MX-18 RC1 Feedback

[j2mcgreg]

dolphin_oracle wrote:

it should be just your user password.

It wouldn't accept it. In any event, I reinstalled RC1 and chose Chromium instead of Chrome and declined Google's offer to sync all my devices. I want to see if the problem recurs.

[entropyfoe]

So far looking very good. I will keep using this as a daily driver, so far no obstacles to that. If I have time, I can try installing on an older amd system.

I downloaded from sourceforge, md5 was good, and burned to USB from the beta using the MX live USB creator.
Booted quickly, and I at once installed to the 4th partition on the nvme drive, as with the beta.

This time no problems finding the root, grub installed and the install went fine. Rebooted, installed nvidia with the MX nvidia installer, rebooted again, no problems.

Did a bunch of desk-top and firefox tweaks, enabled sda1, the data drive, used synaptic after a reload to take all 6 updates, then installed 108 new packages. Suspend works.

Reboot to check stability, from grub to log-in is about 14 seconds.

Code: Select all

:    Host: Ryzen Kernel: 4.19.0-1-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: Xfce 4.12.3 
           Distro: MX-18RC1_x64 Continuum December 17  2018 
Machine:   Type: Desktop Mobo: ASUSTeK model: PRIME X370-PRO v: Rev X.0x serial: <root required> 
           UEFI [Legacy]: American Megatrends v: 4024 date: 09/07/2018 
CPU:       Topology: 6-Core model: AMD Ryzen 5 1600X bits: 64 type: MT MCP L2 cache: 3072 KiB 
           Speed: 2130 MHz min/max: 2200/3600 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1898 2: 2069 3: 1843 
           4: 1846 5: 1881 6: 1879 7: 1879 8: 1881 9: 2963 10: 2972 11: 1827 12: 1837 
Graphics:  Device-1: NVIDIA GK208 [GeForce GT 710B] driver: nvidia v: 390.87 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.19.2 driver: nvidia resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz 
           OpenGL: renderer: GeForce GT 710/PCIe/SSE2 v: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 390.87 
Audio:     Device-1: NVIDIA GK208 HDMI/DP Audio driver: snd_hda_intel 
           Device-2: AMD driver: snd_hda_intel 
           Sound Server: ALSA v: k4.19.0-1-amd64 
Network:   Device-1: Intel I211 Gigabit Network driver: igb 
           IF: eth0 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: 
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 1.14 TiB used: 471.04 GiB (40.5%) 
           ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Samsung model: SSD 960 EVO 250GB size: 232.89 GiB 
           ID-2: /dev/sda vendor: Samsung model: SSD 850 EVO 1TB size: 931.51 GiB 
Partition: ID-1: / size: 100.88 GiB used: 6.14 GiB (6.1%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/nvme0n1p4 
           ID-2: swap-1 size: 16.60 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 34.0 C mobo: N/A gpu: nvidia temp: 40 C 
           Fan Speeds (RPM): cpu: 0 gpu: nvidia fan: 50% 
Info:      Processes: 255 Uptime: 32m Memory: 15.66 GiB used: 2.37 GiB (15.2%) Shell: bash 
           inxi: 3.0.25 

[skidoo]

mentioned for the benefit of Windows emigrants:
The rufus utility (https://rufus.ie) at default settings (mbr)(isohybrid mode) can successfully create an MX18 LiveUSB

[skidoo]

noticed in ~/.xsession-errors
. . .
xfce4-session-Message: 20:37:58.155: SSH authentication agent is already running
gpg-agent[7436]: WARNING: "--write-env-file" is an obsolete option - it has no effect
gpg-agent[7437]: gpg-agent (GnuPG) 2.1.18 started
. . .
conky: Syntax error (/home/demo/.conky/MX-Elementary/MX-Elementary_sys:1: '=' expected near 'yes') while reading config file.
conky: Assuming it's in old syntax and attempting conversion.
. . .
(xfce4-session:7429): xfce4-session-WARNING **: 01:52:00.355: ICE connection 0x5615be156770 rejected
Failed to connect to session manager: Failed to connect to the session manager: Authentication Rejected, reason : None of the authentication protocols specified are supported and host-based authentication failed


