I was also interested in trying that one with KDE, thanks for posting this.
I have one question: Are you still required to reinstall when a major new version comes out? I remember last I looked (a while ago) there was no upgrading path.
this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2026
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TIL. That definitely puts me off, like WTF? How can you fuck up a perfectly upgradable Debian like that?
Yes, unfortunately you have to clean install (they have a guide for it). It's fine for me since it's based on Debian, which has a very long support cycle spanning two or more years generally.
Mint’s relative lethargy at migrating to wayland has been increasingly becoming a sore point due to the sheer practical difference it makes
I mean, pretty much every desktop environment that's not Gnome or KDE has been dragging its feet. AFAIK Cinnamon is on track to be *the first smaller DE with full wayland support. I understand that you don't want to wait if you're actually interested in some of wayland's features, though.
*one of
AFAIK Cinnamon is on track to be the first smaller DE with full wayland support.
I think Budgie just beat them to it. To be clear, Budgie 10.10 is literally Wayland-only.
Neat!
I mean, pretty much every desktop environment that’s not Gnome or KDE has been dragging its feet.
To be fair, migrating a desktop environment from X11 to Wayland is a lot of work, Wayland still hasn't reached feature parity, and most desktop environments are maintained by very few people with scant resources. It's no surprise that the big ones are ahead of the others.
What about COSMIC? It is Wayland only. Do you consider COSMIC to be a "smaller DE"?
I tried COSMIC on PopOS and had the same sour experience that LTT famously did in his recent video. And honestly, considering that it is visually and functionally no different than GNOME (which is already on wayland and much more stable), I don't know why they're even bothering with it.
I already edited my comment to say "one of the first" 3 hours ago.
Also yes, I consider every linux DE that isn't Gnome or KDE "smaller".
I assume edit changes take a while before they are updated on all other instances. I had similar "issues" in the past too. It's pretty annoying. When I replied it didn't show the edited version.
I suppose COSMIC technically never migrated/transitioned from X11 to Wayland, because it's been Wayland-only from inception.
I should have quoted the part I am referring to:
Cinnamon is on track to be *the first smaller DE with full wayland support. I understand that you don’t want to wait if you’re actually interested in some of wayland’s features, though.
I meant that there is a desktop environment with full Wayland support. And my question was if s/he considers COSMIC to be a smaller DE, that could qualify this statement.
Are you on systemd or sysVinit? If you're on the latter, could you tell if you've even noticed any difference so far? Thanks in advance!
No, I chose systemd for the familiarity.
Thanks for posting this. I've been keeping MX Linux in the back of my mind as a possible Debian alternative if I ever need one.
they aren’t letting me post this testimonial in the MX forum because it doesn’t accept anon-aliased emails for logins.
Ouch. That's a red flag for me, since it forces people to expose themselves to spam and tracking if they want to participate in the community. Which alias service did they reject? Maybe there's one that doesn't trigger their rule?
addy.io is the one I'm using
In case you want to try some others:
https://simplelogin.io/
https://relay.firefox.com/
https://www.33mail.com/
https://erine.email/
Unfortunately, some misguided (or possibly malicious) people collect email forwarding domains like these and publish them in lists dishonestly advertised as spam or disposable address lists. An unfortunate number of web developers have taken to using these lists, leading to the situation you're in now.
The best suggestions I can offer:
- Complain to the administrators of each site that does this, making sure to explain why it's a problem. There's a chance that some of them honestly don't realize that legitimate forwarding domains are being swept up into a dragnet intended for spammers, and might stop using those lists if they were made aware.
- When choosing a forwarding service, pick one offering domain names that haven't been picked up by the blacklists. This might require non-default settings when creating a forwarding address, or paying for access to the more obscure domains.