MintPPC

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}

It is now possible to install Gnumeric, a spreadsheat program, in MintPPC64. It wasn’t possible for many many years. The fix was easy. I uploaded the fix to the goffice Gnome team and to goffice Debian.

This year saw the release of various new components of the LXDE desktop, as used in MintPPC.

See here for an update of all new components.

What’s New in Debian 13

• Official support for RISC-V (64-bit riscv64), a major architecture milestone
• Enhanced security through ROP and COP/JOP hardening on both amd64 and arm64 (Intel CET and ARM PAC/BTI support)
• HTTP Boot support in Debian Installer and Live images for UEFI/U-Boot systems
• Upgraded software stack: GNOME 48, KDE Plasma 6, Linux kernel 6.12 LTS, GCC 14.2, Python 3.13, and more

Official announcement

Wiki

ArcticFox has been updated to 46.1 in MintPPC32. There are no ppc64 builds for SeaLion and ArcticFox lately.

As I have Linux Mint running bare metal on my Mac Mini M1, I can experiment to build images using the fast processor. At the moment I am playing around with live-build, a Debian tool to create live systems. At the end of the day, after trying a couple of configuations and building some broken package, I was able to produce a live system ISO of Linux Mint arm64. The ISO boots straight into Linux Mint, just like the Linux Mint x86-64 ISO of the Linux Mint team. The installer which is created does not yet work, although I have an idea how to fix that. If this works, I can provide a Debian style Live image which boots into Linux Mint and can install the same desktop from that image by copying the live system to the disk. This is different from the usual method which is used by debian-installer. Normally, packages from the medium or network are installed.

A working NETINST ISO is available. The image is able to install Linux Mint Debian Edition in a virtual machine via the net. It has been tested in Parallels and works very fast.

Since recently also a Live Image is available, which is able to install Linux Mint arm64 from a live system or with Debian-installer from the boot menu.

A dedicated page was added to the menu on the top of the website. The Linux Mint arm64 page is the place to go to for information about Linux Mint arm64.

Hi guys, I was just able to install Debian bare metal on my Mac Mini M1. I then converted it into a Linux Mint Debian Edition! Look at the picture! This is probably the first Linux Mint arm64 running bare metal on a silicon Mac.

It is unbelievable how fast this machine is under Mint! I installed Mint with all dependencies from a console type Debian installation in like a minute!

It is not yet possible to install such a system automatically, as Debian does not yet give support officially using their debian-installer. At the moment one can only install Linux Mint on Apple silicon by hand.

Recently I ported Linux Mint Xia, running in a Debian trixie base, to arm64. I am working on a solution to get Linux Mint running in a VM like Parallels and UTM on silicon macs with almost native speed. A test version is ready and being tested. In the future, I will sell disk images for Parallels and UTM, maybe also VMWARE. These images will contain Linux Mint Debian Edition 7 (Gigi). Stay tuned for this.

Link to Linux Mint arm64 page