE7 feels sprightlier. Could be the NVMe.