Dedoimedo: the end of a long, beautiful run?

[Jerry3904]

A hard and long look--much appreciated. He likes many things but finally finds too many problems and annoyances to use it for more than testing. Definitely worth a hard and long read.

https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/mx-19.html

[turtlebay777]

I've not had much success with 19 on several tries at creating USBs with persistence which keep breaking, and one full installation which went tits up and left the 'puter needing a fresh install (not with 19!). I feel the name 'petito feo' would be better replaced with 'pathetic neo'. Just my opinion. Thankfully I'm informed that MX 18 will be supported until 2023 so either a better version than 19 will have emerged or I'll be so old that I won't be using computers any more!

[winemaker]

i have read a number of this guys stuff and am skeptical about al of his comments. maybe way too picky. maybe biased. i bet if you looked at any distro or DE you will see little issues or random glitch; or some de's etc have other options more desirab;e than others. seems like there is no 100% distro ideal for any one person unless one makes his own. looking at a distro for what it has to offer and accepting what it has to offer is important. i also seem not to run into many of the issues so many people out there run into. sometimes i scratch my head and wonder what the heck this person did to et the glitches they experience. i like some Enlightenemtn and moksha stuff more than xfce and as i stated never liked xfce - yet what the team had done on mx18 and 19 which i have ran both have done a super job. i have learned that i can do different things with this or cannot do certain things with this than another can - but i try to accommodate the distro and use it for my needs or else i do not use it. sorry for the helter skelter rant and jumping around various points - but in a hurry to post due to my schedule - but wanted to hit a number of points. 18.3 was nice and so is 19. having a system that will last a few more years re: redoing it for me makes a lot of sense. so updating to 19 was crucial. also the new xfce was nice to see what that was about as well the new mx 19.

i would suggest that people take a lot of these reviews with a grain of salt or sand - whichever is smaller to you.

being critical to help the devs is one thing but just spouting out stuff that to me i have not run into as such is fuzzy.

mods/admnis feel free to delete as needed. no offense taken.

[SwampRabbit]

Most of his actual issues where with applications or XFCE, which he stated a few times, but not enough.

He has some things he dislikes specifically MX related, which isn’t much, but good to know.

Not too much MX can do about flaky applications and XFCE 4.14 needing things worked out.

In the end, you can’t make everyone happy with everything. But it’s not a bad review, I guess he had to end it the way he did to drive traffic and push MX to be better.

[andyprough]

Something I agree with from the article, and why I'm loving KDE Plasma desktop after a few weeks of initially trying to love XFCE:

Now, here's the thing. Across the Linux desktop scape, among the actively developed environments, I think only Plasma has the right mix of looks and ergonomics, and suitability for fast, elegant work. This means visual consistency, menus, layouts, efficiency, and modern perks. So when you want to do the same with Xfce, which aims to be more sort of traditional, issues arise.

[Jerry3904]

No question: Xfce can not match KDE for the kinds of effects enabled by a very large developer group and lots of money.

[SwampRabbit]

No question: Xfce can not match KDE for the kinds of effects enabled by a very large developer group and lots of money.

Effects are one thing and honestly I could care less. I personally would turn off compositing it it didn’t make Conkies look ugly. I’d rather remove the Conky that is rarely seen as it is.

But XFCE can meet all of his concerns about

visual consistency, menus, layouts, efficiency, and modern perks

And I think most are covered by MX.

I’ll take the XFCE Whisker menu over any fluffy menu system other DEs have any day. Simple, efficient, and elegant.

We better start working on a VR desktop soon, it’s all the rage, and it’s next on the list of desktop requirements for future reviews. Lol

[sunrat]

I have long been a bit sceptical about some of Dedoimedo's reviews as he always has the perspective that they should work according to his own preferences out of the box and this is possibly the most egregious in that regard. Installing an OS is not a trivial thing to do and does require some learning and knowledge to accomplish and some perseverance to overcome issues with some hardware. Dedo often seems to feign naivety even though he must have done it many dozens of times.
I have never installed any OS that doesn't require some tweaking to be how I like it, sometimes many hours.
I do agree with him that Xfce is not as polished as some other DEs and this version 4.14 is still a bit raw and maybe the cause of some of his criticisms. Personally I think MX should make KDE Plasma the default DE just like it was in Mepis. Resource-wise it's at least as light as Xfce these days and functionality and looks are much better IMO.
He did give MX-19 7.75-8/10 and I agree with that, it's a solid release with a few rough edges and some of the MX tools and customisations are excellent and/or innovative. But I'd give my favourite KDE distro at least a 9.

[winemaker]

I’ll take the XFCE Whisker menu over any fluffy menu system other DEs have any day. Simple, efficient, and elegant.

We better start working on a VR desktop soon, it’s all the rage, and it’s next on the list of desktop requirements for future reviews. Lol

i agree. it is elegant. never been a fan of kde. i stayed away from it like holy water and a vampire. 2 cents.

[Stevo]

I don't seem to be getting any reduced battery life, and tlp also seems to be working on my systems. Is this just a warning when booting with sysvinit?

Two, I noticed a system log error. TLP wasn't being used due to an error, which would explain why no power management kicked into action. I have always believed that TLP can't work around sub-optimal drivers, but if it's included, it should at least work. This can also partially explain the less-than-ideal battery life results.

Nov 26 15:49:56 tester kernel: <1052>[ 378.962211] systemd-udevd[4774]: Process '/usr/sbin/tlp auto' failed with exit code 4.

He based the "reduced battery life" and tlp not working apparently on one quick glance at the battery taskbar widget and its estimate of remaining time, as far as I can tell, and we all know that is never ever wrong.