Well This 24+ Year Linux Vet Just Got Impressed by AVL Mx Edition 23.2

[enorbet2]

Title says a lot but I'd like to explain how and why. I'm really ancient, been in the Music Biz for well over a half century and a proud Slackware Linux user/admin for over 23 years. I'm also a long time multibooter from even back in DOS days. My first GUI aside from DOS Shells was OS/2 2.1. Later with OS/2 Warp 4 I got introduced to Linux when emx runtimes made it possible to substitute the Enlightenment DE for IBM's Workplace. I've not only multibboted forever but kept up with Enlightenment even though I gradually began to prefer KDE.

Because I am a musician/engineer who has been involved in recording since ~1970 and evolved into digital recording around 1998 and shortly wanting desperately to dump Windows, I worked to learn the earliest ALSA system and installed Ardour when it was pre Alpha, before it had install instructions. This worked quite well for me until Pulseaudio invaded. Hey if you like it no biggie but I despise pulse. I was cautiously enthusiastic when Pipewire began to shove an elbow into Pulse's ribs. Pipewire recently has gotten quite good but when I upgraded from my PCIe Essence II card to an external Focusrite USB DAC/Mixer I began a long wrestling match with Pipewire and especially complicated by wanting DaVinci Resolve to work properly with Pipewire and USB Audio, I've been fighting this losing battle for months.

Initially I had a few minor hiccups with AVL like ancient Nvidia drivers. Today I purged the old drivers and ran the Nvidia-575.63-foo.run installer and it was a piece of delicious cake. Then to my utter shock, with zero Preference adjustments and zero Wireplumber or Jack routing tweaks DaVinci Resolve not only ran fine but all appropriate Audio and Video just ran perfectly!!! This is on the Free version which all but requires .mov format. I've wanted to buy a license for Full Studio version but past experience made me wait until I could confirm it worked properly on Linux. That time is TODAY! and I couldn't be more impressed and happy.

Many thanks to the devs who built AV Linux Mx Edition.

[Eadwine Rose]

Moved into the respins forum.

[AVLinux]

Hi @enorbet2

Welcome and thanks for the encouraging words. AVL 23 was the first version to feature Enlightenment and it was not a very well received change in general. I lost a lot of Users and my Distrowatch rating took a beating (oddly the page views are stronger than ever..?). I don't live or die by these things and I personally love Enlightenment and am going to continue with it for upcoming AVL 25 as well as adding a Moksha ISO. I'm intrigued and happy (and maybe a little envious...lol) to hear about your success with Davinci Resolve on Linux. Last year I tried unsuccessfully to get it running reliably and with my AMD Graphics card I was out of luck without special Kernels and added AMD proprietary Repos so I bought a brand new nVidia 4080 SUPER and it was disastrous, the Linux Driver was terrible even with the latest nVidia development Repo drivers and I had numerous Video glitches in daily use and Davinci Resolve crashed repeatedly so I ended up selling the card at a loss and keeping Davinci Resolve Studio work on my Windows 10 partition.. My point is that on any Linux variant Davinci Resolve is a VERY delicate balance of what exact nVidia card you have, both too new and too old will not work and AMD is a real PITA. In truth the excellent nVidia Installer is the work of the MX Linux developers to the benefit of all.

I'm very glad to hear you're having a good experience with AVL and I really appreciate you taking the time to share that here!

[enorbet2]

First, you're welcome and let me add that while I have little problem navigating Enlightenment and respect it's low footprint that is still able to maintain substantial "eye candy", functionally I prefer Xfce or especially KDE and I found it unusually effortless to add those WMs in AVL. Many if not most distros require numerous additional packages, a lot of going back into package management to get anywhere near a fully functional WM. This level of Minimalism makes little sense to me in 2025 and this is from someone who competed on IRC back in the early days to roll a kernel that would fit on a 1.5MB Floppy. These days a 250GB SSD can be had for roughly $20 USD and having used "real estate" on a drive has zero impact on resources and performance as long as sufficient Free Space is maintained...pretty effortless on even dual OpSys systems with 250GB storage overall.

