MX-21 beta 1 feedback thread

[Gaer Boy]

I think your looking for gnome-disk-utility ... its there are installed on my end. Let us know if that is good enough, it seems like a small install.

Does anyone have suggestions would be nice for a replacement easy to use disk manager that is reputable, stable, and maintained well?

I installed gnome-disk-utility and it will do the job. It is much more cumbersome than disk manager on my setup. I have switched authentication to root, which I much prefer, and gdu requires 2 authentications to mount each partition and add an entry to fstab. Disk manager just required authorisation to open. GDU also mounts to /mnt by default and identifies the partition in Thunar by UUID, which is not helpful. Getting it to mount as /media/label needs a number of adjustments to the mount options. I also don't like the fact that there are 3 action buttons for a partition - mount, delete, additional options. That's a cockeyed place to put a delete partition button - thankfully it does give a confirmation message.

In short, gnome-disk-utility will do if nothing better can be found but disk manager is sorely missed.

[SwampRabbit]

In short, gnome-disk-utility will do if nothing better can be found but disk manager is sorely missed.

I wholeheartedly agree my friend, sadly the developer decided to no get it ported to python3, not even sure myself if they tried or decided to abandon it. I can look later.

[dolphin_oracle]

In short, gnome-disk-utility will do if nothing better can be found but disk manager is sorely missed.

I wholeheartedly agree my friend, sadly the developer decided to no get it ported to python3, not even sure myself if they tried or decided to abandon it. I can look later.

he abandoned it. we adopted it, but the migration is beyond my non-existant python skills.

source is here. this would be a good one to get in if someone can take it over. https://github.com/MX-Linux/disk-manager

[Gaer Boy]

