LMDE vs main-edition Mint for those new to Linux, was: LinuxMint Question

[Tom Roche]

Michael Havens http://lists.phxlinux.org/lurker/message/20151029.223419.f8d4ef0a.en.html
> last year I put Linux Mint Debian Edition on my brother's xp computer and it ran beautifully

I like LMDE a lot, have been running it since it went public (~3 years ago? I forget), and have tried to help support it. That being said:

IMHO (YMMV) concepts relating to packaging, repositories, dependencies, and the like (I should be able to summarize this in one word, but nothing comes to mind) will represent the major mental hurdle for almost anyone transitioning from a win* to a Linux distro. (I say "almost," since there may be

* win* users that ran Cygwin, which has its own packaging system. This is one more way in which Cygwin is the gateway drug for Linux :-)

* distros that lack a packaging system. Still?

) Hence I would start a recovering Windozer on a distro that makes packaging more transparent (like main-edition Mint, or Ubuntu on which it's based) rather than on LMDE, where (IMHO) one is expected to have a fairly strong understanding of and experience with Debian packaging and the APT-based toolset.

Once the user gets that experience, and provided either s/he wants to get more b/leading edge or s/he gets sufficiently annoyed with periodic reinstalls, *then and only then* would I recommend transitioning main-edition -> LMDE.

HTH, Tom Roche <Tom_Roche at pobox.com>