Has anyone played around with MX Linux?

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majpooper
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Re: Has anyone played around with MX Linux?

Post by majpooper »

I have booted it up in a VM and quite frankly it just seems to be another Debian/Ubuntu based OS running the Xfce DE. Since the only platform I can run it on is in a VM on an AMD 8 core Bulldozer CPU and 16g of RAM I cannot see any performance differences between lubuntu, pepperment etc. and MX (I configure them all the same in VMware Workstation). I suppose on older weaker hardware is where the performance differences can be distinguished. It really gets down to tweaks and preferences.

I must agree however if the stuff below are things you find important then MX definitely would be a good choice above the others - just not stuff I ever want or need.
* You can set start-up and shutdown sounds very easy in MX Tweak which Linux mint Xfce doesn't have that capability.
* You don't need to use the command line which is great [same can be said for Mint], but when you ask for support as with every Linux distros the command line gets thrown at you like it's the 1980's.
* Everything works on a fresh install. Reliability is very good with few exceptions. [pretty much my experience with Mint]
* Package manager has the ability to chose search and install from MX stable, MX testing, Debian stable, Debian testing, Debian sid backports, and Flatpak without changing your repository configuration.
* MX Linux has Grub customizer that you can set up how it boots to your liking which I really miss and wish the Linux mint developers would incorporate into Linux mint so I can move the greater dailog box to the center where it belongs
Crippled

Re: Has anyone played around with MX Linux?

Post by Crippled »

majpooper wrote: Sun Jun 09, 2019 11:59 am I have booted it up in a VM and quite frankly it just seems to be another Debian/Ubuntu based OS running the Xfce DE. Since the only platform I can run it on is in a VM on an AMD 8 core Bulldozer CPU and 16g of RAM I cannot see any performance differences between lubuntu, pepperment etc. and MX (I configure them all the same in VMware Workstation). I suppose on older weaker hardware is where the performance differences can be distinguished. It really gets down to tweaks and preferences.

I must agree however if the stuff below are things you find important then MX definitely would be a good choice above the others - just not stuff I ever want or need.
* You can set start-up and shutdown sounds very easy in MX Tweak which Linux mint Xfce doesn't have that capability.
* You don't need to use the command line which is great [same can be said for Mint], but when you ask for support as with every Linux distros the command line gets thrown at you like it's the 1980's.
* Everything works on a fresh install. Reliability is very good with few exceptions. [pretty much my experience with Mint]
* Package manager has the ability to chose search and install from MX stable, MX testing, Debian stable, Debian testing, Debian sid backports, and Flatpak without changing your repository configuration.
* MX Linux has Grub customizer that you can set up how it boots to your liking which I really miss and wish the Linux mint developers would incorporate into Linux mint so I can move the greater dailog box to the center where it belongs
MX Linux is based on Debian stable branch and has absolutely nothing to do with Ubuntu. If you were to install anything from the Ubuntu repositories you will most likely break MX Linux. Try actually installing on your computer and not a VM. You will see the speed difference especially when you have many pictures and videos you will see the biggest speed difference of how fast the thumbnails populate in Thunar.
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majpooper
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Re: Has anyone played around with MX Linux?

Post by majpooper »

Crippled wrote: Sun Jun 09, 2019 1:40 pm MX Linux is based on Debian stable branch and has absolutely nothing to do with Ubuntu.
I understand - I was lazy - rather than write it as Debian/Ubuntu I should have been more clear and said based on Debian or Ubuntu (which of course is based on Debian). The bottom line though for me was MX was not significantly different from say Debian running Xfce (which I run my PiHole server on btw) or lubuntu running Xfce or Peppermint etc. However I do agree that there are aspects of MX that you point out that if they are important to the user then makes MX the preferred choice.
Glockdoc
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Re: Has anyone played around with MX Linux?

Post by Glockdoc »

After a month of mostly MX I have decided I like the way everything pretty much works without tweaking. I love the speed over Mint. I like the variety of software. So far I haven't run into anything that only has a tar.gz file for an install.

I do miss how pretty and finished Mint looks.

So, for now, it looks like I am going to keep MX at home and probably install it at the shop. I am still trying to work out a Bluetooth bug in Mint so I bounce back a couple of times a week.

The bt bug is what drove me to try MX in the 1st place!

Thank you for everyone that shared their thoughts.
michael louwe

Re: Has anyone played around with MX Linux?

