Mir is a Canonical project that was once seen as a competitor to Wayland. Although Mir never took off in the desktop space, it became a popular option in IoT devices. The protocol has since been adapted to support Wayland, opening up the possibility of wider adoption.

Miracle is a window manager that is based on Mir and includes its various advantages, including the ability to run on low-end hardware.

The Fedora project will include Fedora Miracle as an official spin with Fedora 41.

Miracle will provide Fedora with a high-quality Wayland experience built with support for all kinds of platforms, including low-end ARM and x86 devices. On top of this, Fedora will be the first distribution to provide a Miracle based spin, ensuring that it will become the de facto distribution for running Miracle.

Wayland is the display protocol that is replacing the aging X11 system. While many users are able to use Wayland with little to no issues, the protocol is notorious for causing issues for some Nvidia users. With X11’s EOL approaching, developers have been working to smooth out the remaining bugs, a process Canonical engineers believe is now far enough along to make Wayland the default.

In Ubuntu 24.10 we’re also planning to take the plunge and switch to Wayland by default for those with NVIDIA graphics cards. There are still a few known issues with this combination and due to the heavy use of Ubuntu Desktop in AI/ML, VFX and other industries we concluded that it was too early to make that switch in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. That list has now shrunk to a number that makes us feel confident in enabling it in the upcoming interim release and give us the time to discover and resolve any additional “unknown unknowns” ahead of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS.

Wayland brings a number of improvements over X11, both in performance and security. With Fedora defaulting to Wayland and Ubuntu now doing the same, the protocol will hopefully see the rest of its rough edges smoothed out quickly.

Microsoft has made a slew of controversial decisions in recent years, including ads in the Windows 11 Taskbar, aggressive ads promoting Edge, a rumored move to a subscription model for Windows, trying to force users to have a Microsoft account to use Windows, and turning Outlook into spyware by sharing users’ Outlook data with 801 companies. To make matters worse, a former Microsoft software engineer has slammed the company for “comically bad” Windows 11 performance.

At WPN, we have repeatedly called Microsoft out for this behavior, but we’re not the only ones. In fact, a Windows Central op-ed by Jez Corden makes the case that Microsoft is destroying goodwill, the consumer experience, and possibly its own future in the interests of short-term cash grabs.

After acknowledging that Microsoft jumped to an early lead in AI, thanks to its deal with OpenAI, Corden points out that Microsoft could be even further ahead in many areas if it hadn’t made some confusing choices.

Despite the hype surrounding Microsoft’s lead in this category, what’s often less talked about is how much further ahead Microsoft would be if Satya Nadella and the team at Microsoft hadn’t made a range of baffling, short-sighted decisions in previous years. Whether it’s Windows Phone’s death and handing Apple and Google a mobile duopoly, short-changing Xbox investment for years until it was too late, or announcing awesome-looking Surface products only to cancel them — Microsoft’s biggest consistency is that it’s inconsistent. The lack of investment in winning over customers with raw quality is returning to haunt Microsoft in various ways, yet the company doesn’t seem to learn from these mistakes.

In 2015, surrounded by holograms for the HoloLens reveal, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said, “We want to move from people needing Windows to choosing Windows, to loving Windows. That is our goal.”

Corden goes on to say that such statements were welcome and reassuring. Unfortunately, Microsoft has not lived up to that promise.

Microsoft’s Security Woes

Citing Microsoft’s recent security issues, and the company’s pivot to promoting security above all else, Corden quotes CEO Satya Nadella’s memo on the subject and highlights the issues with it.

Recently, CEO Satya Nadella sent a memo imploring staff to put security first above everything. “If you’re faced with the tradeoff between security and another priority, your answer is clear: Do security,” the memo reads. “In some cases, this will mean prioritizing security above other things we do, such as releasing new features or providing ongoing support for legacy systems. This is key to advancing both our platform quality and capability such that we can protect the digital estates of our customers and build a safer world for everyone.” You’d have thought that one of the world’s most pre-eminent cloud companies would have been prioritizing security, but this memo reads like that wasn’t the case.

This emerged as a result of a pretty colossal hacking scandal that has been practically ongoing for the past year and, honestly, even longer ago. Microsoft provides email and cloud solutions to thousands of businesses across the globe, but also governments, nation-states, and even military installations. Microsoft revealed that Russian hackers had recently breached many of its systems, including source code, Microsoft execs’ emails, and even U.S. government entities’ emails. Naturally, this was a massive breach of trust and to the detriment of Microsoft’s reputation in this space, but it also indicates how under-invested Microsoft is in this area.

Corden ties the company’s security issues with the lack of overall support the company provides, especially compared to Microsoft’s early days when it was relatively easy to get support for almost any product.

Microsoft’s Failed Mobile Goals

Corden highlights Microsoft’s failed Windows Phone efforts, spending billions to purchase Nokia before shuttering the division a short time later. Nadella has called the move a mistake since it essentially left the mobile market squarely in the hands of Apple and Google, making it nearly impossible for a viable third-party option to survive, let alone thrive.

Once the company decided to try again with the Android-powered Surface Duo, Microsoft once again abandoned its efforts, leaving users hanging. Corden points to Microsoft’s flakiness with its mobile efforts and makes the case that it undermines confidence in the company’s current Surface plans.

While I am excited about the Snapdragon X Elite Surface iterations, as a consumer, my faith in Surface’s future couldn’t be lower. Surface suffers the same customer support cut-corners as Microsoft 365, with retail stores shut down and marketing spend nearly nonexistent. Microsoft’s fickle attitude to its products doesn’t inspire the kind of consumer confidence competitors like Apple or Dell enjoy and need through its short-sighted designs.

Winning trust in the consumer space is incredibly difficult. In previous years, Microsoft had invested a lot of time and effort in curating the goodwill and prestige around the Surface brand. Still, now it’s throwing it all away with inconsistency and a downgraded presence atop a lack of innovation. The death of Surface won’t just be the death of Surface; it’ll be the death of trust should Microsoft ever attempt anything like this again, as an extension of the trust damage already playing out from the death of Windows Phone.

Microsoft’s Obsession With Ads

Corden takes Microsoft to task for its obsession with aggressively advertising its own products within Windows, something we have pointed to numerous times.

