Download Linux

Instructions on how to download Linux. These instructions are for LMDE 5 "Elsie" Cinnamon 64-bit. It is perfectly OK and sometimes a good idea to use other versions of Linux, too.

Linux Mint Debian Edition 5 "Elsie" Cinnamon 32-bit
You may want to use the 32-bit edition of LMDE 5 if you have a really old computer or a netbook. In LMDE 5 you can install a new kernel to allow a 32 bit install to access greater than 4 GB RAM. There is no direct download on the page, but there is a torrent link. You will need a program such as qBittorrent to download this ISO.

Download the LMDE 5 Cinnamon 32-bit ISO Torrent.

Linux Mint Debian Edition 5 "Elsie" Cinnamon 64-bit
Go to the LMDE 5 Cinnamon 64-bit download page.

Choose a mirror
Find a mirror in your country or that is near you and follow that link. If you want to you can use the torrent link near the top of the page.

Wait for downloading to finish
Wait until it finishes downloading. It's a 1.9 GB download so it may take approximately 1-2 hours for you, depending on how you connect to the internet.

Verifying the download
You should skip this section unless you are an extremely advanced user and you care deeply about security. For what it's worth SHA256 sum for the LMDE 5 Cinnamon 32-bit download is 1116d611be80ad496bdc5a7c0444f63564539891f2176f9b134ff9630c6b91c8 and the SHA256 sum for the 64-bit download is 8f351d30e97f3a9c3f3848fde781c7f3758abd0f8ddf120827d98a5832cfa027. If you have GPG, which, unfortunately, neither Windows nor OS X comes with, you can verify the GPG signature with the sha256sum.txt and sha256sum.txt.gpg files which occur in the same directory as the LMDE 5 download on the mirrors.

When it's done
That's it, you've done it. Now you can use the disc image (ISO) in a virtual machine or for a live session and installing Linux.