The Linux Mint team has ended 2014 in force with a great Linux Mint 17.1 "Rebecca" release, for both the MATE and Cinnamon desktop, but it looks like the Debian edition is also going to be interesting.

Linux Mint distros are based on Ubuntu and that is not changing any time soon, but that doesn’t stop the development team from exploring other variants, like Debian. As you all well know, Ubuntu is based on Debian, so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch.

On the other hand, Ubuntu provides a certain predictability that is lacking for the Debian counterpart. The Linux Mint developers can program their releases according to a precise Ubuntu schedule and that is always an advantage. In any case, a new Linux Mint Debian edition is in the works and it should arrive pretty soon.

"The decision was made to use GTK 3.14 in LMDE 2 'Betsy' (the same version as in Debian Jessie). Themes and parts of Cinnamon will be adapted to work properly with it. The decision to switch to systemd or to continue to use sysvinit was not taken yet," wrote Clement Lefebvre a while ago.

You can also see that the decision to adopt systemd hasn't been taken yet, so that will be a very interesting topic. Until then, you can download Linux Mint 17.1 from Softpedia and give them a spin, if you haven't done so already.