Be Gratful for what you have ...

[Nokkaelaein]

If anyone has read through the forum for long enough, they will know that the MX devs do consider suggestions and requests for changes. Things have been improved/tweaked, new tools created, because of that.

Much appreciated. For the record (and I know you didn't specifically target this at the musings on customizing/respinning MX, but I want to say it out loud), the reason I've "rolled my own" using MX as a base, changing all the defaults and some plumbing, etc, is not in any way that I think MX has bad defaults, or anything like that. I've made it the way I want and need it to be, but that's literally just me, and the specific things the systems are used for. So when I talk about how much I appreciate MX and then, in the same breath, "oh I've changed a whole lot of it", lol, I hope nobody reads this down the line and gets the idea that MX somehow needs to be changed in order to be good. That's not what that was about, and many of my changes wouldn't make any sense in a generalized, wide target audience, "install and go" polished public distro. The way the system comes out of the box is a well thought out and documented whole.

[Nokkaelaein]

I was always more of a fan of the BeOS. After they ported it to x86 and, in the waning days before they sold to Palm, started offering it to folks for free, I was happy to put it on a junky little Pentium with 32 MB of RAM that could barely run Windows anymore and it was a dedicated MP3 player for me in my office for a few years. Eventually I got my hands on the leaked network enhancement that gave the BeOS a TCP/IP stack and I got to dogfood it as a browser and e-mail desktop for about a week until I gave up and went back to Eudora and Firebird/Firefox.

Nowadays there's Haiku! https://www.haiku-os.org ... to relive that "dogfooding it out on BeOS" feeling, I mean, haha. I actually tried this in a VM this winter, out of general curiosity and, yes, the nostalgia again. The software library is surprisingly varied and up to date for what is, basically, a curiosity system. But it definitely has a good vibe, kudos. (From the wiki: "Haiku is POSIX compatible and has translation layers for X11 and Wayland.")

[asqwerth]

Much appreciated. For the record (and I know you didn't specifically target this at the musings on customizing/respinning MX, but I want to say it out loud), the reason I've "rolled my own" using MX as a base, changing all the defaults and some plumbing, etc, is not in any way that I think MX has bad defaults, or anything like that. I've made it the way I want and need it to be, but that's literally just me, and the specific things the systems are used for. So when I talk about how much I appreciate MX and then, in the same breath, "oh I've changed a whole lot of it", lol, I hope nobody reads this down the line and gets the idea that MX somehow needs to be changed in order to be good. That's not what that was about, and many of my changes wouldn't make any sense in a generalized, wide target audience, "install and go" polished public distro. The way the system comes out of the box is a well thought out and documented whole.

You're right that I'm not referring to your sort of special case. The respin capabilities are precisely for people to customise the distro to their own preference. The official iso has be something appropriate/comfortable for general use by most people, especially if they don't want to change too much.

And proposals like "MX should have an official Cinnamon release" are not going to get anywhere, because it's a matter of what desktops the main devs are familiar with and/or want to develop for. Anything else is for MX users to create respins of.

[thinkpadx]

Just saw this Charles... Nice!

I sincerely believe this is the finest distro i have ever used. Glad I took the plunge when i did and tried it way back when.

[rokytnji.1]

Being mostly a antiX user. I find MX versions quite easy to setup and get running. On my gear any ways.
MX taught me what tools were available for wacom touchscreens which I was able get working in antiX also.

I like this forum of helpful volunteers. Keep the good info coming.

[uncle mark]

You're right that I'm not referring to your sort of special case. The respin capabilities are precisely for people to customise the distro to their own preference. The official iso has be something appropriate/comfortable for general use by most people, especially if they don't want to change too much.

Mepis and now MX-KDE have been and continue to be darn near perfect for my preferences and use out of the box. The changes I've made to the base install are few and relatively minor. It's almost creepy how much Warren and Adrian knew/know what I prefer.

As an aside, does anyone know how Warren is doing? What he might be up to?

[operadude]

"YEAH, BABY"

[Get in the Way-Back-Machine and Sing to the Tune of "Speed Racer"]:

"Go MX, Go MX....Go MX...Go!!!"