To recap, besides tweaking Slackware with Studioware tools, I have installed and used both OpenSuse (3 flavors including Studio) and 3 versions of Ubuntu Studio. Ubuntu had an edge for a version because I could totally eliminate Pulseaudio and have Pipewire and Pipewire controlled ALSA but Canonical ruined that when the next version incorporated SNAP. Right now after years of work in Audio/Video production I can say without hesitation that AV Linux Mx Edition, is the very best Studio Distro I've ever experienced including very very early distros like from around 2002.

I should add I say that with some chagrin since I really do prefer the unbridled power and freedom of Slackware but it looks like as is rather common, given that even Mr Torvalds says he prefers silence, Slackwaree will be some time before it advances in A/V work sufficiently to be my All-In-One again. For the time being, I will dual boot. AVL _Mx is THAT GOOD! Keep up the great work!

[enorbet2]

OK I have a very serious problem and suggestion. Being a 24+ year user/admin with Slackware I prefer/expect COMPLETE ADMIN CONTROL! This means I $#*$# HATE any system that goes behind my back and tries to undo deep level customization I need, especially without asking for my confirmation.

For a prime example - AVL Mx Edition 23.2 ships with positively ancient nvidia drivers that WILL NOT WORK with modern GPUs like my already somewhat outdated 4070 Ti Super. Kudos for making it easy to install newer ones BUT I positively despise that the system will sometimes automatically try to revert to the ancient driver. It has caused me hours of work and I NEVER want to deal with that insanity ever again.

Now that I've vented and am beginning to calm down please tell me how I can lock a driver or configuration in on AVL so it remains flexible to me, but zero automation will take over and cause any reverting to crap that won't work. I don't need nor want an underfoot Butler. Let me be the responsible admin. If I screw up, I'll know at least what went wrong - ME!, and the last thing I did. Naturally I will also look for answers but I'd like to hear from you AVLinux since you seem sincerely proud and interested in your creation as you well should be. I recognize this is likely not an AVL issue but a Debian one but your experience is valuable to me and I await your response.

[AVLinux]

OK I have a very serious problem and suggestion. Being a 24+ year user/admin with Slackware I prefer/expect COMPLETE ADMIN CONTROL! This means I $#*$# HATE any system that goes behind my back and tries to undo deep level customization I need, especially without asking for my confirmation.

For a prime example - AVL Mx Edition 23.2 ships with positively ancient nvidia drivers that WILL NOT WORK with modern GPUs like my already somewhat outdated 4070 Ti Super. Kudos for making it easy to install newer ones BUT I positively despise that the system will sometimes automatically try to revert to the ancient driver. It has caused me hours of work and I NEVER want to deal with that insanity ever again.

Now that I've vented and am beginning to calm down please tell me how I can lock a driver or configuration in on AVL so it remains flexible to me, but zero automation will take over and cause any reverting to crap that won't work. I don't need nor want an underfoot Butler. Let me be the responsible admin. If I screw up, I'll know at least what went wrong - ME!, and the last thing I did. Naturally I will also look for answers but I'd like to hear from you AVLinux since you seem sincerely proud and interested in your creation as you well should be. I recognize this is likely not an AVL issue but a Debian one but your experience is valuable to me and I await your response.

Hi,

OK, The chassis and wheels of AVL is MX and Debian and I do not touch or influence anything at the depth of Video Drivers at all, I work on top of them. Debian Bookworm indeed has very old nVidia drivers for reasons I'm not privy too. MX provides their handy 'ddm-mx' (aka nVidia Driver Installer) in MX Tools and the latest version of that tool will even fetch the newest Drivers from the nVidia development Repo. I'm afraid I don't understand your concern about maintaining a particular Driver on the system. Essentially Debian's handling of nVidia drivers has always been a weak point and MX has upped the game considerably by making things both much easier and greatly expanding the Drivers available. Can you please explain more specifically what the issue is?

[rokytnji.1]

Howdy enorbet.

Glad things are working out using AVL.
I ran it for a bit. On older equip. then yours I bet.
AVLinux probably has all the answers you may need since he is the main Developer of AVL.