Review MX14 by LinuxHelpGuy

[malspa]

I like when a professional does it, no talk about wallpaper choice, widget style and other irrelevant issues.

For me, default appearances aren't worth a comment, except in those (rare) cases when I think things are exceptionally well done. Out-of-the-box "looks" matter a lot more to other people, though.

[richb]

I like when a professional does it, no talk about wallpaper choice, widget style and other irrelevant issues.

For me, default appearances aren't worth a comment, except in those (rare) cases when I think things are exceptionally well done. Out-of-the-box "looks" matter a lot more to other people, though.

They do, but will not hold up without the "beef" to back it up. However, if you combine both you have a system people will be attracted to, and stay with.

In my opinion MX-14 has excellent MX tools, and thoughtfully put together package choices. And it looks pretty nice to me.

[BitJam]

I wonder if the text displayed during boot is a turn off to to some people. Someone recently reported that they showed a Linux newbie MX-14 and Mint. The newbie said they thought MX-14 was ugly. Maybe people immured in Windows subconsciously associate text with (the blue screen of) death.

[Adrian]

I wonder if the text displayed during boot is a turn off to to some people. Someone recently reported that they showed a Linux newbie MX-14 and Mint. The newbie said they thought MX-14 was ugly. Maybe people immured in Windows subconsciously associate text with (the blue screen of) death.

For the next release it might not be a bad idea to set up a bootsplash (Plymouth?) to cover the text. I'm not very familiar with that because I prefer the text, but I can see why some people would be intimidated by the scrolling text. For people who want to see the text there's always the option to disable the bootsplash or to press Esc to see the text.

[asqwerth]

I wonder if the text displayed during boot is a turn off to to some people. Someone recently reported that they showed a Linux newbie MX-14 and Mint. The newbie said they thought MX-14 was ugly. Maybe people immured in Windows subconsciously associate text with (the blue screen of) death.

That was me. First impressions do count for non-techy people coming from proprietary OSes.

She looked at Mint Cinnamon, Mate, and MX14 on someone else's PC, said MX didn't look good, and that if Cinnamon does work well on her old PC (I should know within the next few days; I burned her a live DVD because her PC couldn't boot up from USB), she would much rather have that than MX14.

I told her MX was faster, more efficient, and was a highly competent and complete OS, but that didn't change her order of preference, which was Mint Cinnamon, Mint Mate, and lastly, MX14.

And yes, the verbose text during bootup was something totally unfamiliar and a bit alarming to her. She commented on it. Mint displays their logo in plymouth during bootup.

I do think Mint just has a more welcoming and familiar look to total newcomers.

[uncle mark]

I told her MX was faster, more efficient, and was a highly competent and complete OS, but that didn't change her order of preference, which was Mint Cinnamon, Mint Mate, and lastly, MX14.

This just makes me want to scream. Everything today is about style, not substance.

[chrispop99]

I told her MX was faster, more efficient, and was a highly competent and complete OS, but that didn't change her order of preference, which was Mint Cinnamon, Mint Mate, and lastly, MX14.

So make MX-14 look like Mint, add Plymouth, then remaster it.

Chris

[kmathern]

I wonder if the text displayed during boot is a turn off to to some people. Someone recently reported that they showed a Linux newbie MX-14 and Mint. The newbie said they thought MX-14 was ugly. Maybe people immured in Windows subconsciously associate text with (the blue screen of) death.

For the next release it might not be a bad idea to set up a bootsplash (Plymouth?) to cover the text. I'm not very familiar with that because I prefer the text, but I can see why some people would be intimidated by the scrolling text. For people who want to see the text there's always the option to disable the bootsplash or to press Esc to see the text.

You might be opening up a 'can of worms' if you add a bootsplash.

From what I recall with Mepis 11.0/12.0 with the plymouth splash, it would sometimes work differently depending on the video driver that was being used.

For instance I recall needing to use a 'vga=xxx' cheat when using the nvidia proprietary driver, to get the plymouth bootsplash to show up. The 'vga=xxx' cheat wasn't needed with the nouveau driver. Not sure but something similar might have also been necessary with the fglrx (proprietary) driver versus the radeon (opensource) driver. I also think the 'vga=xxx' cheat can cause problems with the intel driver.

I also recall there being some video artifact problems caused by the plymouth splash.

[BitJam]

For the next release it might not be a bad idea to set up a bootsplash (Plymouth?) to cover the text.

There are a couple of problems with this. We rely on the text to display error messages during the Live boot. Perhaps the problems have been beaten back enough that this is not as much of an issue. Starting with MX-14.2, we are also using the text in the early boot process for easy-persistence and easy-frugal installs. Part of why these are called "easy" is because they happen early in the boot process (well before X-windows is available) which allows things to get set up and ready to run on the very first boot. Even though LinuxHelpGuy was using MX-14 which doesn't rely on setting things up in the early boot process, these are part of the puppy-like features the reviewer liked so much.

Another issue is that Plymouth relies on KMS (modeset) video drivers. It won't work on systems that can't use those drivers. It also requires we put those drivers and other stuff into the live initrd which will add several meg to the size of the iso file. If we want to cater to older systems, Plymouth may not be ideal.

There is some program that got added late in the MX-14 release that spews text and empty lines to the boot screen. IMO we should really get this program to act more politely. It gives the appearance that something has gone wrong and it forces potentially useful text off of the screen.

We've added the old fbcondecor (fbsplash) system to antiX-14. We use it in verbose mode for displaying a background image *behind* the text. One difficulty with this is that it requires a kernel patch. AFAIK, it would not work with the kernels we use in MX-14. This is certainly not ideal either.

There have been plans to move control of the virtual consoles out of the kernel and into user space. That part of the kernel source tree was recently reorganized by Linus even though there were no changes in the code or functionality. If user space virtual consoles come to fruition then they might make a more ideal solution possible.

Another compromise might be to allow the early initrd text to stay on the screen but divert everything else and replace it with marching dots:

Code: Select all

The system is booting ..............

I really don't know if this would be worthwhile or if it would mollify people who are turned off by text.

So make MX-14 look like Mint, add Plymouth, then remaster it.

Plymouth usually goes into the initrd. Video drivers would need to be added to the initrd as well. A remaster would not do this for you.

[Adrian]

If the video card doesn't support Plymouth it will display the text, how are all the other distributions who use Plymouth dealing with the problems with described? I'm sure there's a solution, pretty much all major distributions use bootsplash.

EDIT: just saw the detailed explanation provided by BitJam. I guess we'll see if there's a better solution next year, since might change till then, the kernel might include what's needed by then.