Two years after the last release published release of an alternative build of the Linux Mint distribution – Linux Mint Debian Edition 7 (LMDE), based on the Debian package base (classic Linux Mint is built on the Ubuntu package base). The distribution is available in the form of installation iso images (3 GB) with the Cinnamon 6.4 desktop environment.
LMDE is aimed at technically literate users and provides more new package versions. The purpose of LMDE development is to ensure that Linux Mint can continue to exist in the same form even if development of Ubuntu ceases. In addition, LMDE helps to check the applications developed by the project for their full functionality on systems other than Ubuntu. To upgrade from the LMDE 6 branch, is provided with the mintupgrade utility, which just needs to be installed from the repository and run as root.
LMDE includes most of the improvements to the classic release Linux Mint 22.2, as well as original project developments (application manager, update installation system, configurators, menus, interface, Xed text editor, Pix photo manager, Xreader document viewer, Xviewer image viewer). The distribution is fully compatible with Debian GNU/Linux 13, but is not package-level compatible with Ubuntu and classic releases of Linux Mint. The system environment corresponds to Debian GNU/Linux 13 (Linux kernel 6.12, systemd 257, GCC 14).