Microsoft will start placing recommended apps in the Start Menu, as depicted above. It’ll roll out gradually in the coming weeks, and it seems some of these will be quite easily turned off.

However, Microsoft has also gotten incredibly aggressive with marketing Microsoft Edge within Windows 11 recently, moving beyond simple “hey, Microsoft Edge is actually pretty good” to outright resetting your default browser when you run major updates. Microsoft will drop pop-ups to warn you not to install Chrome and beg you to stay with Microsoft Edge when searching for Chrome within Bing.

I actually use Microsoft Edge, and I like it a lot. The password manager is incredibly easy to use and syncs between Edge on my desktop and Samsung Galaxy well. But punishing users who don’t want to use it is egregious and a problem of Microsoft’s own making. Google made a browser that was simply better through innovation and hard work. Microsoft didn’t invest enough in its browser technology, and excluded themselves from the market by putting customers last — notice a pattern here?

Conclusion: ‘Microsoft Needs to Learn Some Patience’

Corden’s overall conclusion is that “Microsoft’s biggest consistency is that it’s inconsistent,” that the company needs to learn patience.

Hindsight is 20/20, and I’m admittedly not privy to the full range of factors driving some of Microsoft’s decision-making. But after ten years, the results tend to speak for themselves. I always hear that Microsoft is “learning, learning, learning” from its mistakes, but it never seems to do so. They acquire companies at a breakneck speed, underinvest in integrations, and then shut down those divisions and products while wondering what went wrong. We’ve seen it repeatedly: reams of layoffs, underbaked integrations, low investment, and taking customers for granted.

I used to wonder why many Microsoft reporters seemed jaded, but after almost a decade, I feel like I’m starting to understand. There’s still plenty to love here, and I’m certainly not denigrating the efforts of individuals in those teams — I want them to be supported better and for customers to be treated with more care. I like Windows 11 for the most part, and I like the possibility of using Surface with ARM. Xbox seems to have an impressive slate of upcoming games. But because of the patterns Microsoft keeps throwing at us, it all comes with a cloud of doubt. Doubt is easy — building trust is hard, and Microsoft hasn’t learned this yet.

Corden’s take is an incredibly well-reasoned, in-depth take on Microsoft’s current issues and is well worth a read. The full article can be found here.

AlmaLinux is a popular clone of RHEL, giving users an enterprise-grade distro for free. While AlmaLinux used to be 1:1 RHEL compatibility, the project had to change direction when Red Hat began restricting access to its source code. AlmaLinux is now Application Binary Interface (ABI) compatible with RHEL. This frees the distro to improve on RHEL, while still maintaining compatibility.

That newfound freedom is on full display with AlmaLinux 9.4, with the latest release bringing a number of improvements.

Introducing updates to enhance machine security and data protection, AlmaLinux 9.4 also provides improvements in web-console and system roles that automate additional operations and promote consistency in complex environments. Its new system roles enable the creation and management of logical volume manager (LVM) snapshots for improved data backup and recovery processes while its new features also aim to improve system availability and reliability, facilitate easier recovery operations, and enhance virtual machine snapshot capabilities in hybrid cloud environments.

One of the big features of AlmaLinux’s new release is support for older hardware that the latest RHEL has dropped support for.

With RHEL 9.4, Red Hat changed how they manage device drivers that are deprecated, disabled, or unmaintained, and also removed support for several older hardware devices. The way those devices are managed makes it easy for AlmaLinux to re-add support for those devices that the AlmaLinux community still needs. The release of AlmaLinux 9.4 marks a pivotal moment for any industry looking to keep hardware and human costs low by extending the life of still-good, but aging servers.

The list of devices deprecated in RHEL and supported in AlmaLinux include:

• aacraid – Dell PERC2, 2/Si, 3/Si, 3/Di, Adaptec Advanced Raid Products, HP
• NetRAID-4M, IBM ServeRAID & ICP SCSI
• be2iscsi – Emulex OneConnectOpen-iSCSI for BladeEngine 2 and 3 adapters
• hpsa – HP Smart Array Controller
• lpfc – Emulex LightPulse Fibre Channel SCSI
• megaraid_sas – Broadcom MegaRAID SAS
• mlx4_core – Mellanox Gen2 and ConnectX-2 adapters
• mpt3sas – LSI MPT Fusion SAS 3.0
• mptsas – Fusion MPT SAS Host
• qla2xxx – QLogic Fibre Channel HBA
• qla4xxx – QLogic iSCSI HBA

“This significant enhancement not only streamlines installation and updates for our clusters but also revitalizes older systems, particularly in VFX studios where legacy CPU rendering blades still play a vital role,” said Tristan Theroux, IT infrastructure & security director for SHED. “In the realm of VFX, where every resource counts, these trusted, resilient servers tackle less intensive tasks, allowing more powerful rendering servers to be reserved for more intensive projects. AlmaLinux 9.4 doesn’t just bridge the gap between the past and present; it propels us toward a future where innovation knows no bounds.”

The AlmaLinux team emphasized the importance of the project’s newfound freedom, as well as the team’s commitment to its user base.

“The release of 9.4 stands as the latest testament to AlmaLinux’s steadfast commitment to our community while maintaining the ever-improved performance, scalability and reliability,” said benny Vasquez, chair of the AlmaLinux OS Foundation. “This is our second point release for AlmaLinux 9 since last year’s shift from copying Red Hat bit-for-bit, and we are starting to take advantage of our freedom.”

“Releasing AlmaLinux 9.4 less than one week after the release of Red Hat 9.4 is a testament to the strength and depth of knowledge of the AlmaLinux community and its commitment to speed as well as stability,” said lead architect at AlmaLinux, Andrew Lukushko. “We have the backing of companies and organizations that provide the infrastructure and fundamental understanding needed to deliver the enterprise Linux that our community needs.”

According to the latest data by StatCounter, Windows 10 adoption increased to 70.01% at the end of April 2024. In contrast, Windows 11 adoption dropped to a mere 25.69%. Interestingly, Windows 10’s gain appears to be directly at the expense of Windows 11, since Windows 10 rose by 0.96% and Windows 11 dropped by 0.97%.

