Clement Lefebvre has announced the arrival of LMDE Update Pack 4 almost half a year after the last update to Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE). The new update brings the 3.2 Linux kernel to this version of Mint and drops the GNOME 2 desktop in favour of Cinnamon 1.4, MATE 1.2 or a choice of other desktop environments.

Finally following the lead of the main edition of Linux Mint, LMDE is dropping GNOME 2 because of underlying dependency issues that result from Debian Testing's switch to GNOME 3-based libraries. As Lefebvre points out in the announcement "GNOME 3 conflicts with GNOME 2 and so most distributions lost GNOME 2 about a year ago. Linux Mint 12 lost it in November and LMDE is about to lose it as well with this update pack." For users who would prefer not to switch to Cinnamon, MATE or the stock GNOME Shell, LMDE also provides KDE 4.7.4 and Xfce 4.8 with this update.



Linux Mint Debian Edition in action The major shift to GNOME 3 libraries with several different desktop choices built on top of them does at least partially explain the long development cycle. Linux Mint Debian Edition was originally envisioned to be a rolling distribution that would track Debian Testing but it switched to the Update Pack model in July of last year.

Lefebvre's announcement has more information about LMDE Update Pack 4 and the package updates should already be available through the LMDE repositories. Install media images for Linux Mint Debian Edition can be downloaded from the Linux Mint web site.

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(fab)