MX Linux Forum

Nice and thorough. One of very few to mention, much less use, MX-PI, and the first to mention FBReader.

and there is the usual & expected good / bad points. .
- it should give MX another spike in the DW chart, though.

"One of the few areas where I think MX loses out to the big, mainstream Linux distributions is in beginner friendliness".
- it's still a fairly beginner / friendliness Linux System - as far as I'm concerned, though.

Also, the review gives the impression that apart from things like browsers and kernels (which he called "key components"), the applications in MX repos are all "old' or rather, Debian Stable packages.

Otherwise, it's a pretty positive review.

Very thorough and positive. I wish he had mentioned the manual where a beginner can learn about the concepts that he indicated made MX somewhat less beginner friendly.

Pierre wrote:"One of the few areas where I think MX loses out to the big, mainstream Linux distributions is in beginner friendliness".
- it's still a fairly beginner / friendliness Linux System - as far as I'm concerned, though.

I've read the review as well and I agree with the reviewer.

There's beginners and then there's beginners. Somebody who's not an IT professional and has no experience whatsoever with Linux will probably not be able to set things up with MX. Case in point, my mother-in-law. She's 81, fairly computer-literate as these things go (meaning she is a low-wattage Office user, daily uses her browser, reads and answers her emails etc.) Some stuff she can install and set up on her own if it's simple but even such a basic thing as changing the default file save format in LO is beyond her.

I convinced her a while ago to try MX16 (as she was not happy about the way Windows 10 was portrayed in some of the media). With some trepidation she agreed. Her PC is now dual-boot and she can work with the new system but almost the slightest difference to what she is used to under Windows means a nervous email or even a phone call. She learns and she is willing to try things out but handing her the MX ISO file and tell her to install it on her PC... no way. We're talking light years here. And there are many like her, even younger people in their forties and fifties.

This is not so much a criticism of MX. Some systems are more user-friendly than others and having that choice is a good thing. It is more a reflection on what most people in the "real world" are able to do with their PCs if left to their own devices -- and how they view those machines they do not even begin to understand,

"Some of the MX utilities include a snapshot tool for making bootable ISO images of our system"

This is something special that many distros lack. At least it was mentioned.

richb wrote:Very thorough and positive. I wish he had mentioned the manual where a beginner can learn about the concepts that he indicated made MX somewhat less beginner friendly.

Agreed. I've just posted in the DW comments section my thanks to Jesse for the review, and to draw attention to the suitability of the manual for beginners.

Chris

+1

asqwerth wrote:Also, the review gives the impression that apart from things like browsers and kernels (which he called "key components"), the applications in MX repos are all "old' or rather, Debian Stable packages.

I've gone through his package list and their versions, with these results:

--3 packages with difference in major numbers (13%)
--5 packages with difference in minor numbers, excluding kernel (21%)
--2 significant errors by DW (qt, gtk+)

If the first is correct, then we might want to look at those: python, mesa, gcc

This is a great review. A nice present for the new year.

Jerry3904 wrote:

asqwerth wrote:Also, the review gives the impression that apart from things like browsers and kernels (which he called "key components"), the applications in MX repos are all "old' or rather, Debian Stable packages.

I've gone through his package list and their versions, with these results:

--3 packages with difference in major numbers (13%)
--5 packages with difference in minor numbers, excluding kernel (21%)
--2 significant errors by DW (qt, gtk+)

If the first is correct, then we might want to look at those: python, mesa, gcc

I have to admit I wasn't looking at the DW list of packages. I was just thinking about the programs and apps in the MX repo that can't be found in Debian, or those that are newer than the versions in Debian repos.

I was just trying to see what he was basing his opinion on, and that was the only thing I could come up with. Posted the errors on DW.

I was actually just looking at and comparing the results of the dpkg -l command from my Stretch (Xfce) installation (updated through today) and from the MX-17 live session (downloaded a couple of weeks ago). Not sure if these files would be helpful or informative to anyone here... I got kinda bored with looking through them, myself.

Anyway, I thought it was a good and fair review.

A DW reader has just commented that he thought there should be USB images available for download. Perhaps this is something that should be considered?

Chris

chrispop99 wrote:A DW reader has just commented that he thought there should be USB images available for download. Perhaps this is something that should be considered?

Chris

what's the difference between a usb image and a hybird iso?

There is always room for improvement....as long as there is a healthy "distro-mindset" !!
The speed of software developments in Linux today obviously varies from field to field.
Some "things" are running too much and some others are not !
...and somehow comes a big update one day and after that .... no boot...or no cute.....anymore !
This is what I mean with the word "distro-mindset"....
Therefore , I think that a serious and modern distribution should provide (as a matter of priority) strong balances and a general situation of harmony !!
Modernization is good and I like it but .... never at the expense of harmony and security.
I can see these good features here in MX-17 !!
I can't see in the above review any report about the nvidia-settings advanced tab.....
I had seen it (first time) in manjaro linux and after that I read about the 20-nvidia.conf and other details.... Anyway I could see video without screen flickering for first time in my 7-8 years linux life.....!!! (The same here !!)
It is a very serious matter for the everywhere troubled and disappointed nvidia users like me.
Sorry for my poor English....! I heavily use the google translator....
Best Regards !

Meh, I put my 2 cents in. Let's see if they publish it. It is the Emachine review/comment.