Windows 11 has been incredibly unpopular with Microsoft’s user base, largely as a result of controversial decisions Microsoft has made. The company has insisted on including advertising in the operating system, despite intense criticism of the practice. Windows 11 also has steep, and seemingly arbitrarily, high system requirements that will see hundreds of millions of PCs become obsolete.

Unfortunately for users, Windows 10 is EOL October 2025, meaning it will not receive bug fixes or security updates after that date. Microsoft has rolled out an extended support option, but it is expensive. The option starts at $61 per license for the first year, then increases to $122 the second year, and $244 the third. Microsoft offers no additional support, paid or otherwise, after the third year.

If the latest usage stats are any indication, Microsoft still has a long way to go to convince users to upgrade to Windows 11.

Ubuntu recently expanded its optional support window for Ubuntu LTS to 12 years, up from the previous 10. Not to be outdone, Red Hat says REHL 7 is eligible for a total of 14 years, up from its original 10. The company announced the change in a blog post, acknowledging that much has changed since RHEL 7 was released, raising new challenges for IT organizations.

As we near the end of the standard 10-year life cycle of RHEL 7, some IT organizations are finding that they cannot complete their planned migrations before June 30, 2024. To support IT teams while they catch up on their migration schedules, Red Hat is announcing a one-time, 4 year ELS maintenance period for RHEL 7 ELS. While Red Hat is providing more time, we strongly recommend customers migrate to a newer version of RHEL to take advantage of new features and enhancements.

As the company goes on to highlight, each major version of RHEL receives 10 years of support. The first give includes “full support, including bug fixes, security patches, software enhancements, hardware enablement and backports.” The next five years focuses mainly on security patches and bug fixes.

After this, RHEL enters the Extended Life Phase (ELP). During this time, you have continued access to previously-released content on the Red Hat Customer Portal and the Red Hat Knowledgebase. Additionally, we may provide limited ongoing technical support and advice for migrating to currently supported RHEL versions.

For organizations that need to remain on a major release beyond the standard life cycle, we offer the Extended Life Cycle Support (ELS) Add-On. This add-on currently extends support of major releases for up to 2 years after the end of the standard release life cycle. As an optional, add-on subscription, ELS gives you access to troubleshooting for the last minor release, selected urgent priority bug fixes and certain Red Hat-defined security fixes.

As Red Hat point out, the additional support period will give organizations the necessary time to update.

Over the last decade, RHEL 7 has become a staple in many IT organizations, providing a more consistent, trusted platform for hybrid cloud workloads. With 4 years of ELS for RHEL 7, you can revise and execute your migration plans based on your schedule, while continuing to receive the support you need to protect your critical workloads.

Tuxedo OS is a Linux distro that is based on Ubuntu LTS, but running Plasma as the desktop environment. Tuxedo OS is somewhat unique in that it pulls the entire KDE stack from KDE Neon, making it a semi-rolling release distro. While the underlying base is stable Ubuntu, Plasma and the KDE apps are regularly updated, as are the kernel and graphics drivers. Unlike KDE Neon, however, the Tuxedo team does extra testing to ensure a smooth experience for users.

Roughly two months after the release of Plasma 6, the Tuxedo team’s testing and integration is complete and the distro now defaults to Plasma 6.

On 28 February 2024, the KDE project released Plasma 6, a rock-solid release with sensible changes. We have integrated Plasma 6 into TUXEDO OS for you over several weeks and tested it extensively so that it now acts as the updated desktop environment for TUXEDO OS.

As part of the upgrade, Wayland is now the default display server, instead of the aging X11. For users whose workflows are not yet compatible with Wayland, Tuxedo OS still includes X11 and users can easily select it at the login screen.

Users downloading and installing a fresh installation of Tuxedo OS will automatically have Plasma 6. Existing users will be prompted by a notification giving them the option to upgrade. For more detailed upgrade instructions, please see this article.

We reviewed Tuxedo OS as part of our Linux Distro Reviews series and found the OS to be the best KDE Plasma experience of any we had reviewed, both on Tuxedo and non-Tuxedo hardware. The distro’s unique approach of buliding on a stable base, while still offering a well-tested, up-to-date KDE experience is hard to beat. The fact that Tuxedo OS is part of the Ubuntu/Debian ecosystem also ensures users have the widest array of available software.

Individuals wanting a trouble-free KDE Plasma experience should give the latest Tuxedo OS a spin.

Tumbleweed is a popular rolling release distro that provides extensive testing, giving users a higher degree of reliability than is often associated with rolling releases. openSUSE is also well-known for its tight security, making reproducible builds an obvious next step for the distro.

The project’s Jan Zerebecki detailed the change in a blog post:

In March, the configuration for building openSUSE Factory was changed to be bit-by-bit reproducible (except for the embedded signature). Following this, the first openSUSE Tumbleweed packages were verified to be bit-by-bit reproducible.

Zerebecki went on to describe the importance of reproducible builds:

Reproducible builds have a multitude of uses for security and quality. To further enhance their utility, reproducible builds need to be combined with other techniques such as distributed post-merge code review and capability based designs.

A recent example is that reproducible builds allow for the creation of proof, simply by rebuilding and comparing the result, that a GCC build whose source was extracted with a compromised xz was not compromised; this process was achieved without needing to reverse engineer how the compromise occurred. Similarly, reproducible builds were reported as being usefully during investigations of the xz compromise.

Reproducible builds enable collaboration that otherwise would not be possible by supporting more scientifically-based arguments for security, which can be independently verified.

More Linux distros have been moving to reproducible builds for the reasons Zerebecki outlined.

Why Two Flavors of Mint

Mainline Linux Mint and LMDE are both excellent distros. While Linux Mint collectively is often referred to as a ‘new user distro,’ in reality, Linux Mint is one of the few distros that is equally adept at serving the needs of new and experienced users.

The mainline Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu LTS. As of the time of writing, Linux Mint 21.x is based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Within the next couple of weeks, however, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS will be released. It usually takes the Mint team a couple of months to rebase on the new Ubuntu release, meaning we should see Linux Mint 22 around June or July.

In contrast, LMDE—as the name implies—is based on Debian. As of the time of writing, LMDE 6 is based on the latest Debian 12 Bookworm. Like Ubuntu LTS, there is usually a Debian release every two years or so, with the newest version of LMDE following suit a couple of months later. LMDE 6 was released in September 2023, just a couple of months after Debian 12. LMDE 7 will be based on Debian 13, likely in mid-2025.