/var/log/syslog :
avahi-daemon[6947]: WARNING: No NSS support for mDNS detected, consider installing nss-mdns!
. . .
usb_common: module verification failed: signature and/or required key missing - tainting kernel
. . .
[pulseaudio[7507]: [pulseaudio] authkey.c: Failed to open cookie file '/home/demo/.config/pulse/cookie': No such file or directory
[pulseaudio] authkey.c: Failed to load authentication key '/home/demo/.config/pulse/cookie': No such file or directory

/var/log/lightdm/lightdm.log :
WARNING: Could not enumerate user data directory /var/lib/lightdm/data: Error opening directory '/var/lib/lightdm/data': No such file or directory

^----- the directory does exist. Permissions of its parent ( /var/lib/lightdm/ ) drwxr-x---

[skidoo]

synaptic :
toward aiding discoverability, recommend "Show package properties in main window" enabled per the default preferences

[asqwerth]

Regarding the installer's new interface for the root/home/swap/boot partition settings, I suggest that the "none" option in the swap dropdown menu be changed to "none or use existing".

As I recall, this was the original description in the previous interface, so that users understood that they could choose this "none" option if they already had a swap partition created and formatted on the system, perhaps by another distro.

Otherwise, a user who is not so familiar might either backtrack to Gparted to create a completely new swap partition or they might click on an existing swap partition thinking to reuse it.

But doing the latter step will reformat the swap partition, changing its UUID. If the other distro is a systemd distro, this will cause that distro to go into a 90 sec check mode because it can't find the swap partition under the old UUID.

[skidoo]

Tonight I cannot remember howto view/edit the Xfce global keybinds.
No luck from searching whiskerMenu: "keyb", "shortc", "hotk"... and didn't find it in "MX Tools" nor "Xfce Settings"
-=-
During the process of hunting, I noticed a usability issue with the default whiskerMenu theme:
insufficient contrast between its scrollbar and the scrollbar background color



Not as the default wallpaper, and not necessarily bearing phrases in 30 languages, one of the preinstalled wallpapers (exploring novice will discover) might mention howto access/change global hotkeys. Another probably welcome notation on such wallpaper would be
"tip: You can Alt+rightMouseButton and drag to resize an application window"

[skidoo]

When a "save persistence" operation is launched, the initial dialog looks like this:



The intent of of this "opening screen" hasn't been fully realized ~~ to provide a place to remind/recommend
"close any running applications, especially web browser, before proceeding".

ANY running applications?
Well... in addition to risking loss of unsaved changes to WIP documents currently opened in text/graphics editors, it might not be widely understood that many applications rely on @exit clean shutdown to perform housekeeping (e.g. save changed preferences, save RecentlyUsed documents list).

If firefox is (still) running when an on-demand persist save operation is performed, this scenario invites loss of state (open tabs, history) for the current browsing session as well as potential loss of recent bookmark entries. At next launch it will recognize that its @exit SessionManager files are missing and prompt "your last session crashed. Restore the previous (next-to-last) session?"

[Eadwine Rose]

Tonight I cannot remember howto view/edit the Xfce global keybinds.
No luck from searching whiskerMenu: "keyb", "shortc", "hotk"... and didn't find it in "MX Tools" nor "Xfce Settings"

Do you mean.. open the menu, in the search field on top enter keyboard, click that, then go to the tab application shortcuts?

[dolphin_oracle]

I'm getting this in Chrome "Enter password to unlock your login keyring", which would be fine except there was no initial prompt to set up a password.

This is odd. I'm using MX 16, and I've got Opera, Slimjet & Vivaldi browsers installed. When they were initially installed they opened without fuss. I'm now getting "Choose password for new keyring" when I open any of them for no particular reason.

Has something happened to Chromium based browsers?

Yes. On linux the chrome based browsers if you use encrypted password storage (the default). I think the chrome based stuff stores other stuff in encrypted storage too