According to the ISO image page of the LinuxMint community website, the ISO of LinuxMint Debian Edition (LMDE) 6 is under testing. The test has been running for six days so far, with two sets of failures each for the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of LMDE6; a third attempt to pass the test is in progress.
LMDE6, codenamed "Faye", brings the latest changes of LinuxMint21.2 and uses the newer Debian12 as the base and the newer Linux6.1 kernel. Some of the changes carried over from Linux Mint 21.2 include improvements to the Cinnamon desktop through a feature called Styles, which allows users to have greater customization of themes and accent colors.
One of the main differences between Ubuntu-based LinuxMint and LMDE is the longevity issue. The mainstream LinuxMint version has been supported for five years, while LMDE has only been supported for two years, which means there is only a short time to upgrade to a new version.
If you focus on production environments, then the LinuxMint major release may be better for you, as it means less frequent upgrades and potentially better software support since it is more widely used than LMDE.
For those who don’t understand how LMDE fits into the LinuxMint product line, it is essentially a backup plan for enterprises. If something goes wrong with Ubuntu, the Mint team can quickly switch to the Debian version of the operating system and continue developing Xapps, Cinnamon, and MATE.
Currently, the team is testing the final ISO image of LMDE6, and users can expect to see it land in the next week or so. If you are already using LMDE5, upgrade instructions will be posted on the LinuxMint blog when the upgrade path becomes available.
Learn more:
https://community.linuxmint.com/iso