Is the grass greener over there?

[clicktician]

If you look at distros from an application point of view -- what do you want it to do -- they're much harder to evaluate.
For example, if I want to run VMWare virtualization products, MX is not the best choice. And it doesn't claim to be, either.
If you want to build a tablet that only runs Chrome in kiosk mode, there might be superior distros out there. Same if you're looking for a NAS or Plex video server.

Ironically, I cobbled together a travel router for the purpose of sharing paid WiFi networks that I'm frequently on in hotels, campuses, etc. It's just a simple Intel compute stick glued to a mini 4 port gb switch and a battery pack.
I tried several firewall and router distros. Nothing impressed me for this setup. I ended up choosing.... MX 19. Best router I've ever owned. Who knew?

[mowest]

MX as a distro is wonderful, but one of the greatest benefits of MX is the strong connection between the community and the distro. New tools, new features, and even new desktops seem to come from community ideas and experimentation. As MX continues to welcome new users into the community and mentors those new users in "scratching their own itch" you will continue to see things that make MX stand apart from other distros.

One look at my signature shows that I run a few different distros, but what keeps distros on my machines is the community. I installed MX for the first time on my hardware this July, but it will make it well beyond a month thanks to a great community of users, contributors, and developers.

[SwampRabbit]

If you look at distros from an application point of view -- what do you want it to do -- they're much harder to evaluate.

Very true, it’s hard to compare a Desktop centric OS to a purpose built one.
Really hard to beat MX in the desktop realm, which is what I think the OP was focusing this thread on.

My favorite “on the go” wifi router/ access point, VPN concentrator distro is OpenWRT hands down. Runs great on a Raspeberry Pi.

Virtualization Hypervisor - Proxmox VE

NAS/SAN - OpenMediaVault

Firewall/Router - pfSense or OPNsense, maybe Sophos UTM and Untangle (those aren’t that good and limited)

Network Security Monitoring - Security Onion, Rock NSM, OSSIM

Imaging/Cloning - Clonzilla, FOG

[srq2625]

This is interesting, I haven't used Leap but did use various versions of suse for about 20 years. I've had very good experience in recent years with their rolling release version, Tumbleweed. If you want to keep trying suse I'd recommend moving to Tumbleweed, which is where most of the opensuse development resources go. But it is a heavy distro and does demand a lot of memory and may cause heavier CPU usage. Once I found MX, I haven't gone back to suse. But the help forum is top notch.

I tried both Leap and Tumbleweed ... or at least I tried to try Tumbleweed. I couldn't get it to run properly and wasn't interested enough to invest a lot of effort.

Then the MX KDE betas made the scene and that as a game changer for me. I've been running the Beta 2 since it was made available and haven't looked back! Can't wait for the actual release to make it's way to the public.

[AVLinux]

Hi everyone,

Still pretty new here but I have to say the grass is very green!

I have distributed my own specialty-purpose Linux (AV Linux) since 2007 and my first Distro and first meet-up with Linux folks was Mepis in 2006, At the time I thought what an extraordinarily, friendly community-minded place but my needs were to move my Studio recording setup to Linux and for all it's great attributes Mepis was not a multimedia-centred Distro at the time..

So after lone-wolfing it for many years with pure Debian and various 3rd party installers (Remastersys, Systemback) I now find myself back here at MX all these years later mostly because MX is SO much more than a 'Desktop Linux'. It is extremely developer-friendly and the developers have left their fingerprints all over it with the numerous excellent MX Tools, the supplementary Packaging is nothing short of incredible as a complement to what Debian already provides and the willingness of the packaging team to scratch the Users itch regardless of of how popular the resulting package may be is beyond generous. The richness of the MX Repositories really makes MX adaptable to pretty much any purpose so I think MX is vastly more versatile than pretty much any other garden variety Desktop Linux. There are without a doubt many great ones with high points and notable attributes but it would be a tall order indeed to come up with as complete a universe as MX provides and still maintain that friendly community touch!

I'm loving the grass here and plan on pitching a tent here for some time to come! Thanks to all!

[Bartman]

I tried both Leap and Tumbleweed ... or at least I tried to try Tumbleweed. I couldn't get it to run properly and wasn't interested enough to invest a lot of effort.

I've used openSuse Leap 15.1 and 15.2 although to much for me to want to learn at my old age and there are to many other choices to use that I'm more familiar with so I can relate to your frustration.

openSuse Leap 15.2 is a good distro and worked well OOTB however everything I needed to do I had to research and spend too much time to trying to figure out how to do stuff properly.

Just ain't worth the hassle, I'm an install and use OOTB type user.

I'll stick with MX Linux and PCLinuxOS for my daily drivers although I'll still play with other Linux distros.

[clicktician]

My favorite “on the go” wifi router/ access point, VPN concentrator distro is OpenWRT hands down. Runs great on a Raspeberry Pi.

Don't you love OpenWRT? I just bought a Linksys WRT3200ACM last week -- because it was the best router I could find that ran OpenWRT. They have really worked hard on that distro since the LEDE merge.

I agree that the OP was certainly referring to desktops. But, I'm kinda sensitive to this because Jesse at Distrowatch sometimes approaches every distro review like a general purpose desktop.
Do you think we're cultish about it? Make Tech Easier just wrote in a review of XFCE:
"MX Linux is a less common distro with a solid cult following"

Hahaha.
https://www.maketecheasier.com/xfce-review/

Solid cult, baby.

[CharlesV]

@ rokytnji.1 Free version... while I know its kind of dicey.. if I cannot get a community version up and really enjoy it... no possible way I am headed for a paid one ;-/ (just my own thing prob.. but .. )

[CharlesV]

DDWRT and OpenWRT had me for years, I couldnt leave them ... then I found pfSense and that was it. Couple a pfsense router with a Ubiquiti ap and NOW we have something serious, stable, and secure.

Plant an couple of MX machines behind it and you have heaven !!!

[SwampRabbit]

Don't you love OpenWRT?

For basic at home use and on the go setups for sure, it’s not too much and not too little, and easy to use. I once had a RPi running it... acting as a Man-In-The-Middle AP to another AP, connecting multiple machines (wired and wireless) behind it through a VPN over DNS to avoid a Captive Portal.

Make Tech Easier just wrote in a review of XFCE:
"MX Linux is a less common distro with a solid cult following"

I actually read that the other day.
Much better to have a solid following of any kind than a giant flimsy one. But I’m not a fan of kool-aid myself and I wouldn’t consider it cultish by any means.

DDWRT and OpenWRT had me for years, I couldnt leave them ... then I found pfSense and that was it. Couple a pfsense router with a Ubiquiti ap and NOW we have something serious, stable, and secure.

We were talking about something a normal everyday user would use at home. pfSense as much as I love it (note - I referenced it above) is not that at all, it’s overkill and a really learn to set up and maintain in a home environment. Most home users that set it up at home don’t do it right to begin with which makes it less secure than a box store router/firewall.

As far as Ubiquiti, them and I have a love hate relationship. I have A LOT of their products. Their APs, while good, really aren’t any better than anything else on the market for the home sector. You can’t take full advantage of them unless you have a USG. The USGs are overpriced bricks with a horrible setup and capabilities.