raymac46 Posted February 24, 2020 Share Posted February 24, 2020 My main desktop is a Windows 10 machine. This plays my train sims, does my Income Tax and keeps my wife happy. But I want to have Linux available there so I run MX-Linux 18 in VirtualBox. I am posting from it now. I have found that MX-Linux has everything I would want in a Virtual setup. All the Guest Additions work out of the box. It is stable as can be. It's based on Debian. It is easy to update. No unattended-upgrades running in the background. A nice Xfce desktop. MX-Linux is so nice I have basically given up Virtual distro farming. Life is good. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted February 24, 2020 Share Posted February 24, 2020 Nice Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunrat Posted February 24, 2020 Share Posted February 24, 2020 MX is a great distro and the devs are really active and friendly. I'm liking their forums less as time goes by though. So many people asking for help without doing any searching or looking in the extremely fine manual. And lots of people helping to answer questions who only have a very vague idea what they are talking about. I know there's a bit of that in every forum (present company excepted) but it's rife at MX. It's the main downside to MX becoming really popular really fast. Of course there are some really good people on their forums particularly the devs who post regularly and try to help as much as they can. I can't help thinking their time may be better spent actually developing though instead of helping those who can't be bothered helping themselves. I'm back to using pure Debian Buster with Plasma, or siduction which is closeish to pure. Partly because I much prefer KDE Plasma to Xfce. Still have MX on a micro SD card for Justin. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted February 24, 2020 Author Share Posted February 24, 2020 I've always found a VirtualBox system to be a different beast than one on the rails. For instance Arch Linux has been rock stable for me on actual hardware but I've occasionally had problems after updates in VBox. That must be a problem with VBox itself. MX-Linux seems to have fewer and less kernel based updates. It also doesn't use systemd much. I've always been a huge Xfce fan and VBox does a nice job of customizing it. I use it in VMs for stability and run it on some old hardware I have here. When I have better machines I stick to Linux Mint Cinnamon and Debian with Gnome. I agree that KDE Plasma is a nice desktop but it's never "stuck" with me for some reason - probably because I'm satisfied with the other desktops. I haven't been into the forum much unless I have a problem but when I have been there I noticed that the devs were quick to respond to legitimate concerns. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted February 24, 2020 Share Posted February 24, 2020 MX rocks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Mauser Posted March 13, 2020 Share Posted March 13, 2020 MX Linux is great. I have been using it almost exclusively for the past 4 years. I did stay away from MX Linux for a few months after they became so popular that it attracted a rotten bunch from a distro that consists of at least 99% of the worst of the worst that have changed a few of the developers for the worse. The MX forum became very bias on how it was being run. A lot of favoritism along with the rules don't apply to the trouble makers while lies are allowed and the truth is not allowed because the lies were posted first along with attacks. Upon my return to MX Linux I did find that the forum did improve but it's still bias where some people are more equal than others. I take part less and have skipped a year of donating because of it. The distro is excellent, but the forum needs work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted March 13, 2020 Share Posted March 13, 2020 43 minutes ago, Mauser said: The distro is excellent, but the forum needs work. That is, unfortunately, often the case. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted March 13, 2020 Share Posted March 13, 2020 Also, the people running such forums are doing this in their free time without any pay whatsoever. Even the ones that gets donations, it is usually not even enough to the keep the site up and running. These people donate their time to provide such a forum. That might be something to think about. 1 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted March 13, 2020 Author Share Posted March 13, 2020 MX-Linux 19.1 is working well on my Lenovo Flex 2 - former Windows machine. I have recycled my daughter's old broken hinge HP Sleekbook. The Lenovo has trailing edge AMD hardware which works great with the FOSS AMD video driver stack. No problems with the processor either. Even the touchscreen works (not that I care about that.) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted March 13, 2020 Share Posted March 13, 2020 3 hours ago, securitybreach said: Also, the people running such forums are doing this in their free time without any pay whatsoever. Even the ones that gets donations, it is usually not even enough to the keep the site up and running. These people donate their time to provide such a forum. That might be something to think about. Indeed. However, as in Real Life®, there are rectal orifices everywhere. You just have to filter them out as you go along. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted December 3, 2020 Share Posted December 3, 2020 Why MX Linux reminds me of old-school Linux--in the best ways Quote You might not know this, but according to Distrowatch, MX Linux is currently the No. 1 most downloaded Linux distribution. You're probably thinking, "MXWhat?" That's right, a distribution that seemingly came out of nowhere has shot up the ranks to the top of the class...sort of. MX Linux isn't all that new. In fact, it's been around since 2014. MX Linux was created as a cooperation between former MEPIS Linux communities and antiX, a lightweight, systemd-free Linux distribution. Although MX Linux defaults to the Xfce desktop as their flagship, you can download and install versions with KDE or Fluxbox for either a slightly more modern desktop (KDE) or a throwback to old-school Linux (Fluxbox). One of my favourite os's. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted December 4, 2020 Author Share Posted December 4, 2020 (edited) It does have a few glitches, but when it works it is great. I have had, and continue to have a very good experience with it on an AMD based laptop from 2014. Haven't tried the KDE flavor though. Edited December 4, 2020 by raymac46 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted December 4, 2020 Share Posted December 4, 2020 23 minutes ago, raymac46 said: Haven't tried the KDE flavor though. Me neither. I just use the bog standard version on me backup Tough Book 52. Only had one problem with it in four years and that was the last update, but it was a simple enough fix.. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saturnian Posted December 4, 2020 Share Posted December 4, 2020 7 hours ago, abarbarian said: Why MX Linux reminds me of old-school Linux--in the best ways One of my favourite os's. I noticed that one person so far has commented on the article at that site: Quote "In other words, MX Linux installs with a lot of software--more than you'll ever use." I can understand some people want that, but like many I want a minimal install and to add only what I want and use. I don't want to spend more time downloading a huge .iso file, more time installing and especially more time removing programs I will never use and more time updating useless to me software. I like to see both types of .iso offered by a distro, full and minimal. MX is a great distro, but I agree with that comment. I wish they'd offer a minimal install option. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted December 4, 2020 Author Share Posted December 4, 2020 MX Linux does have a lot of tools but I think many of them are holdovers from Mepis itself. They don't seem to slow down the system though. Updates are pretty fast because these are not very large files. What I like about MX is that whatever desktop you choose, it is well designed, sleek and does not require much in the way of customization to suit me. I'm not surprised that their Plasma variant is good as the original Mepis had KDE as its default desktop. I don't like it if you have an Nvidia card and want to install the proprietatry driver. The MX tool for this failed when I tried it. I also had trouble with a reinstall after some issues with Fluxbox, which again I blame on how MX handles Nvidia graphics. AMD and Intel have not been issues in graphics handling with MX. I guess it's a matter of horses for courses. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted December 5, 2020 Share Posted December 5, 2020 18 hours ago, saturnian said: I wish they'd offer a minimal install option The devs are involved with antiX which does offer a lean version. An I get the impression that they want to offer a fully functional otb experience for folk with MX. If they were to offer a lean install they would have to leave out all or some of the special tools which sort of defeats the concept of MX. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunrat Posted December 5, 2020 Share Posted December 5, 2020 1 hour ago, abarbarian said: The devs are involved with antiX which does offer a lean version. An I get the impression that they want to offer a fully functional otb experience for folk with MX. If they were to offer a lean install they would have to leave out all or some of the special tools which sort of defeats the concept of MX. There's also a Base version respin which leaves out most of the applications but still has Xfce. It's made by some of the devs but technically is unofficial. https://forum.mxlinux.org/viewtopic.php?f=127&t=60898 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted December 5, 2020 Share Posted December 5, 2020 5 hours ago, sunrat said: There's also a Base version respin which leaves out most of the applications but still has Xfce. It's made by some of the devs but technically is unofficial. https://forum.mxlinux.org/viewtopic.php?f=127&t=60898 Great find.Neat Christmas present for saturnian It is worth another plug, MX-Base released with all the goodness of MX but minimal apps Quote These MX-19.2 base ISOs have been designed to contain the full goodness of the MX Linux system, without the accompanying desktop, productivity apps, games, etc normally found on our regular ISO. For all intents and purposes, they will work just like any other MX system, except you get to choose your own apps and additional features. The Xfce ISOs do not include MX-Fluxbox, which is available in a dedicated release using the most recent version 2.2. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saturnian Posted December 5, 2020 Share Posted December 5, 2020 That's good about the MX Base respins. I might want to look at the MX Base iso with Fluxbox + Xfce. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted December 6, 2020 Author Share Posted December 6, 2020 (edited) MX Linux on my old laptop just got a massive update including the Fluxbox desktop and everything appears to be OK. I guess the MX glitches are now in the past. Edited December 6, 2020 by raymac46 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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