LMDE was originally conceived as a fallback plan for the Mint team in the event that something happened to Ubuntu. LMDE essentially gives the team an insurance policy, ensuring they will always be able to deliver the experience users have grown accustomed to.

In addition, making Cinnamon and the various X Apps work on LMDE services as a compatibility test, ensuring the various parts of the Mint ecosystem can be easily used on other distros.

Misconceptions

Before moving on to how the two version of Mint compare, let’s get a couple of misconceptions out of the way.

• LMDE is not a rolling release distro. When it was first launched, LMDE was a rolling release, but that is no longer the case. Nowadays, LMDE is based on Debian Stable.
• LMDE is not behind Debian Stable. Throughout a release’s lifecycle, Debian will release minor point updates that include a number of security and bug fixes, such as 12.1, 12.2, 12.3, etc. In reality, these only impact the ISO image you download and install. In contrast, LMDE 6 will remain LMDE 6 until LMDE 7 comes out. When installing LMDE 6, you will have the version that was released the day LMDE 6 was publicly released. However, as soon as you run your first system update, you will receive all the updates, security patches, and bug fixes that come from upstream Debian. In other words, as soon as you run the first system update, your LMDE 6 will be the equivalent of whatever the latest point release of Debian is—Debian 12.5 at the time of writing—just as would happen if you installed an older point release ISO of Debian and then updated it.

How the Two Compare

In point of fact, mainline Mint and LMDE are so similar that it’s easier to discuss the ways they are different. Bear in mind that I have extensively tested both versions on a Tuxedo Pulse laptop, designed specifically for Linux, as well as a 2019 HP with a problematic network card.

Kernel Manager and Driver Manager

Two of the hallmark features of mainline Mint are the Kernel Manager and Driver Manager, graphical tools to install and activate a different kernel, or to install hardware-specific drivers.

LMDE does not have either of these tools since both are based on underlying Ubuntu tools. As a result, accomplishing the same thing in LMDE requires using the Synaptic package manager or the Terminal.

Hardware Support

Debian made great strides toward closing the gap with Ubuntu’s hardware support by including non-free drivers in version 12. As a result, there’s never been a better time to use a Debian-based distro since it now works out-of-the-box with hardware that requires extra work with previous versions.

Despite this, Ubuntu still has a lead in hardware support. There are few, if any, distros that do more to make sure they work with various hardware than Ubuntu, and it shows.

I have found this to be the case in my testing. For example, in my home office I use an old HP inkjet printer that is immediately recognized over the network by both Linux Mint and LMDE. However, an HP laser printer that I frequently used is only recognized by Linux Mint. I have not been able to get LMDE to see it. With more effort, I’m sure I would eventually, but it’s telling that Linux Mint sees it OOTB.

Kernels, Graphics Drivers, and Apps

Ubuntu and Debian have very different philosophies about managing a release, differences that have a direct impact on the editions of Mint.

In the case of Debian, once a version is released, that version is essentially frozen in time. The only updates it will receive during its two-year cycle are security patches and some bug fixes. Everything else, including the kernel and graphics drivers, will remain on the same major version as the day of release, and will only be upgraded to a new version when the next Debian version is released.

In contrast, Ubuntu has its Hardware Enablement Stack (HWE), which updates the LTS version’s kernel and graphics drivers every six months. As a result, the LTS versions receive nice performance improvements throughout the life of the release. In addition, Ubuntu updates some applications throughout the life of an LTS, something Debian doesn’t do.

For example, at the time of writing, LMDE is running kernel 6.1.x and Mesa 22.3.6. When Linux Mint 21 was released, it was running kernel 5.15 and Mesa 20.05. By the time Mint 21.3 was released—still based on Ubuntu 22.04—kernel 6.5.x was available, and Mesa was upgraded to version 23.0.4.

Some of these differences can be mitigated to a degree. For example, using Flatpaks can help both distros—but especially LMDE—have the latest versions of apps. Similarly, using Debian backports, which are enabled in LMDE, can provide a newer kernel.

In the case of the Mesa graphics stack, however, there is simply no good way to update it on LMDE or the Debian Stable it is based on. Again, this can be mitigated to a degree by using Flatpak for any apps that would benefit from an updated graphics stack since Flatpak includes its own dependencies and is often up-to-date with the latest versions.

PPA Support

PPAs are a popular way to get specific software, or newer versions, within the Ubuntu ecosystem. For example, Ubuntu and Linux Mint users who want the absolute latest Mesa drivers can add the Kisak PPA to their system and have the latest, bleeding-edge version.

While some PPAs may work on Debian and LMDE, it’s not a recommended way to install software on a Debian-based system, and it can easily break your installation.

Support Period

The provided length of support is another difference between the two versions of Mint.

Being based on Ubuntu LTS, mainline Mint comes with five years of support. In contrast, LMDE provides roughly a year of support after the release of a new version. Since a new version is released approximately every two years, LMDE comes with roughly three years of support, although it can be less in some cases.

Which Should You Choose?

In many ways, choosing between Linux Mint and LMDE is difficult because the two distros are so similar. Here is a list of reasons that may factor into your decision.

Dislike of Ubuntu

Despite everything Ubuntu has done over the years to advance the Linux desktop, there are a vocal percentage of Linux users that have a strong dislike for Ubuntu. Some of this stems from Ubuntu’s parent Canonical pushing technologies and then unceremoniously abandoning; insisting on promoting Snaps, an alternative to Flatpak; or missteps Canonical made years ago, such as setting up an affiliate program with Amazon search.

In reality, this is the least important reason to discount mainline Linux Mint because the Mint team mitigates nearly all of Ubuntu’s bad decisions. Take Snap as an example. Mint includes the more accepted Flatpaks instead of Snaps and implements measures to ensure a user doesn’t accidentally install them.

That doesn’t mean the Mint team mitigates everything Canonical does. For example, installing the Microsoft fonts package on Linux Mint includes the ubuntu-advantage-tools as a dependency, meaning users will see a message promoting Ubuntu Pro in the Terminal. This can largely be mitigated by grabbing the Microsoft fonts installer from the Debian servers since that version has no such dependencies.