Post by michael louwe »

Glockdoc wrote:
Fyi, Debian Stable and MX-Linux have the same LTS of 5 years wrt security updates.(source; Wikipedia) This may not apply to point releases.
boyo1991

Re: Has anyone played around with MX Linux?

Post by boyo1991 »

i used MX linux for a little bit. i wasnt a huge fan. my graphics driver did not install correctly after a few times of installing and i got a lot of screen tearing so i said eff it. maybe coulda dealt with it, but then i would have had to deal with customizing it as i think its standard desktop is atrocious.
Crippled

Re: Has anyone played around with MX Linux?

Post by Crippled »

boyo1991 wrote: Tue Jun 25, 2019 4:15 pm i used MX linux for a little bit. i wasnt a huge fan. my graphics driver did not install correctly after a few times of installing and i got a lot of screen tearing so i said eff it. maybe coulda dealt with it, but then i would have had to deal with customizing it as i think its standard desktop is atrocious.
Which graphics do you have? Did you enable Compton?
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MadmanRB
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Re: Has anyone played around with MX Linux?

Post by MadmanRB »

I use MX linux on my laptop, while i am not crazy about XFCE it does seem to be a good distro and has pretty good battery life.
On my desktop MX linux wasnt so good but I blame the nvidia drivers on that bit.
mediclaser
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Re: Has anyone played around with MX Linux?

Post by mediclaser »

Flemur wrote: Mon Jun 03, 2019 12:19 pm I avoided MX linux because of the name of its first "Primary Team Leader".
It's just a name. As long as the developers and the community supporting a distro are not imposing their political beliefs on me (and not oppressive to those with opposite views), I can overlook that. Now, if the name was something that attacks (or promotes hatred on) certain races or nationality...
If you're looking for a greener Linux pasture, you won't find any that is greener than Linux Mint. ;)
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Re: Has anyone played around with MX Linux?

Post by mediclaser »

151tom wrote: Tue Jun 04, 2019 9:25 am Yeah I hear ya MX Linux is a good choice for anyone just like Linux Mint Xfce and both being Xfce are pretty much the same from my experience although MX Linux being Debian its software packages are probably older than Linux Mint software packages.
My observation is actually quite the opposite. For example, MX Linux already had the 2.10 version of GIMP since MX 18.x version.
If you're looking for a greener Linux pasture, you won't find any that is greener than Linux Mint. ;)
Crippled

Re: Has anyone played around with MX Linux?

Post by Crippled »

mediclaser wrote: Fri Jul 05, 2019 6:36 pm
Flemur wrote: Mon Jun 03, 2019 12:19 pm I avoided MX linux because of the name of its first "Primary Team Leader".
It's just a name. As long as the developers and the community supporting a distro are not imposing their political beliefs on me (and not oppressive to those with opposite views), I can overlook that. Now, if the name was something that attacks (or promotes hatred on) certain races or nationality...
Most of the MX Linux developers won't, but three of them will.
michael louwe

Re: Has anyone played around with MX Linux?

Post by michael louwe »

Crippled wrote: Fri Jul 05, 2019 11:22 pm
mediclaser wrote: Fri Jul 05, 2019 6:36 pm
Flemur wrote: Mon Jun 03, 2019 12:19 pm I avoided MX linux because of the name of its first "Primary Team Leader".
It's just a name. As long as the developers and the community supporting a distro are not imposing their political beliefs on me (and not oppressive to those with opposite views), I can overlook that. Now, if the name was something that attacks (or promotes hatred on) certain races or nationality...
Most of the MX Linux developers won't, but three of them will.
.
I would assume that most Linux developers are anti-capitalists = anti-M$, anti-Apple and anti-Google.

No wonder desktop Linux has a minuscule 2% world market share for > 20 years = not many countries in the world are pure communist or pure anti-capitalist. Pure communism and pure free/libre GNU/Linux do not really work.

Problem for the anti-capitalists is that even communist China, NKorea, Vietnam and Cuba use M$-Windows, Apple-MacOS/iOS and Google-Android more than desktop Linux/Ubuntu Touch.

The only good thing about geeky Linux is that it is free-of-charge = can be used by resourceful capitalist tech-giants for their business operations, eg Google, Facebook and Amazon = no need to pay M$ the Windows tax.
rick gen
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Re: Has anyone played around with MX Linux?

