MX-14 Review

[malspa]

As Blogspot says "I rate MX-14 as one of the most functional XFCE 4 distros I have used. It is fast, stable and efficient."
For me and my wife it is best distro. It just works! Perhaps it is best not to wait for new reviews (or ignore what Dedo says) and focus only on to use it.

Yeah, it doesn't matter much what Dedoimedo or anyone else says if the release works well for the person using it.

I don't think Dedoimedo likes Debian very much -- I couldn't find any more recent Debian reviews than his ones of Debian 5.03 "Squeeze" (http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/debian.html) and Debian 6 "Lenny" (http://dedoimedo.com/computers/debian-6.html), both of which I enjoyed running here, and both of which he didn't care for, to put things mildly!

And, I checked out his review of CrunchBang 11 "Waldorf" (http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/crun ... ldorf.html). Fairly positive review. That's cool; I like CrunchBang 11 and everything. But I don't think that it's as much better than MX-14 as his reviews might lead one to believe; it's different out-of-the-box and it comes with its own pros and cons, but for me it was kind of a toss-up between keeping Waldorf on my low-spec computer or replacing it with MX-14 (I kept CrunchBang, but one seemed as good as the other).

I'd be interested to see what he has to say about Wheezy Xfce, which I use now on my primary computer. I think he'd probably rip it; I don't think it's along the lines of what he likes, especially out-of-the-box. But to me, it's wonderful.

So I'd say take Dedoimedo's reviews with a grain of salt, if you can; if you can get any useful info from them, do that. Beyond that, just keep trying to make MX better. Remember, this is only the first release, and it's an excellent start; its users are happy, and that's the important thing.

[MX-tester]

Considering it is the first release & how many dowloads you have had, it certainly says to me that you have done something right.
Word of mouth & comments from users on the 'net will gain more users, even if one person does not find it to his/her taste.

I spent a long time with pure Debian, but in the end, I went for pre packaged firmware that got my wifi working O.T.B.

Crunchbang was favourite for several years, but then I found antiX was now using a Debian base so swapped to that because I liked Fluxbox & light weight distros, it is easy to add programs that you want after an install.

So having been with antiX for a while, there was mention of this new distro in conjunction with Mepis, which also now is using a Debian base, so I thought I'd try it.

I didn't particularly like it to begin with, but as I have said elsewhere, it seems to grow on you.

[GuiGuy]

Does Crunchbang include persistence, "snapshot" etc?
If not, ISTM these facilities are overwhelming reasons for preferring MX-14.

[richb]

Does Crunchbang include persistence, "snapshot" etc?
If not, ISTM these facilities are overwhelming reasons for preferring MX-14.

But that is not true for everyone. Neither is a draw for me.

[zarg2]

For some reason Waldorf was super slow on my laptop and Fedora 20 LXDE runs almost as fast as Antix13.2 (go figure). I agree with MX-Tester that for some MX14 may be a little off-putting at first since it looks different but once they realize it's a sandbox that you can build your own castles in it becomes a fun distro to use. My wife is always complaing because I constantly experiment with the DE setup on the computer hooked up to our TV . I just am looking for a "sweet spot" that I like for looks/ease of use and MX14/XFCE makes it very easy to try differnt things without fear of breakage. Perhaps a little "welcome to MX14; please go to the control center and play with the desktop" welcome screen would help total newbies to explore the flexibility of the distro. Adiradnam Sen's review does a pretty good job of showing whats hiding under the hood in MX14.

[GuiGuy]

....
But that is not true for everyone. Neither is a draw for me.

Fair enough, but how about the other big advantages of MX-14: this forum and the community packaging team?

[Adrian]

....
But that is not true for everyone. Neither is a draw for me.

Fair enough, but how about the other big advantages of MX-14: this forum and the community packaging team?

I would vote for the community packaging team, it's amazing to run Debian Stable and still have new packages for most of the popular pieces of software.

[Jerry3904]

Totally agree--we need to have another person on that team who has the interest and ability.

I am thinking of a recruitment effort later for them and the rest of the MX-14 Dev Team in order to begin to lay out MX-15 planning.

[richb]

....
But that is not true for everyone. Neither is a draw for me.

Fair enough, but how about the other big advantages of MX-14: this forum and the community packaging team?

Absolutely, and a thorough review would point out all that. Something is bound to appeal to almost anyone.

[The Boy Wonder]

For a long time I was a technophobe. I imagined that Linux was "just for geeks" and couldn't imagine doing all this cool stuff without having someone looking over my shoulder the whole time.

"Don't touch that! You'll blow up the whole feramantle drive!"

When I heard about "Linux for human beings" I was amazed, and having nothing to lose, I wiped away Windows and tried all the 'buntu flavors, then Mint, then PCLinuxOS, Debian, Mepis (8.5 I think it was). More recently I've been looking at some of the "lightweight" distros (SalixOS, Lubuntu, AntiX, Puppy, now MX-14). As my computer ages, though, I have found that OSes and software require increasingly more and more resources, and even my old favorite (Xubuntu) was getting slower. Most of the time I could overcome it by changing swappiness and choosing lighter applications. But lately, well... until yesterday!

While AntiX was awesomely fast, I'm still a little technophobic and require stability above all else. Just the word "Testing" gives me more than a little pause. So here comes MX-14, based on Debian Stable! And it just doesn't get any more stable than Debian Stable. I was delighted when I read about MX-14! Mepis enjoys a reputation for "making Debian simple" for technophobic sidekicks like me, but without all the drama, hype, and uncertainty of the Ubuntu family. While I did successfully install and configure Debian once, it was buggy and argued with my hardware too often, and it's too complicated for me to share with the other Teen Titans, so it was back to Xubuntu with fingers crossed. But again, borked by an update. Full of extras I never used or cared about (Plymouth, PulseAudio, etc), and no longer fits on a CD. If not for Plop Linux, that would have been a deal breaker.

MX-14 runs wonderfully fast, and I'm at completely at ease with it because it's Debian Stable! Yippieeeeee!

I'm not a great Linux reviewer because I'm just a sidekick and not qualified to talk about a distro's inner workings. My "reviews" read more like fanboy rants I guess, but I hope to get better at it as I go. I'll write one when when my school work permits, and post it here. A hearty thanks to all who had a hand in developing this simple, workable Debian Stable Xfce mixture!