Here are just a few of my feelings for the MX Distros, and Team MX:

[bambuko]

Based on my experience of another open source software (not Linux distro) it seems to be a default position of new users:

... I have used ****** software before...

why is "your" software:
- doing it differently
- not providing me with what I am familiar with
- when can you change it to suit my needs

such is human nature and I doubt one can do much to change it....

Thank you for all the work you are doing - some of us appreciate it very much indeed

[mxer]

Ah well, I wasn't going to post here, but.......as a returning user, I'm finding the Mini & Fluxbox versions a very good alternative to the regular XFCE distro for lesser hardware, although booting is slower than my previous main distro, once up & running, I've no complaints - so, thanks everyone for all these versions.

P.S. My reasons for returning are that my Chromebook audio never worked on my previous distro, & also the fact that I've always liked Fluxbox - & my latest acquisition is an i5 with an NVME drive, which I was having trouble installing to UEFI on my previous distro, but MX/XFCE went on no problem.

[BitterTruth]

I'm going to jump in here and also thank all the members of the forum and general users of MX that also spend a lot of time solving problems, highlighting issues or suggesting improvements too. It takes an entire community (even multiple communities inc our sister community, antiX) to produce and maintain something so brilliant and after all we ALL get to enjoy it.

Personally, I like to think of Linux Distros as a mature ecosystem with many interconnected and interdependant parts that are acting in a natural and (mostly) mutually beneficial way. In such a case it makes no sense for those parts (distros/apps) to compete against one another. Rather it makes more sense that they should continue to cooperate/share.

Similarly, an approach where one has to constantly undermine someone else's efforts (other distros) to make themselves feel better, doesn't make any sense. Yes, a distro needs to be able to stand on it's own merits (which MX clealry does) and no 2 distros should have all the same features anyway (otherwise one of them is simply just redundant), but this doesn't mean that some mutually beneficial stuff can't be shared (pipewire from Redhat for example). Otherwise there's the risk of stagnation.

To me this means that new users that grump about missing features or how, what and why are a crucial part of keeping MX relevant. Yes it can appear to be out of the bounds of respect and border on ingratitude, but the fact that they have taken the time out to engage is a positive in itself. Add to this the fact that a lot of users don't really know forum etiquette and are often making a post for the first time. Hence the constant need for reminders to post QSI. Also the written word often comes across in ways other than what was intended and it is often times particularly difficult to put a computing issue into words that are clear. This is why new posts always involve spending the first few comments trying to sift through to the actual problem, but once youcan. one finds that many objections are easily explained away whilst others turn out to be genuine issues that can lead to improvement (think of the new additions/changes to the MX installer).

I mean when it comes down to it, nobody is obligated to reply to such posts. If one doesn't like a post the easiest thing to do would be to just ignore it (although I understand the urge to quickly post a cutting remark and put the poster in their place, is often too hard to resist, lol).

The thing that makes MX stand out for me, the icing on the cake if you will, is the fact that the devs haven't taken up a cause; a hard stance on any one particular issue. They are absolutely chill. Users aren't locked into any 'world view'. If you don't like systemd ('d' is for devil, also from Redhat), don't use it etc. The devs have included an option to use SysV. If you want to add test repos, go for it, the devs have added an option. I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT JUST THE MODULARITY HERE. It's the fact there's no pretensions. Just quiet, understated competence and resolve with a professional attitude. It's good old service-with-a-smile.

Compare that to one particular distro/community which had a very toxic attitude a number of years ago (maybe they still do, I couldn't care less either way). I could never figure out what all the anger/agression/fuss was about, tbh. Didn't like the distro or the forums. It was like some kind of fascinating horror show; a masochistic experiment where users would ask for help, get chewed out, come back and get chewed out again and eventually repeat the cycle of abuse to the next generation of users. I couldn't understand it at the time but I now know that it's because ALL USERS ARE MOSTLY DESPERATE AND ALWAYS HAVE BEEN & ALWAYS WILL BE AT THE MERCY OF DEVS, which of course means that it pays to not p*** them off, lol.