MX 17 for video editing/graphics work

[guacamayo]

Hey there, fellas!

I'm an animation student from Colombia and I'm on the market for a good distro right now. I'm also a Linux user since 2009, quite lazy to go bare-bone Debian and I have some questions!

1) Right now I'm using Linux Mint 18.3 Xfce and sometimes I open multiples files on Krita and inkscape. After 5+ opened files I noticed that the Xfce processes start to consume a lot of CPU and RAM resources for some reason and I'm guessing it has something to do with how Mint interacts with Xfce or how Xfce wraps around those apps (it could be more of a lack of RAM/CPU problem but I like to blame Mint and systemd since my laptop is from 2016 and has an intel i7, Nvidia graphics and 8gb of RAM). Is this any different on MX? Can I squeeze my specs with it?

2) I recently got my hands on a 120gb SSD and a SATA-to-USB (Type-C) adapter and I would love to edit some small family videos on DaVinci Resolve or Kdenlive (with offline clips) running under MX-17. Has anyone tried this? Could it be a viable setup?

3) How does it behave around Wacom/Huion tablets? I have used the digimend drivers under all sorts of computers and it works great under Mint and Fedora

4) Could I switch to ALSA from Pulse-Audio if I wanted to?

I tried a live USB session and it looks and feels great but I don't really care for eye-candy and apparently some reviews focus a lot on that matter. So, I'm more interested on hearing about it's performance, workability for lazy-bones and the opinion of someone who works with graphics and video and uses MX as it's main distro.


Anyway, sorry for the block of text and thanks for your time!

[tascoast]

I tried a live USB session and it looks and feels great but I don't really care for eye-candy and apparently some reviews focus a lot on that matter. So, I'm more interested on hearing about it's performance, workability for lazy-bones and the opinion of someone who works with graphics and video and uses MX as it's main distro

Welcome to the Forum.
I would work on installing any apps you can on the Live USB, assuming some space free. It should run about as fast as an internal install and provide a good test.
As always, hardware is relevant so posting inxi -F in Terminal will offer more information on issues like sound.
Most of the MX tools and custom features are really just ideal for lazy people, or the unfamiliar. The underlying stability and detail of MX versions, with broad hardware support, is the most attractive quality, in my experience.

[Eadwine Rose]

I can tell you it works fine with the tablet. I have a wacom here (not that I use it.. lol) and it was recognized without having to install extras.

[dolphin_oracle]

I edit videos all the time on a much older i5 dual core machine with 8gb of ram. I'm happy with it.

as to ram/cpu useage, 5 files open in krita and inkscape is potentially a lot of resources in use, depending on file size and complexity.

[clicktician]

2) I recently got my hands on a 120gb SSD and a SATA-to-USB (Type-C) adapter and I would love to edit some small family videos on DaVinci Resolve or Kdenlive (with offline clips) running under MX-17. Has anyone tried this? Could it be a viable setup?

3) How does it behave around Wacom/Huion tablets? I have used the digimend drivers under all sorts of computers and it works great under Mint and Fedora

I have a CalDigit Thunderbolt 3 Type-C dock with USB3, e-Sata, Audio in/out, Displayport video, and Gigabit ethernet. The only thing that doesn't work with MX-17 is the Displayport because that is displaylink dependent (my feelings about displaylink deleted - lol). If you want the Thunderbolt audio, of course, you must open the Mixer and select the correct device and configuration (on the config tab, just as you'd do with HDMI). The drives on the dock hot-plug like they normally do.

My Wacom Intuos CTH-680 13 inch pen tablet works flawlessly with the pen able to move the cursor in hover and touch to execute/select, so I would imagine its larger siblings used for pro animation would work as well.

I run the stock MX-17 64bit Kernel 4.13.0-1-amd64.

[Lobstercat]

I edit videos and, how to start this.... Recently we had a massive system failure taking down nearly all of our computers - 3 desktops & 5 laptops. I had had MX-16 on my laptop and made an iso just the size to fit on a DVD. Following that tragedy, we edited 2 commercials, a corporate promo video, and a lecture using Kdenlive & Natron off copies of my live DVD of MX-16 and it worked great. In fact, a few computers never got their HDs replaced - they still are running the live DVDs! And yes you can use ALSA. Sorry, no experience with the tablets or having that many windows open, though I believe Inkscape was also running along with our other programs. Currently I have a problem trying to install MX-17 so no direct experience with that but MX-16 worked great. There were a few computers that would freeze up or crash but that was after being up for several days with very large projects in them. Not sure why only some had problems, most likely a RAM issue - they all had 4Gigs. The other 4, 8, 16, & 24 gig PCs powered through so you shouldn't have a problem but then I wouldn't think you'd have a problem using Mint either so ... as someone else said, try the live DVD, install everything and open it up and see how it does.

[Stevo]

Holy Murphy's Law, Batman!

Have you thought about using some inexpensive liveUSBs instead of the slow DVDs?

[Lobstercat]

For our situation the DVDs are better. The problem was an ongoing (a few months) electrical issue which not only fried several RAM chips, PSUs, power strips, UPSs, expansion cards, & a Mobo but also currupted all the HDs. USB sticks are nice but they can still be currupted. DVDs are a bit more durable that way so when things started going screwy you at least knew your OS was still in tact. After you shut everything down and waited a while and rebooted that is... But for the OP I'm sure not a problem and a better idea.