This example, however, highlights the relatively minor impact Ubuntu’s decisions have on Mint. Lead developer Clément (Clem) Lefèbvre has made clear his belief that—at least at this time—the advantages Ubuntu brings to the table far outweigh any disadvantages.

I’ve nothing bad to say about 22.04. I hope Ubuntu continues to be as good going forward and doesn’t neglect its APT package base. If we don’t have a reason to transition we won’t. Ubuntu is still the best APT package base out there in our opinion. LMDE is there as a potential solution, but it is not a goal in itself.

While dislike of Ubuntu—or commercial distros in general—may be the least important reason, it is still a valid reason for someone to choose LMDE over Linux Mint.

LMDE’s Fewer Updates

Because it is based on Debian, LMDE has far fewer updates than Linux Mint. For users who want to update as little as possible, LMDE would be the preferred option.

Entrenched In Debian’s Ecosystem

Some users are long-time Debian users and are well-entrenched in the Debian ecosystem. They may be running servers that are powered by Debian, or have other computers running the distro.

For individuals like these, and especially fans of Cinnamon, LMDE is a perfect compliment. Under the hood, LMDE is Debian, just with updated Cinnamon and X App included. Whereas, like all its other packages, it will use the same version of Cinnamon throughout its lifecycle, LMDE receives updates to Cinnamon and the X Apps every six months when a point release of mainline Mint is released.

Newer Hardware and Gaming

Because Linux Mint benefits from Ubuntu’s HWE stack, it is generally a much better choice for users with newer hardware, or for those who want to optimize their gaming experience, since newer kernels and Mesa drivers have a direct impact.

As stated above, it is possible to install a newer kernel in LMDE, but there is no good way to install a newer Mesa version. While this can be partially mitigated by using Flatpak, some games and gaming services don’t run as well as a Flatpak.

To illustrate the point, YouTuber and former professional gamer A1RM4X took mainline Mint, upgraded the kernel and Mesa stack, and found that performance was roughly on par with the best rolling release distros—a result that would be difficult to achieve with LMDE.

Mint Team’s Main Focus

Not to be underestimated is which distro is the Mint team’s main focus: Linux Mint. As Clem stated above, “LMDE is there as a potential solution, but it is not a goal in itself.”

While LMDE is an incredibly capable distro and one of my personal favorites, there are times when its “potential solution” status shines through.

For example, LMDE 6 has a bug in the network notification dialog. Whenever you join or disconnect from a network, a notification dialog displays. There is an option to ‘Never display this again,’ but it doesn’t work on LMDE 6. Despite this being reported for months, it has never been fixed since it’s an upstream Debian 12 bug. In fact, the fix only recently was provided on a third-party site which was announced on the Linux Mint Discord server. One can’t help but wonder if the Mint team might have offered a solution much faster if this bug was impacting the mainline edition, which 88.8% of Linux Mint users are on.

This is not meant in any way as a negative point against the Linux Mint team. As Clem said, LMDE “is not a goal in itself.” The team’s main focus is mainline Linux Mint. As a result, users who want the most supported experience should use the mainline edition, while those who want an outstanding distro that may require a bit more knowledge and self-sufficiency may find LMDE more to their liking.

What the Future Holds

Despite the Mint team’s commitment to Ubuntu as the base, the day may come when that is no longer an option. Ubuntu has been increasingly switching to Snaps over native packages, with 24.04 slated to replace Thunderbird and the CUPS printing stack with Snaps.

Clem has indicated that the team is watching this trend closely, as he stated in the July 2023 blog post.

Last but not least we’re keeping an eye on Ubuntu, their increased focus on Snap, the quality of their 24.04 package base and what this means for us going forward.

At this point, it’s safe to say that Linux Mint 22 will be based on Ubuntu 24.04. As long as Canonical doesn’t make any drastic changes, future versions of Linux Mint will likely continue to be based on Ubuntu LTS, and LMDE will remain a fallback plan.

The fact is, it’s easier to de-Snapify the occasional package from Ubuntu than bring all of Ubuntu’s advantages to Debian.

As Clem stated, however, the Mint team will be watching Ubuntu 24.04 closely, meaning we’ll have more long-term indications of the team’s plans once Mint 22 drops.

Two Solid Choices

At the end of the day, Linux Mint and LMDE are two of the finest Linux distros available, offering an outstanding experience for users of all experience levels.

As with most things in life, you should analyze what is important to you in a computing experience, consider the above points, and make the decision that’s best for your circumstances.

Either way…you can’t go wrong.

Final Note: What Do I Use?

For me personally, LMDE is my distro of choice. While mainline Linux Mint would easily be my second choice, there are things I like and prefer about LMDE. One of those is an Ubuntu-free experience. As mentioned above, the Mint team does an admirable job undoing most of Canonical’s bad decisions, but there are a couple that still impact my specific workflow.

In addition, I am a big fan of community distros, rather than corporate ones. In the case of LMDE, it is a community distro built on one of the oldest community distros in existence.

Finally, I appreciate the renowned stability and security of a Debian-based distro, while still receiving regular updates to the desktop environment and core apps.

All of this makes LMDE the perfect distro for me.

One of the major complaints about Windows 11 is Microsoft’s insistence on users setting up a Microsoft account, rather than a local one. While it’s still possible to use Windows 11 without a Microsoft account, it requires jumping through hoops to do so.

Microsoft is now bringing that same approach to Windows 10 with Build 19045.4353.

New! This update starts the rolls out of account-related notifications for Microsoft accounts in Settings > Home. A Microsoft account connects Windows to your Microsoft apps. The account also backs up all your data and helps you to manage your subscriptions. You can also add extra security steps to keep you from being locked out of your account. This feature displays notifications across the Start menu and Settings. You can manage your Settings notifications in Settings > Privacy & security > General.

According to Windows Latest, users who want to stop Windows 10 from nagging them into signing up should turn off “Show me notifications in the Settings app. When off, required notifications are still shown” and reboot.

Between including ads in the taskbar, aggressively pushing its own apps over competitors, sharing users’ Outlook data with 801 companies, and now trying to force users to sign up for a Microsoft account, the company seems hell-bent on undermining any goodwill it once had with consumers.