Code: Select all

System:    Host: <filter> Kernel: 5.10.0-8-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: N/A 
           parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.10.0-8-amd64 
           root=UUID=<filter> ro quiet splash 
           Desktop: Xfce 4.16.0 tk: Gtk 3.24.24 info: xfce4-panel wm: xfwm4 dm: LightDM 1.26.0 
           Distro: MX-21_beta1_x64 Wildflower July 27  2021 base: Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye) 
Machine:   Type: Desktop Mobo: ASRock model: FM2A88X-ITX+ serial: <filter> 
           UEFI: American Megatrends v: P2.10 date: 01/17/2014 
Battery:   Device-1: hidpp_battery_0 model: Logitech Wireless Keyboard K270 serial: <filter> 
           charge: 100% (should be ignored) rechargeable: yes status: Discharging 
           Device-2: hidpp_battery_1 model: Logitech Wireless Mouse M185 serial: <filter> 
           charge: 55% (should be ignored) rechargeable: yes status: Discharging 
CPU:       Topology: Quad Core model: AMD A8-6500 APU with Radeon HD Graphics bits: 64 type: MCP 
           arch: Piledriver family: 15 (21) model-id: 13 (19) stepping: 1 microcode: 6001119 
           L2 cache: 2048 KiB 
           flags: avx lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 svm bogomips: 27946 
           Speed: 1938 MHz min/max: 1700/3500 MHz boost: enabled Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1761 
           2: 1951 3: 1855 4: 1997 
           Vulnerabilities: Type: itlb_multihit status: Not affected 
           Type: l1tf status: Not affected 
           Type: mds status: Not affected 
           Type: meltdown status: Not affected 
           Type: spec_store_bypass 
           mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl and seccomp 
           Type: spectre_v1 mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization 
           Type: spectre_v2 mitigation: Full AMD retpoline, STIBP: disabled, RSB filling 
           Type: srbds status: Not affected 
           Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected 
Graphics:  Device-1: AMD Richland [Radeon HD 8570D] vendor: ASRock driver: radeon v: kernel 
           bus ID: 00:01.0 chip ID: 1002:990e 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.11 driver: ati,radeon 
           unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz 
           OpenGL: renderer: AMD ARUBA (DRM 2.50.0 / 5.10.0-8-amd64 LLVM 11.0.1) 
           v: 4.3 Mesa 20.3.5 compat-v: 3.1 direct render: Yes 
Audio:     Device-1: AMD Trinity HDMI Audio vendor: ASRock driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel 
           bus ID: 00:01.1 chip ID: 1002:9902 
           Device-2: AMD FCH Azalia vendor: ASRock driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel 
           bus ID: 00:14.2 chip ID: 1022:780d 
           Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.10.0-8-amd64 
Network:   Device-1: Qualcomm Atheros AR9462 Wireless Network Adapter vendor: AzureWave 
           driver: ath9k v: kernel port: f100 bus ID: 01:00.0 chip ID: 168c:0034 
           IF: wlan0 state: down mac: <filter> 
           Device-2: Qualcomm Atheros QCA8171 Gigabit Ethernet vendor: ASRock driver: alx 
           v: kernel port: e000 bus ID: 03:00.0 chip ID: 1969:10a1 
           IF: eth0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter> 
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 2.05 TiB used: 176.36 GiB (8.4%) 
           ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Samsung model: SSD 870 EVO 250GB size: 232.89 GiB block size: 
           physical: 512 B logical: 512 B speed: 6.0 Gb/s serial: <filter> rev: 1B6Q scheme: GPT 
           ID-2: /dev/sdb vendor: Seagate model: ST1000DM005 HD103SJ size: 931.51 GiB 
           block size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B speed: 3.0 Gb/s rotation: 7200 rpm 
           serial: <filter> rev: 00E5 scheme: MBR 
           ID-3: /dev/sdc vendor: Toshiba model: HDWD110 size: 931.51 GiB block size: 
           physical: 4096 B logical: 512 B speed: 6.0 Gb/s rotation: 7200 rpm serial: <filter> 
           rev: A8J0 scheme: MBR 
Partition: ID-1: / raw size: 30.00 GiB size: 29.36 GiB (97.87%) used: 7.66 GiB (26.1%) fs: ext4 
           dev: /dev/sda4 
           ID-2: swap-1 size: 7.81 GiB used: 268 KiB (0.0%) fs: swap swappiness: 15 (default 60) 
           cache pressure: 100 (default) dev: /dev/sdb11 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 15.9 C mobo: N/A gpu: radeon temp: 13 C 
           Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
Repos:     No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list 
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian-stable-updates.list 
           1: deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye-updates main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.list 
           1: deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mx.list 
           1: deb http://mxlinux.mirrors.uk2.net/packages/mx/repo/ bullseye main non-free
           No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/various.list 
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/vivaldi.list 
           1: deb http://repo.vivaldi.com/stable/deb/ stable main
Info:      Processes: 229 Uptime: 3h 48m Memory: 6.71 GiB used: 1.47 GiB (21.9%) Init: SysVinit 
           v: 2.96 runlevel: 5 default: 5 Compilers: gcc: 10.2.1 alt: 10 Shell: quick-system-in 
           running in: quick-system-in inxi: 3.0.36 

I'm very impressed with the Beta - it's as stable and fault-free as my MX-19 install. I have more or less fleshed it out to my usual standard and found few faults. The following items have been installed, mainly via MX Package Manager:

Gnome-disk-utility, Vivaldi, KMyMoney (+110 packages) Quodlibet, Gwenview, Audacity, Calibre, Inkscape, Shotwell, MuseScore 3, MasterPDF Editor 4, VirtualBox. I was surprised that I also had to install gscan2pdf.