Post by rick gen »

I tested the distro on a live USB about a month ago.
I actually liked MX Linux. I like it's simplicity, it's Xfce-based, so it's gotta be simple to use.
I even liked how they put the taskbar on the left side of the screen for a default, instead of on the bottom side.
Why, because pc monitors are not getting any taller, they're getting wider and wider.
Therefore, screen real estate space is plentiful on the horizontal side. It's appropriate especially for laptops.

Only downside I've seen so far, at least in my case due to poor eyesight, is that the magnification feature is disabled.
Pressing the Superkey + scrollwheel does nothing. None.
And so this can't be a distro for me. So I didn't install it.
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Re: Has anyone played around with MX Linux?

Post by eegrek39 »

I was seduced by the published download figures so I thought I would give it a try. It has a really different feel to it, but I managed to get all my bits and pieces working - I have some freecad drawings which are animated and this worked o.k with the python macros but no different than mint 19.1. I also have been playing with sqlite databases together with Qt5 Creator Gui to add more fields to the famous Address Book example. and this worked well as well as other Gui examples. I managed to download the latest versions of any software which I was using and all worked ok until I downloaded Office version 6.3.0.4. The office - Base forms and Tables were a complete disaster with Dates not working at all when using a Diary example I designed some years ago. I did not understand the fix instructions and I hope Mint does not include this version until it has been fixed.
I felt that indeed it showed some promise but it never felt as polished as linux mint and there were times when I missed some mint functionality particularly when I wanted to uninstall some software. The timeshift alternative did not seem to meet what I wanted. In the end I was glad to revert to Linux mint 19.2 tina and get back to normality.
kjm69

Re: Has anyone played around with MX Linux?

Post by kjm69 »

MXlinux is my no1 Distro and i also have Linux mint installed on my second computer which
coffee.jpeg
is working well.
rjsrjs

Re: Has anyone played around with MX Linux?

Post by rjsrjs »

I tried using MX Linux off of thumb drive about a year ago. Tried to follow directions but was confusing. Couldn't make it persistent on the the (32GIG) thumb drive at all. Other than that it was OK to use. Haven't tried it since. If directions get easier to follow, then I may try it again someday.
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Pierre
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Re: Has anyone played around with MX Linux?

Post by Pierre »

their latest version - - MX-19b2 is now available, for Testing.
https://forum.mxlinux.org/viewtopic.php?f=94&t=52591
as always, Don't Install any Beta - on Your production Machine.
8)
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Please edit your original post title to include [SOLVED] - when your problem is solved!
and DO LOOK at those Unanswered Topics - - you may be able to answer some!.
michael louwe

Re: Has anyone played around with MX Linux?

Post by michael louwe »

rjsrjs wrote: Wed Sep 25, 2019 9:25 am I tried using MX Linux off of thumb drive about a year ago. Tried to follow directions but was confusing. Couldn't make it persistent on the the (32GIG) thumb drive at all. Other than that it was OK to use. Haven't tried it since. If directions get easier to follow, then I may try it again someday.
.
I used Windows and Rufus to create the Live MX-Linux USB. Booting the Live USB, I was able to add persistence to it (= rootfs) by selecting a size of 2GB and persist-static. Any size more than 2GB up to the maximum default size of 4GB will throw an error. This was the advice from the MX forum. Seemed like an odd bug.
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Re: Has anyone played around with MX Linux?

Post by Glockdoc »

Okay, after mostly using MX for 5 months I am really happy with it. Upgraded to MX19 last night and lost my sexy KDE desktop, which turned out to be a good thing.

I found out I can use Cinnamon with MX and 19 fixed my printer driver issue. Mint still has a bluetooth issue where bluetooth won't see my speakers. Sees everything else, BUT, my wireless speakers.

I am sold.

Next I am going to play with seeting up an Antix live USB with persistence since they make is sooooo easy for a newbie to do.
Glockdoc
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Re: Has anyone played around with MX Linux?

Post by Glockdoc »

rjsrjs wrote: Wed Sep 25, 2019 9:25 am I tried using MX Linux off of thumb drive about a year ago. Tried to follow directions but was confusing. Couldn't make it persistent on the the (32GIG) thumb drive at all. Other than that it was OK to use. Haven't tried it since. If directions get easier to follow, then I may try it again someday.
I just checked out the AntiX website and watched their video for making a USB with persistence. Looks super easy. I have previously had the same problem you did. Check it out. Pretty much you can set up the live usb with persistence, download any programs you want, change your settings to you liking, then reflash( to to use Android terms) the live usb. Next boot everything is right where you want it.
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