Canonical is closing in on the release of the latest Ubuntu LTS, with Ubuntu 24.04 in Release Candidate stage. Despite not being officially released yet, the new version appears to be a speed demon.

Phoronix tested Ubuntu 24.04 against 23.10 and Windows 11 in 101 benchmarks. The test was conducted on a Framework laptop, with “the 8-core / 16-thread AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS Zen 4 SoC with Radeon RX 7700S graphics, a 512GB SN810 NVMe SSD, MediaTek MT7922 WiFi, and a 2560 x 1600 display.”

Out of 101 benchmarks carried out on all three operating systems with the Framework 16 laptop, Ubuntu 24.04 was the fastest in 67% of those tests, the prior Ubuntu 23.10 led in 22% (typically with slim margins to 24.04), and then Microsoft Windows 11 was the front-runner just 10% of the time…

Windows 11 is already wildly unpopular, with Microsoft struggling to convince Windows 10 users to upgrade. The fact that its performance is so bad is not going to help the company make its case.

Young took to X to demonstrate how bad the Windows 11 Start Menu really is, despite having a top-of-the-line computer.

The Windows 11 Start Menu is comically bad.

This machine has a $1600 Core i9 CPU and 128 GB of RAM and this is the performance I often get.

What is going on in Redmond?

— Andy Young (@anerdguynow) | April 9, 2024

Young then went on to point out that Microsoft needs to listen to its users who are frustrated by the Windows 11 experience.

To be clear, I love Windows. I helped build parts of it. I want it to be as good as it once was. If data suggests the software you build frustrates a significant percentage of users, it means there’s work left to be done.

Once the standard in desktop operating systems, Windows has increasingly frustrated users, thanks to Microsoft’s controversial decisions. The company has been integrating advertising into Windows, aggressively promoting Edge using methods that mimic spam and is rumored to be moving Windows to a subscription model.

To make matters worse, Windows 10 is nearing end-of-life, but it’s estimated some 400 million PCs are not compatible with Windows 11, leaving users with few good options.

In its efforts to be a cloud, AI, and services company, Microsoft has been losing touch with the product that once defined it.

Microsoft leaker Albacore revealed a new button on the Windows 11 Taskbar, called “Recommendations.” There was little additional details at the time, but Microsoft has now confirmed its intentions. In a blog post, the company says the new feature will make recommendations from the Microsoft Store.

Building on top of recent improvements like grouping recently installed apps and showing your frequently used apps, we are now trying out recommendations to help you discover great apps from the Microsoft Store under Recommended on the Start menu. This will appear only for Windows Insiders in the Beta Channel in the U.S. and will not apply to commercial devices (devices managed by organizations).

Fortunately, Microsoft says the feature can be turned off.

This can be turned off by going to Settings > Personalization > Start and turning off the toggle for “Show recommendations for tips, app promotions, and more”. As a reminder, we regularly try out new experiences and concepts that may never get released with Windows Insiders to get feedback. Should you see this experience on the Start menu, let us know what you think. We are beginning to roll this out to a small set of Insiders in the Beta Channel at first.

The company also emphasizes that not all features that it test in its Beta Channel will ship.

The Beta Channel is the place we preview experiences that are closer to what we will ship to our general customers. Because the Dev and Beta Channels represent parallel development paths from our engineers, there may be cases where features and experiences show up in the Beta Channel first. However, this does not mean every feature we try out in the Beta Channel will ship. We encourage Insiders to read this blog post that outlines the ways we’ll try things out with Insiders in both the Dev and Beta Channels.

That latest statement seems to be an acknowledgment that Microsoft knows Recommendations are likely to be unpopular. The fact is, users are quickly tiring of Microsoft’s insistence on trying to shove ads into Windows and monetize its users’ data.

Hopefully, the company rethinks this idea sooner rather than later.

Microsoft has repeatedly been under fire for injecting ads into Windows 11, being overly aggressive with Edge ads, and for sending massive amounts of data to advertising companies. Unfortunately, it seems Microsoft shows no signs of slowing down.

According to Microsoft leaker Albacore, Microsoft is bringing a “Recommended” button to the Windows 11 taskbar, a button that probably does not bode well for users who want to be left alone.

A new button is coming to the Windows 11 Taskbar right alongside system ones like Task View, Widgets, etc. It’s called “Recommended” & has all strings stripped from production, guess the UI team doesn’t want people to know. Concerned about recommendations becoming this integral

— Albacore (@thebookisclosed) | April 9, 2024

Microsoft seems intent on completely changing its Windows business model. As the company has focused on the cloud and services, it seems hell-bent on turning Windows into another service, with rumors that it will begin charging a subscription for Windows 12.

If Albacore is right, and Microsoft introduces a “Recommended” button to Windows 11, it’s a safe bet users can expect even more ads in the future.

According to The Document Foundation, the organization behind LibreOffice, Schleswig-Holstein made the decision following a successful pilot program aimed at addressing issues with using commercial software. In particular, the state administration was concerned about digital sovereignty, as highlighted by the Minister-President’s website:

Independent, sustainable, secure: Schleswig-Holstein will be a digital pioneer region and the first German state to introduce a digitally sovereign IT workplace in its state administration. With a cabinet decision to introduce the open-source software LibreOffice as the standard office solution across the board, the government has given the go-ahead for the first step towards complete digital sovereignty in the state, with further steps to follow.

We have no influence on the operating processes of such [proprietary] solutions and the handling of data, including a possible outflow of data to third countries. As a state, we have a great responsibility towards our citizens and companies to ensure that their data is kept safe with us and we must ensure that we are always in control of the IT solutions we use and that we can act independently as a state.

As The Document Foundation points out, the German state’s decision comes on the heels of the EU Commission finding that its own use of Microsoft 365 infringes on EU data protection regulation. The EU strictly regulates how citizen data can be used and where it can be sent. Unfortunately the European Data Protection Supervisor found that using Microsoft’s products doesn’t provide the necessary protections, we noted in our coverage of finding:

In particular, the Commission has failed to provide appropriate safeguards to ensure that personal data transferred outside the EU/EEA are afforded an essentially equivalent level of protection as guaranteed in the EU/EEA. Furthermore, in its contract with Microsoft, the Commission did not sufficiently specify what types of personal data are to be collected and for which explicit and specified purposes when using Microsoft 365. The Commission’s infringements as data controller also relate to data processing, including transfers of personal data, carried out on its behalf.