Almost all seem to work as expected. My HP X451DW was installed automatically, although I still have to change the default paper size to A4. I had 3 problems:

I use 2 alternative profiles in Thunderbird, both stored on my data partition. I edit profiles.ini to access them and have to use thunderbird --ProfileManager in the terminal for the first start. This gave me an error, which doesn't seem to affect operation:

tbird error.png

My virtual XP wouldn't use the existing machine file. The error message showed that the data partition was mounted at /mnt instead of /media. This despite taking care in gnome-disk-utility. Easily corrected, but I would love to have disk manager back.

vbox-error.png

My Epson scanner is only detected by sane-find-scanner run as root. As user, it returns:

Code: Select all

$ sane-find-scanner

  # sane-find-scanner will now attempt to detect your scanner. If the
  # result is different from what you expected, first make sure your
  # scanner is powered up and properly connected to your computer.

  # No SCSI scanners found. If you expected something different, make sure that
  # you have loaded a kernel SCSI driver for your SCSI adapter.

could not open USB device 0x1d6b/0x0001 at 009:001: Access denied (insufficient permissions)
found USB scanner (vendor=0x03f0 [HP], product=0xaa11 [HP Officejet Pro X451dw Printer]) at libusb:003:002
could not open USB device 0x1d6b/0x0002 at 003:001: Access denied (insufficient permissions)
could not open USB device 0x13d3/0x3393 at 008:003: Access denied (insufficient permissions)
could not open USB device 0x046d/0xc52b at 008:002: Access denied (insufficient permissions)
could not open USB device 0x1d6b/0x0001 at 008:001: Access denied (insufficient permissions)
could not open USB device 0x1d6b/0x0002 at 001:001: Access denied (insufficient permissions)
could not open USB device 0x1d6b/0x0001 at 005:001: Access denied (insufficient permissions)
could not open USB device 0x1d6b/0x0003 at 007:001: Access denied (insufficient permissions)
could not open USB device 0x04b8/0x013a at 006:002: Access denied (insufficient permissions)
could not open USB device 0x1d6b/0x0002 at 006:001: Access denied (insufficient permissions)
could not open USB device 0x1d6b/0x0003 at 004:001: Access denied (insufficient permissions)
could not open USB device 0x1d6b/0x0002 at 002:001: Access denied (insufficient permissions)
  # Your USB scanner was (probably) detected. It may or may not be supported by
  # SANE. Try scanimage -L and read the backend's manpage.

It's at 006:002. This lack of permission for the USB devices is probably also the reason why I can't access printer or scanner in VirtualBox. I haven't had this problem in other versions.

My only major criticism is one of appearance, which is often a matter of personal preference. I find almost everything too faint and indistinguishable. I don't usually make many changes to themes, fonts, etc, but it will certainly be necessary with this version. The extreme case is LibreOffice, where the icons are virtually invisible.

libreoffice display.png

That's the sum total of my problems. If it wasn't for the display issue, I would be happy to use this Beta as my daily system. I doubt I could say that about any other distro. Congratulations and thanks to the whole Development Team.

Phil

[Gaer Boy]

One small item I forgot. I turn off all window snapping, rollover, etc. I want my windows to go and stay where I put them! I've stopped most of the irritating behaviour but one feature eludes me. When a window touches the top of the screen (only), it maximises. I've failed to stop this - help would be welcome.

[Adrian]

I wonder if the LibreOffice needs a different set of icons for "light" themes.

[dolphin_oracle]

One small item I forgot. I turn off all window snapping, rollover, etc. I want my windows to go and stay where I put them! I've stopped most of the irritating behaviour but one feature eludes me. When a window touches the top of the screen (only), it maximises. I've failed to stop this - help would be welcome.

window manager tweaks, accessbility tab, there is a tiling option.

[Gaer Boy]

Thanks, D-O. I would never had connected that description.

[dolphin_oracle]

Thanks, D-O. I would never had connected that description.

no worries @Gaer Boy thanks for all the feedback!

on the libreoffice theme issue, did you reuse a libreoffice config from your home folder by any chance? this is what the writer looks like by default on the live media.

[Gaer Boy]

No - as far as I remember, that's the appearance on first opening. I looked at a setting or two but changed nothing. I usually alter many of the locations from /home to my data partition but I haven't tried any of that yet.