Mint is based on Ubuntu. It's not strictly tied to any Debian release channel?! There's LMDE as well. That's based on stable.
this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2026
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why is mint recommended and debian is called kernel-showcase "only graddaddy not really a usable distro"
Mint is very, very stable. However, not all hardware is compatible, especially since Mint is using older libraries. For most people, Mint is the best solution. For your hardware, it seems to be Debian-Unstable. I personally use both and I'm happy with both.
Mint and Mint LMDE are using Pipewire by default, how are you using pulseaudio?
i didnt know thanks
PikaOS
Mint is based on testing irc.
I thought so too, and it looks like it used to be, but LMDE is currently based on Debian Stable, specifically LMDE 7 is based on Debian 13 "Trixie", first released Aug 2025.
FWIW I've been running Debian Testing for a few years now and been plenty happy, might get worth trying that.
Yeah, don’t do that.
You may have been lucky, but the testing repository is really not meant for daily use.
Noone cares about packages there, so depending on what you have installed and when you update, you might have critical security vulnerabilities that have been patched for weeks on Stable or other incompatibilities/broken dependencies.
Unstable is not meant for daily use either, but at least you brainlessly get pushed the latest updates at all times. I have used it for a while, but it broke on me, too.
If you need newer software, just use Stable with backports or Flatpaks.
So I completely understand where you're coming from, but sometimes you gotta live on the edge and accept the consequences.
I exclusively use Debian stable. I ran unstable for a while but in general I never felt like it gave me anything I needed. I also do not recommend running unstable unless you're very familiar with Debian and are easily able to work out issues. They didn't come up often, but they did come up.
I agree.
I switched to unstable because I wanted the latest kernel and latest Plasma, my experience has been mostly positive but there are weird issues like not being able to install ffmpeg due to some dependency conflict. I can compile ffmpeg from source and install just fine tho
i last used unstable back in 2007 and it wasn't that much different that stable; has it gotten worse?
Not at all. I didn't mean to imply it was plagued with issues, but I did run into them every now and then. Nothing I couldn't ever resolve either but it's still not something I'd recommend to a novice unless they are open to potentially breaking their system in a way that may be unknown to them.
i was thankful for those issues; it taught me A LOT about how Linux worked back then.