[NBLUG/talk] talk Digest, Vol 199, Issue 4

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Brad Morrison (bradmorrison at sonic.net):

> I use Linux Mint partly because it is ranked on DistroWatch as the
> third most popular Linux distro
> (https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mint), so I assumed
> that more users translates to more frequent updates.

Doesn't follow, really.

There are lots of reasons why the timeliness of updates has no
connection to the number of users.  However, it's also the case that
DistroWatch's distro ranking isn't, and cannot be, based on number of
users.  As the display's name says, it's a "Page Hit Ranking".  It's
just a summary of the number of times someone searched for a particular
named distro using the Distrowatch site search engine.

> LM does appear to use a fixed release model instead of rolling. 

Both the _regular_ edition of Linux Mint (compatible with Ubuntu's
repos) and Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) are released-based rather
than rolling, yes.

LMDE doesn't have a separate entry on Distrowatch, so it's not included
in the "Page Hit Ranking" list.  Searching for it brings up Linux Mint,
so I just incremented LM's Distrowatch "popularity" by 1.  ;->

> I haven't really thought about it before, but it looks like Linux Mint
> is a Ubuntu based distro (whatever that means)

It means that Clément Lefèbvre and friends started with the then-current
release of Kubuntu 6.10 in 2006 and fixed them with various desktop
enhancements and saner DE choices, and each LM release is
binary-compatible with a concurrent *buntu release.

> but uses Debian for its package management - ? 

No.  *buntu is closely based on Debian and is a persistent fork from it
(but is no longer binary-compatible), and therefore *buntu uses lots and
lots of Debian-standard administrative tools including the distinctive
dpkg and apt package-management tools and the .deb package format.

> Do the distros usually package the apps themselves or
> does Ubuntu/Debian do that?

Yes.  But sometimes a distro exists as a binary-compatible variation on
a more-established distro, compatible with the established distro's
package repositories but adding some of its own bespoke packages to
create something different or specialised.