saturnian Posted January 22, 2014 Share Posted January 22, 2014 The first beta for MX-14 is up. This is a Mepis/antiX collaboration; comes with Xfce, and it's based on Debian Wheezy. Looks very nice in the live session. I used Unetbootin to put it on a flash drive. Info here: http://www.mepiscommunity.org/mx14 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hedon James Posted January 22, 2014 Share Posted January 22, 2014 IMO, it bears a resemblance to Unity. I like Unity, so that's a good thing! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted January 22, 2014 Share Posted January 22, 2014 Nice Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amenditman Posted January 22, 2014 Share Posted January 22, 2014 Gotta be good, based on Mepis/Anti-X. Downloading. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saturnian Posted January 22, 2014 Author Share Posted January 22, 2014 IMO, it bears a resemblance to Unity. I like Unity, so that's a good thing! Only in that the panel is over on the left side, I think. But that's how I've been setting up my panel lately (nice for laptop/notebook screens), so I'm happy to see that default set-up. The screenshot I posted is just from a live session, right after booting up. They've thrown in a lot of nice touches -- stuff from antiX, etc. I like that they include inxi. Myself, I wouldn't switch from Debian to MX-14 for my primary system, but I think this might be nice for when I want to do a quick and easy installation, especially on a low-spec computer; also, looks like a nice tool for live sessions. Very good first beta; I like this project. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted January 22, 2014 Share Posted January 22, 2014 Looks very neat. Love the bar on the left as that is the natural way your hand moves with a mouse. Shame I do not have time to play with it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hedon James Posted January 23, 2014 Share Posted January 23, 2014 Yeah, I prefer the dock on the left. I've always been a fan of docks, especially Cairo Dock, with my most used/favorite software just a click away. With older 4:3 ratio monitors, it made sense to have that bar on the top or bottom, depending on your distro and desktop, but when 16:9 widescreens were available, top/bottom docks took up precious production area. I thought moving the dock to the side was GENIUS, and I've even taken to converting Mac docks to left side docks. At first, it's weird, but after a day or so you realize "it's the same dock, but vertical, and this works better anyhow!" Now I do it with LXDE desktops too. And while I really liked the ultimate customizability and eye-candy of Cairo Dock, the Unity dock (Ubuntu calls it a launcher) and LXDE dock (LXDE calls it a panel) are much quicker and responsive, with a lesser resource footprint. I like this low spec distro MX-14 with the side dock! I think I'm tempted to give it a whirl in the VM. Good find Saturnian! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saturnian Posted January 23, 2014 Author Share Posted January 23, 2014 What determines if it's a dock or if it's a panel? That's xfce4-panel in MX-14. I really like Xfce's panel; I use either that or tint2 in Openbox. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saturnian Posted January 23, 2014 Author Share Posted January 23, 2014 Nice little piece about some Linux docks and panels: http://linuxlibrary....p-docks-panels/ I haven't even tried Cairo Dock, even though I know it's quite popular. Something about the appearance isn't attractive to me. I guess I'm missing out. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted January 23, 2014 Share Posted January 23, 2014 I love docks too. Rocket Dock for XP was my favourite.E17 has a cool docking system too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hedon James Posted January 23, 2014 Share Posted January 23, 2014 What determines if it's a dock or if it's a panel? That's xfce4-panel in MX-14. I really like Xfce's panel; I use either that or tint2 in Openbox. I don't know what the technical definition is, but I consider a "dock" to be a third-party desktop overlay program and a panel to be an integral part of the desktop, usually stretching the entire length of an edge. Although panels with transparency LOOK like a dock. It's probably just semantics, but IMO it boils down to built-in desktop functionality versus a third-party program. Dock, panel, launcher bar...they're all very similar and provide near identical functionality, IMO. But regardless of what I think, I'll try to use whatever nomenclature the developer prefers. If Ubuntu wants to call its feature a "launcher bar", I'll try to honor that. But around my house, I've been known to refer to it as the "Unity Dock" and the "Launcher Panel". Is the glass "half-empty" or "half-full"? I submit that it is whatever YOU say it is! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted January 24, 2014 Share Posted January 24, 2014 Tried it in VBox and again had problems with the Guest Additions - could not auto adjust the window size to fit the screen although I tried both building the Additions and adding in virtualbox-guest-utils. It looks great with the Live CD though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saturnian Posted January 24, 2014 Author Share Posted January 24, 2014 (edited) It looks great with the Live CD though. Some folks are having problems trying to boot with the live CD. Worked here on four different computers, though. I prefer to use a flash drive (no problems doing it here with Unetbootin), but I tried with the CD as well just to see if it would work. Edited January 24, 2014 by saturnian Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted January 24, 2014 Share Posted January 24, 2014 I made a live USB stick but it wouldn't run on my old laptop (PAE kernel not supported.) Why a light distro like this needs PAE I'll never know. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hedon James Posted January 24, 2014 Share Posted January 24, 2014 Tried it in VBox and again had problems with the Guest Additions - could not auto adjust the window size to fit the screen although I tried both building the Additions and adding in virtualbox-guest-utils. It looks great with the Live CD though. have you tried adding the virtualbox-guest-X11 package? Always seems to work for me, although perhaps that is a part of the guest-utils? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted January 24, 2014 Share Posted January 24, 2014 Yes I added that as well. If you get it to work let me know what you did. I installed the virtualbox-guest-X11, dkms and utils packages to no avail. This is on a machine with Nvidia graphics so that linux-firmware-nonfree package shouldn't be the problem I don't think. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saturnian Posted February 2, 2014 Author Share Posted February 2, 2014 Nice little distro shaping up here, folks. They got the second beta up this week. I still haven't done an installation (virtual or hard drive), but it looks great from the live session. They're going with QupZilla as the default web browser instead of Midori, which shipped with the first beta. Lots of nice little touches, like smxi and inxi, a metapackage installer, and a good "Help" document (accessible from the panel). Definitely worth a look for folks who like Xfce and anything based on Debian Stable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hedon James Posted February 5, 2014 Share Posted February 5, 2014 Yes I added that as well. If you get it to work let me know what you did. I installed the virtualbox-guest-X11, dkms and utils packages to no avail. This is on a machine with Nvidia graphics so that linux-firmware-nonfree package shouldn't be the problem I don't think. I got the MX-14 distro loaded in a VM with guest additions and have full screen native resolution. I did have to install them manually, though, from the command line. After clicking "install guest additions", open a terminal: cd /media/cdrom should take you to the Virtualbox Guest additions iso ls to verify VBoxLinuxAdditions.sh is present sudo sh VBoxLinuxAdditions.run The Virtualbox modules should build and install. Reboot, select native display resolution in Guest, then select View>Full Screen in host. Worked for me. AntiX, however is giving me fits with native resolution. I think I've discovered the solution, but haven't verified it yet. There appears to be a bug in the default AntiX kernel, which needs to be manually upgraded to 3.7.10-antix.7 in order to enact the fix. I'll let you know shortly if it worked... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hedon James Posted February 5, 2014 Share Posted February 5, 2014 (edited) Okay, MX-14 appears to be an evolution of AntiX with the Mepis team. Lots of similarities and somewhat confusing with troubleshooting. But the above fix referencing manual upgrade of the kernel does indeed work! I also noticed in synaptic that virtualbox-guest-x11 and virtualbox-guest-utils are available. Strange, as the cli says they're not available, but synaptic shows they are. EDIT: there is an unchecked repository in synaptic for "Debian VirtualBox graphics" or something similar; check that box, and the virtualbox-guest modules are available for download with synaptic or the CLI. Solution for AntiX native resolution found here: http://antix.mepis.c...title=Main_Page Note the November 2013 bug fixes. Don't forget to 'sudo update-grub' like I initially did....DOH?!!!! And note the NEW kernel isn't at the top of the boot list in GRUB; I booted 2-3 times before I figured out the default kernel was loading (conky showed the old one on the desktop display), then realized the GRUB boot menu is "upside down" from what you'd normally expect. Another "DOH"! Upon reboot, arrow down to the newly available (and most recent) Debian/Gnu Linux kernel 3.7.10-antix.7 and login. Go to control center and select "session" on the left menu and "screen resolution" to the right; input root credentials when asked; in Screen Layout Editor choose Output>VBox0>Resolution and select your native resolution. Reboot to take effect. You MAY need to toggle your view in order to fix wallpaper appearance; if wallpaper is still displayed in OLD resolution, choose different wallpaper and save, then re-select default wallpaper and save again. TADA! (kind of a PITA, but it works!) Full screen resolution in AntiX now! Edited February 6, 2014 by Hedon James Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 Did you get the auto-resize guest display to work so that it'll fit inside your VBox window and you can still see the host controls at the bottom? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hedon James Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 Yes Ray. Although I don't auto-resize. I just toggle the checkbox on View>Full Screen to go between the "full size" guest display in the VBox window and the "full screen" display that makes the guest distro appear to be the native host. But toggling that checkbox setting does indeed provide the "full size" window you describe! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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