MintPPC

I noticed activity in the packages of Linux Mint Debian Edition 7 on the servers of Linux Mint. It means that we are close to a release of Linux Mint “Zena” and an upgrade to LMDE 7. The most important updates are a renewed menu, a “System Reports” tool to help finding problems and recommended solutions to issues, the adddition of XApp Symbolic Icons (XSI), which are simple, monochrome icons used throughout applications for buttons, menus, and status indicators. Furthermore, cinnamon has been upgraded to 6.6, with improved support for keyboard layouts and input methods. Nemo has been upgraded to 6.6 which features a template manager. Furthermore, in Nemo one can pause and resume file operations from now on. Other improvments: whenever you miss a notification, it now shows a badge in your window list. The workspace switcher applet was improved. Its desktop representation is much clearer than before. Only visible windows are shown, along with their icon. A new configuration tool was implemented to support Thunderbolt. Many more features were added. It can all be seen here.

I will start working on the updates to the arm64 version of LMDE 7. For current users, these updates will become available via the MintPPC repository. In the near future, I will also spin a new LMDE 7 iso with the upgraded packages. If all is done, I will publish it here on the homepage.

Hi,

just a quick heads-up: After fixing a longstanding upstream bug [1], LibreOffice is
finally available on 32-bit PowerPC (powerpc) again.

It can be installed with:

# apt install libreoffice

Feel free to test and report back!

Thanks,
Adrian

[1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1122336

An update in my MintPPC system upgraded grub. If you do this on your system, don’t forget to repair the boot partition afterwards with
_{fsck.hfs /dev/sda2}

LMDE 7, code named Gigi, has been released today by the Linux Mint team. I am ready with LMDE 7 arm64 too. The ISO can be purchased via this website. The procedure to install LMDE 7 arm64 in UTM on Apple Silicon can be seen here.

Linux Mint Debian Edition 7 Beta has been released and I am up to date with the changes. When a stable version is released, the arm64 version will follow suit soon thereafter. I will not give away this release for free anymore.

Upgrade from LMDE 6 goes smooth and without any issues. I just performed an upgrade from LMDE 6 to 7 within UTM. The result can be seen here.

I was able to build the latest VLC for PowerPC, after many years being unable to be built. It was shown to work on the new Mirari board, a PowerPC based computer with the e5500 chip. The Mirari does not have Altivec instructions. The VLC packages were built with Altivec disabled. VLC PowerPC is only available in MintPPC32, not in Debian.

Today BrassMonkey, an internet suite application, was added to the MintPPC repository. To install:

^{sudo apt update
sudo apt install brassmonkey}

Info at github

Hello, I am very proud to announce that LMDE 6 cinnamon edition for arm64 has been released. Much testing has been done and I now call the live installer stable. lmde6-cinnamon-arm64.iso installs LMDE 6 with packages from the Linux Mint Xia release in a Debian Trixie base. This distribution will have a shelf life until June 2035, as Debian keeps fixing security bugs until that time (see here).
Send a mail to jjhdiederen at zonnet dot nl for more information.

Details of LMDE 6 cinnamon arm64:
kernel: 6.12.41+deb13-arm64
cinnamon: 6.4.8+faye

System requirements:
2 GB RAM (4 GB recommended for a comfortable usage).
20 GB of disk space (100 GB recommended).
1024×768 resolution (on lower resolutions, press ALT to drag windows with the mouse if they don’t fit in the screen).

Screenshot LMDE 6 cinnamon arm64 from a Mac mini M1:

I have started with the preparations of the next Linux Mint Debian Edition arm 64. It is called Gigi and has version number 7. I was able to build a live system with LXDE in this case as it builds fast and the right base-files package. As you can see, it is real Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) now, as recognized by fastfetch.

Edit 20 September 2025

Linux Mint Debian Edition 7 Beta has been released and I am up to date with the changes. When a stable version is released, the arm64 version will follow suit soon thereafter.

_{sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gimp-data=2.10.38-2
sudo apt install gimp
sudo apt-mark hold gimp-data}