raymac46 Posted July 29, 2017 Share Posted July 29, 2017 Now that I have recycled my old 32 bit Atom netbooks, I was looking for some other junker to sit on my workbench for quick Googling by me and my wife. I settled on my daughter's old HP laptop which she brought out for me to wipe and recycle. My daughter is not easy on hardware. This particular laptop has been dropped off her bed - twice. Once the screen was broken and I replaced it. The second time the right hand hinge was broken. I can't really open and close the lid any more and I have the screen held together by duct tape - but hey...it works and the laptop isn't going anywhere. Specs are fine for a junker - AMD Trinity A6-4455 APU, 8 GB of DDR3, 500 GB hard drive. Much better than an Atom 32 bit. So what distro to choose? The ultimate Junkroom Linux - MX-16. Why? It's stable as can be - based on Debian Jessie with backports for security. Beautiful Xfce desktop - easy to use and lovely theme. Everything works out of the box - including a Broadcom wifi card. No problems with AMD FOSS drivers. Easy to autologin so my wife doesn't have to remember a password if she needs to use it. Has both Mepis and AntiX in its genes. MX Linux isn't as popular an Ubuntu or Linux Mint - nor as cool as Arch - but it does have its uses. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted July 29, 2017 Share Posted July 29, 2017 Nice I have not played with MX Linux in a couple of years but I may fire up a VM and play around with it. That's kind of odd...they only have like 9 download mirrors. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted July 29, 2017 Share Posted July 29, 2017 Nice I have not played with MX Linux in a couple of years but I may fire up a VM and play around with it. That's kind of odd...they only have like 9 download mirrors. Who needs mirrors when they have a torrent for the download. If only all distros would offer a torrent option. MX-16 is a fine beast. I ran MX-15 for over a year and upgraded to 16 and have had no problems whatsoever. I have 16 on a usb stick with persistence as a backup os. Setting up on a usb stick was simple with the tools provided and interestingly setting up persistence was very easy too.MX-16 seems to be the only os to make that task simple and easy. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted July 29, 2017 Share Posted July 29, 2017 Who needs mirrors when they have a torrent for the download. If only all distros would offer a torrent option. Pretty much every distros offers torrents but https and ftp downloads are much faster. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted July 29, 2017 Share Posted July 29, 2017 Believe it or don't... I've never gotten the hang of torrenting. I think it has something to do with my router/firewall settings. I can only leech. Leeching is SLOW. http/ftp is much faster on my hi-speed FIOS network. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted July 30, 2017 Share Posted July 30, 2017 Who needs mirrors when they have a torrent for the download. If only all distros would offer a torrent option. Pretty much every distros offers torrents but https and ftp downloads are much faster. Never used to be the case. Kanotix for instance does not offer a torrent. As to faster, I just did a torrent of Arch from clicking on the link at the site page it took 2.24min and by using a uk mirror it took 2.02min. Mind you the torrent had to wait for the torrent program to start up and wait for me to click on start so that will have taken up a few seconds. So yup mirrors in this case are quicker by a whisker. However I am coming at this from a different angle to you it seems. I ain't so bothered about speed so much, if I decide to download something I can wait a while for it to appear. My main reason for always mentioning torrents is the fact that almost anyone anywhere in the world can participate in the community aspect of open source if they are using torrents. Download the torrent and if you leave the torrent open you can seed for other folk thereby helping out. On a slow connection and I do have a decade of experience to call on here torrenting with a well seeded torrent is way faster than downloading from a mirror.The more seeds the faster the torrent. Everyone can help out in the community and even if that is all they do they have made a contribution. Also using torrents in this way helps to give torrenting a better face to the world. The developers of programs only need to make a seed instead of updateing multiple mirror sites every time they make a change to their program so they save time and effort. An best of all using torrent in a totally legal way sticks it to the man. That is the way I look at it anyways. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wa4chq Posted July 30, 2017 Share Posted July 30, 2017 I put MX-16 on the old Dell laptop I have on the boat. It's nice. I'm only using it for watching movies or maybe simple video editing etc. No problems with the install. If I knew someone wanting to try Linux, I'd suggest it over Mint...nothing wrong with Mint though.....however, I don't know anyone who wants to come over to the dark side.....But for regular use, it's Slackware for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cluttermagnet Posted August 13, 2017 Share Posted August 13, 2017 Can you try it as a live DVD or do you have to bite the bullet and install it up front? Would I want to first try the x64 version? I guess most of what I run these days is now 64bit... I do still have a few working 32bit desktops around, but they are mostly collecting dust these days... Clutter Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted August 14, 2017 Author Share Posted August 14, 2017 I'm running the MX-16 64 bit version and yes it works as a live ISO either on DVD or USB. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted August 14, 2017 Share Posted August 14, 2017 (edited) Can you try it as a live DVD or do you have to bite the bullet and install it up front? Would I want to first try the x64 version? I guess most of what I run these days is now 64bit... I do still have a few working 32bit desktops around, but they are mostly collecting dust these days... Clutter Works well on a 32 bit and a 64 bit pc. You can try it out as a Live distro, if you put it on a stick you can very easily set up persistence to the stick or I belive you can have the persistence folder on a hard drive. Works fine with MBR or UEFI mobos. Edited August 14, 2017 by abarbarian 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wa4chq Posted August 14, 2017 Share Posted August 14, 2017 I also have it on a stick with persistance..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saturnian Posted August 14, 2017 Share Posted August 14, 2017 I still have MX-15 on a flash drive. I don't use it that often, so I haven't set up persistence, but I've used /home persistence in the past, with MX-14. MX is great for live sessions, just like Mepis was, and it's a great tool to have around. MX ships with GParted, but I also like for my "toolbox" to include GParted Live, on another flash drive. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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