MX-18 Feedback

[anticapitalista]

Well, I got around to installing MX-18 this morning. Clean install on a clean partition. This has to be one of the worst installation experiences with any Linux distro that I've ever tried.

Boring. Absolutely, stunningly boring.
...

The next version of the installer will play old public domain cartoons or have a Tetris-type game built-in.

Have a close look - space invaders on the console on live iso.

Boot iso with cheat bp=1 then type space-evaders
To escape and continue the boot after the game has finished, type exit

[Stevo]

Pacman.. and when you get caught by a ghost you have to start aaaallll over again.

You'll have to answer difficult trivia questions or solve math problems to get to each new step of the install! "Egghead Linux™, copyright 2018 Stevo!"

[Eadwine Rose]

You'll have to answer difficult trivia questions or solve math problems to get to each new step of the install! "Egghead Linux™, copyright 2018 Stevo!"

[manyroads]

I now have 7 MX18 machines... go me, yay me... Anyone got an old machine they want updated?

[Gordon Cooper]

These threats of trivia questions and maths problems appear to have scared the clients away. Only two torrent uploads noted all morning.

[Stevo]

Might be some from archive.org, but I can't split those from the ISO downloads.

[Mauser]

Backyard Tech opinion of MX-18. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztxqYP4JZes

[beardedgeek72]

First debian-based install since 2006.
Only used it for a few hours so far and basically have a very mixed bag:

Here are my issues and nitpicks, in no specific order:

[*]The default theme is... not as good as it looks in screenshots. Half of it looks great, half of it looks like it's a custom theme from Windows XP.
[*]Found out after half an hour when I tried to set my panel as transparent that no compositor was running by default, but that Compton is preinstalled (but again, no compositor was started by default)
[*]The image is bloated beyond belief. A lot of things are just things not needed, I spent an hour going through and uninstalling about a third of everything, but a few things are also confusing: Why are there four package managers preinstalled?
[*]Chromium bug: Min and Max buttons disappear when maximized. I have not tried Chrome, don't want to. Also default font size is HUGE for some reason. Not the case in Manjaro Xfce or Windows 10.
[*]Speaking of package managers... I had a fun time trying to install Spyder3. The three first times I looked for it, the package manager(s) found it but refused to install due to some issue where it thought the package was empty, basically. Same with Youtube-dl. Then suddenly it worked. Slow servers? Or something else?
[*]Speaking of more package management: When I was busy uninstalling and installing stuff to my liking, I saw 5 packages constantly sitting on the "held back" list. Then suddenly the update notified popped up and told me those five were ready to be updated? Is this normal behavior in Debian? Just wondering.

This is what i can come up with for now. As I said this is my first debian-based distro since 2006.
In case anyone wonders, I got into Linux late 2005, and ran the following back then: OpenSuse, Ubuntu (first "Big" release, when Ubuntu sort of exploded and was in all the papers), Debian Stable, Debian Testing, Mint. Then I got a new computer and I never got around to fiddle with the multiboot.
Started with Linux again this may, and have exclusively run Arch-based distros this time: Antergos, pure Arch, SwagArch, Manjaro. Wanted to broaden my skills a bit so right now installing alongside Manjaro: This, Siduction Xfce, and OpenSuse Plasma.

[chrispop99]

First debian-based install since 2006.
Only used it for a few hours so far and basically have a very mixed bag:

Here are my issues and nitpicks, in no specific order:

[*]The default theme is... not as good as it looks in screenshots. Half of it looks great, half of it looks like it's a custom theme from Windows XP.
[*]Found out after half an hour when I tried to set my panel as transparent that no compositor was running by default, but that Compton is preinstalled (but again, no compositor was started by default)
[*]The image is bloated beyond belief. A lot of things are just things not needed, I spent an hour going through and uninstalling about a third of everything, but a few things are also confusing: Why are there four package managers preinstalled?
[*]Chromium bug: Min and Max buttons disappear when maximized. I have not tried Chrome, don't want to. Also default font size is HUGE for some reason. Not the case in Manjaro Xfce or Windows 10.
[*]Speaking of package managers... I had a fun time trying to install Spyder3. The three first times I looked for it, the package manager(s) found it but refused to install due to some issue where it thought the package was empty, basically. Same with Youtube-dl. Then suddenly it worked. Slow servers? Or something else?
[*]Speaking of more package management: When I was busy uninstalling and installing stuff to my liking, I saw 5 packages constantly sitting on the "held back" list. Then suddenly the update notified popped up and told me those five were ready to be updated? Is this normal behavior in Debian? Just wondering.

This is what i can come up with for now. As I said this is my first debian-based distro since 2006.
In case anyone wonders, I got into Linux late 2005, and ran the following back then: OpenSuse, Ubuntu (first "Big" release, when Ubuntu sort of exploded and was in all the papers), Debian Stable, Debian Testing, Mint. Then I got a new computer and I never got around to fiddle with the multiboot.
Started with Linux again this may, and have exclusively run Arch-based distros this time: Antergos, pure Arch, SwagArch, Manjaro. Wanted to broaden my skills a bit so right now installing alongside Manjaro: This, Siduction Xfce, and OpenSuse Plasma.

Hi; welcome to the forum.

You will never get consensus on theming, or any other graphics issues! However, alternative themes are included, many more are available online, and customising themes isn't too hard.
MX Linux is intended to be as light as possible, and usable on quite old hardware. Compositing is off by default to help with that. Mention is made in the manual.
The choice of installed software is made by the developers to give a balance, and options, to suit as many users as possible. Why does it matter how large the image is? You can either ignore things you don't want, hide them from the menu, or as you have done uninstall them. HDD space is not really an issue in today's world.
I'm not a Chromium user, and it's not pre-installed, so can't comment on that I'm afraid. There have been no other reports yet, so something to watch for perhaps.
Your issues with package management were most probably due to mirrors updating. It takes a while for everything to sync.

Chris

[CaputAlista]

The situation of the high RAM consumption in live cd in mx 18, apparently, is due to the kernel.
The mx 17 that does not give problems and when updating the kernel to 4.19.10-antix1-amd-smp I had the same problems.
Can I put a kernel in mx 18 as under the snapshot mx17 on October 20? Thanks