Schleswig-Holstein is clearly positioning itself as a champion of open source software and the digital sovereignty that provides.

Pop!_OS (Pop or Pop OS from here on, because that spelling is horrible) is a popular distro based on Ubuntu and designed specifically for System76’s hardware. Like any distro, however, Pop can be installed on any computer compatible with Linux and used by countless people who have never owned a System76 laptop.

What Sets Pop OS Apart

What sets Pop apart from all the others in a world of Ubuntu derivatives and clones? In our Linux Distro Reviews series, Pop OS scored one of our highest scores thanks to several important features:

• Being based on Ubuntu gives Pop the best-in-class compatibility that Ubuntu provides.
• The distro is a semi-rolling release distro. While the core system and apps are based on Ubuntu, and therefore change little between major versions, the Linux kernel, Mesa graphics drivers, and select apps are updated regularly. This gives Pop OS an edge in performance and helps it be compatible with the most recent hardware.
• System76 removes Ubuntu’s Snaps from Pop, including the more commonly used Flatpak.

While those benefits are enough to make Pop OS stand out, the desktop experience is its true headliner feature.

The Current COSMIC Desktop Environment

Unlike other distros that use KDE Plasma, GNOME, Cinnamon, Xfce, or something else, Pop OS uses its own desktop environment (DE): COSMIC. To be clear, in its current incarnation, COSMIC is a heavily—with an emphasis on heavily—modified GNOME.

GNOME is the most widely used DE on Linux, although it has nearly as many detractors as fans. While beautiful, modern, and relatively stable, the DE is minimalist, eliminating basic things like a taskbar or dock, maximizing and minimizing windows, desktop icons, and more. All of these can be added via extensions, but the extensions break with each new version of GNOME and generally can result in less stability.

In contrast, while preserving much of GNOME’s modern look and feel, COSMIC maintains common desktop paradigms, making it easier for new users to adapt to. System76 achieves this through extensive use of extensions, modifying GNOME into something that can hardly be called GNOME anymore.

Even more impressive, COSMIC is the only true tiling desktop available on Linux. Like a dedicated tiling window manager, COSMIC includes automatic tiling features that can be activated or deactivated by the user.

Given the level of customization the Pop team has put into COSMIC, it’s easy to see why continuing to build on GNOME is not an ideal solution.

The Next Version of COSMIC

In late 2021, System76 devs shared their plans to create an all-new COSMIC, written entirely in Rust. This would give System76 the ability to be in full control of the DE’s development—rather than be dependent on GNOME—and continue evolving it ways that would otherwise not be possible.

Over the last couple of years, System76 has continued to reveal details about its COSMIC development, with the company nearing an alpha release. While the original alpha was planned for the end of March, the company delayed it to late May in the interest of releasing a more complete experience. Originally, the COSMIC alpha would only have included the DE itself, still relying on GNOME apps. Because development has proceeded much faster than the team anticipated, the company is now shooting for late May with an alpha that will include the DE and all the basic apps one would expect, such as a text editor, file manager, and more.

We won’t go into all the features that are included in the upcoming COSMIC, as there is already a plethora of articles and videos that cover COSMIC’s development. In addition, we will be doing a full, deep-dive review once it is available.

The purpose of this article is to predict how the Linux desktop space will be impacted by yet another DE entering the market.

Why COSMIC Is So Important

As stated earlier, Gnome is the most popular Linux DE. Gnome benefits from being the default DE for Ubuntu, Fedora, SUSE, and many other distros.

KDE Plasma comes in a close second, taking a diametrically opposite approach to Gnome. Plasma excels at being THE most powerful DE on any platform, offering a slew of customization options.

Xfce is usually considered the third-place choice, with Cinnamon coming in fourth. After Cinnamon, there are a number of options, including Budgie, Deepen, Pantheon, LXQT, and others.

COSMIC’s entry into the DE market represents a major shift in several ways:

• COSMIC does not use GTK or Qt. KDE Plasma and LXQT both use the Qt UI toolkit, while Gnome and nearly every other DE uses GTK. In contrast, being Rust-based, COSMIC uses Iced. This makes COSMIC one of the only DEs that is not at the mercy of decisions made by GTK developers or Qt.
• COSMIC does Gnome…but better. Gnome’s appeal is is its simplicity and reliability. Unfortunately, Gnome often takes its simplicity too far, eschewing basic desktop functionality that has been at the core of personal computing for decades, forcing users to install extensions to bring that functionality back.
• COSMIC’s Rust underpinnings promise to bring a level of performance and security other DEs, especially JavaScript-based ones like Gnome, may struggle to compete with.
• System76’s devs seem open to working with the larger community. In contrast, Gnome devs often have the reputation of being a bit prickly. There’s a reason that roughly half a dozen DEs that are all forked off of Gnome. Many projects like the benefits Gnome brings but want something that isn’t quite as limited.

The Fun Part: Predicting What Happens Next

If System76 is able to deliver on COSMIC’s promise, where does that leave the Linux DE space?

I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that 2024 will see Gnome drop from its spot as the most popular Linux DE.

To be fair, we don’t believe COSMIC will replace Gnome as the top DE. We do, however, believe that COSMIC will pull enough users away from Gnome to catapult KDE Plasma to the top spot. While COSMIC will likely take a fair amount of users away from Plasma as well, Plasma still offers a level of power and customization that COSMIC doesn’t provide…at least not yet.

Some of the lesser-used DEs, such as Budgie, will likely experience a loss of users as well. Budgie is already very similar to Gnome. In fact, it is possible to largely replicate Budgie’s workflow within Gnome using extensions. Once COSMIC arrives, essentially providing everything that Budgie—and its parent Gnome—can while also providing much more, users may opt for the all-in-one option that still provides the same general aesthetic and better performance.

As 2024 progresses, I believe the Linux DE rankings will look something like this:

• KDE Plasma
• Gnome
• COSMIC
• Xfce
• Cinnamon

Going into 2025, we believe it is entirely possible that COSMIC could eventually surpass Gnome and take the second spot, driven by wider adoption by distributions outside of Pop OS. For example, Fedora is already exploring launching a COSMIC Fedora Spin, and the DE is already on NixOS and Arch.

Overall, COSMIC’s entry represents one of the most exciting developments in the Linux DE space in years. System76’s laser focus on delivering a fast, stable, beautiful, and customizable option could result in the Goldilocks of Linux DEs.

Windows 10 EOL is slated for October 2025. Unfortunately, Windows 11’s reception has been lukewarm, with high system requirements and slow adoption. It’s estimated some 400 million PCs don’t meet Windows 11’s requirements, meaning millions of perfectly good computers will end up in landfills once Windows 10 goes EOL.

After countless calls for Microsoft to extend Windows 10 support, the company has finally decided to acquiesce—albeit at a steep price. In a support document, the company says consumers will have the option of paying for an annual subscription to continue securely using Windows 10 past 2025:

If you are an individual consumer or an organization who elects to continue using Windows 10 after support ends on October 14, 2025, you will have the option of enrolling your PC in the paid Extended Security Updates (ESU) program. The ESU program enables PCs to continue to receive Critical and Important security updates (as defined by the Microsoft Security Response Center) through an annual subscription service after support ends. More details including pricing will be provided at a later date.

The ESU program provides individual consumers and organizations of all sizes with the option to extend the use of Windows 10 PCs past the end of support date in a more secure manner.

According to Windows Central, the extended support will cost users a pretty penny, starting at $61 per computer for the first year, and doubling each following year. As a result, the second year costs $122 and the third $244, after which the extended service cannot be renewed.

Microsoft’s extended support offer is one of the clearest indications yet of the giant acknowledging that its current operating system is nowhere near as popular as its predecessor.

Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distro by far. Canonical is largely responsible for making Linux approachable to the masses, solving many of the pain points that plagued individuals trying to switch over from Mac or Windows. The company offers two releases of Ubuntu: an LTS (long-term support) version that is released every two years and an interim release that comes out every six months.

Canonical already offers five years of standard support for LTS releases, upgrading that to 10 years with Ubuntu Pro. Ubuntu Pro is free for personal use—with a limit on the number of machines covered—and a paid service for companies.

The company says it is expanding the optional 10 years of support to 12 years:

Long term supported Ubuntu releases get five years of standard security maintenance on the main Ubuntu repository. Ubuntu Pro expands that commitment to 10 years on both the main and universe repositories, providing enterprises and end users alike access to a vast secure open source software library. The subscription also comes with a phone and ticket support tier. Ubuntu Pro subscribers can purchase an extra two years of security maintenance and support with the new Legacy Support add-on.

“We’re thrilled to offer our customers additional years of security maintenance and support for Ubuntu LTS releases”, said Maximilian Morgan, Global VP of Support Engineering at Canonical. “Drawing on 20 years of excellence in open source, Canonical delivers expert security maintenance and support for customers around the world. With Legacy Support, we empower organisations to navigate their operational needs and investments into open source with confidence, ensuring their systems remain available, secure, and supported for many years to come”.

As Canonical points out, the company’s security team backports all the necessary security fixes to LTS releases, giving customers a stable and secure experience they can count on for more than a decade:

Security maintenance is part of a continuous process that proactively protects systems. It includes regular vulnerability scanning, evaluation and patch management. With Ubuntu Pro, Canonical provides continuous vulnerability management for critical, high and medium Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) across all software packages shipped with Ubuntu. Canonical’s security team actively backports these crucial fixes to all supported Ubuntu LTS releases, giving enterprises and end users peace of mind to keep their systems secure without requiring a major upgrade.

Ubuntu is the leading Linux distro for a reason and Canonical’s decision to expand LTS support is sure to help solidify that lead.

Each family of Linux distros has their own package manager, with Debian/Ubuntu using apt, Fedora and Red Hat using dnf, and Arch using pacman. openSUSE’s package manager is zypper, an otherwise capable option. Many openSUSE users, in particular, appreciate zypper’s verbose explanations and the fact that it gives the user choices about how to resolve conflict, etc.

One thing zypper is also known for, however, is its speed—or lack thereof. Much of this is the result of zypper not supporting parallel downloads, unlike virtually every other package manager. It seems the openSUSE team is finally addressing this with a new tool called sypper.

The team describe’s sypper’s use in a blog post:

As part of benchmarking and prototyping for mirror infrastructure, a new tool was developed, sypper. While its intended purpose is a little bit different, it can be used for pre-downloading packages for zypper. Benchmarking shows that it downloads 4-5 times faster by using concurrent downloads and skipping some advanced checks, which zypper does. So check the readme if you want to experiment with the download speed.

As the readme points out, there are two ways to run sypper:

• Run sypper as a regular user: It will create a directory cache/packages in the current directory. You can copy the content of that folder to /var/cache/zypp/packages, so zypper will pick them up instead of downloading.
• Run sypper as root, then it will download packages to /var/cache/zypp/packages, so zypper will pick them up on the next run. It should be noted that the developers do not recommend this option.

Although there has been not statement to this effect, hopefully sypper’s functionality will eventually be folded into zypper, giving the package manager true native parallel downloads. If that happens, zypper could easily become the best package manager on any distro.

According to Statcounter, Windows 10 remains the most popular version of Windows currently in use, with more than 67% market share as of February 2024. Microsoft has been trying to push Windows 11 adoption, but the newer version is decidedly less popular than its predecessor.

Microsoft is pushing the issue, announcing that Windows 10 21H2’s days are numbered:

Windows 10, version 21H2 will reach the end of updates on June 11, 2024. This applies to the following editions released in November of 2021:

• Windows 10 Enterprise, version 21H2
• Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session, version 21H2
• Windows 10 Education, version 21H2
• Windows 10 IoT Enterprise, version 21H2

These editions will no longer receive security updates after June 11, 2024. Customers who contact Microsoft Support after this date will be directed to update their device to the latest version of Windows 10 or upgrade to Windows 11 to remain supported.

Unfortunately, many users cannot upgrade to Windows 11. It’s estimated that 43% of existing PC hardware is incompatible with the new OS. One option many users are turning to is Linux, with the free OS extending the life of existing hardware by years.