@fanisatt, Very thoughtful and well written piece. I totally agree with your comments. I would venture say that is the MX philosophy. Nothing is rushed for the sake of novelty. The release cycle has been a point release mid year and a new one at the end of the year. The final release has followed the Debian release cycle as we all know is certainly not rushed. In the interim the developers continue to modestly make improvements and the package team keeps applications up to date responding to requests and with their own initiative. The other key is that the dev team listens to users needs, and issues. I think the end result speaks for itself and most reviewers agree.

@ richb
Thanks for your response !!
I wish things to evolve according to the wishes and the plans of the MX team.
Best regards !

Pierre wrote:"One of the few areas where I think MX loses out to the big, mainstream Linux distributions is in beginner friendliness".
- it's still a fairly beginner / friendliness Linux System - as far as I'm concerned, though.

Agreed, but I think the most important feature for a "beginner friendly" distro is everything (at least everything the beginner cares about) must work right out of the box. MX has this feature in spades! GNU/Linux beginners aren't going to be successful searching online bug reports, editing grub or configurations files in terminal, starting and stopping systems processes, etc..

Reviews aside, I like watching MX climb in the Distrowatch user rankings:
https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=ranking

Not including IPFire (a dedicated firewall rather than a general purpose GNU/Linux distro), MX is now #2 and the latest buzz may give it the boost it needs to reach the top of list.

This review seems reasonably positive and objective to me; however, I don't recall
any published review that grasps the unique and distinctive features of MX to create
derivative LiveUSBs with selective persistence, making iso-snapshots, iso-remastering
and kernel replacement.

This review only notes these as options on the MX-Tools GUI, without any significant
recognition of the remarkable infrastructure that these options represent.

TJ Hoye wrote:This review seems reasonably positive and objective to me; however, I don't recall
any published review that grasps the unique and distinctive features of MX to create
derivative LiveUSBs with selective persistence, making iso-snapshots, iso-remastering
and kernel replacement.

Probably because Jessee doesn't know what that stuff is, and/or has no use for it.

TJ Hoye wrote:This review seems reasonably positive and objective to me; however, I don't recall
any published review that grasps the unique and distinctive features of MX to create
derivative LiveUSBs with selective persistence, making iso-snapshots, iso-remastering
and kernel replacement.

Not quite true. antiX has these features

[conveys] the unique and distinctive features of MX to create derivative LiveUSBs with selective persistence... and live-usb-maker

I can't fault a distrohopping reviewer for skimping on the details. Even across the the cumulative d_o tutorial videos, only selective details are covered. Personally, I'm inclined to lobby for a feature freeze until completion of a comprehensive and up-to-date set of relevant documentation is achieved.

One newly-added live-usb-maker feature "Update UUIDs on an existing live-usb"
...I (seriously) have no idea why, or when, one would want/need to utilize that feature.

Developer (and helper/supporter) resources are continually stretched thin, and documentation never catches up because attention is spent chasing and supporting further edge cases.
Why are /home/demo/Live-usb-storage permissions root:root?
I'm dismayed by this scenario wherein we're unable to readily provide a definitive answer to the inquiry. At the same time, I'm wondering "How did we arrive here? How 'valid' is the perceived edge case which inspired Live-usb-Storage in the first place?" Legacy bios + single fixed drive w/ mbr + dualboot... and the machine lacks a second usb port (to host user's choice-of-format extra storage partition)??? Because "speed"? Naw. if a machine has only usb2 support, and its fixed drive is not a SATA1 5400rpm laggard, and user chooses to employ static persistence... well, choices have trade-offs.

A similar point of wonderment:
blab ~= blabel
How did we arrive at (needing to remember, and to document) redundant pairs of persistence-related bootline parameters???
Because once upon a time... total bootline length was to limited to 256 chars? (now is 4096 chars?)
Because... eternal backwards compatibility?

skidoo wrote:Personally, I'm inclined to lobby for a feature freeze until completion of a comprehensive and up-to-date set of relevant documentation is achieved.

Agree 100%. I would perhaps add the suggestion to instigate a process to rigorously identify and squash bugs before adding new code with potentially new bugs.

Under Windows (I do not know yet enough about MX to say the same about that) I have since at least 2014 adopted a strategy of version-freezing ALL software I use. There are now only three valid reasons to update an application to a newer version: 1) important security fixes (most often); 2) a bug is removed that is actively annoying me (rare); 3) a newer version has a feature that I definitely need (even rarer). In my experience (YMMV) practically all the applications I use are more than good enough for my purposes (for instance I am still using a couple valid MS Office licenses from 2003 and there is zilch reason for me to change that) and have been that for quite a while. About the only app I regularly updated (other than browser, the Adobe crap etc) was a sandbox utility. And VirtualBox.

Most stuff I use has been around for many years (foobar2000, vlc, IrfanView...) and these programs are mature, stable applications. No need to tinker (again YMMV).

IMHO, updating software (other than for security fixes) is a vastly overrated pleasure.

I don't make full use of all the MX live USB tools, but wouldn't the new features have been there to be tested in the alphas and betas of MX17?

I'm belatedly catching up with some forum posts. Still a newcomer to MX and using MX-16. But I'd pick up and agree with RichB's comment on the MX-17 review:

richb wrote:Very thorough and positive. I wish he had mentioned the manual where a beginner can learn about the concepts that he indicated made MX somewhat less beginner friendly.

As a definite newbie I have found MX extremely user-friendly. I'd definitely endorse the value of the manual. The best user-guide to any of the half-dozen or so Linux distros I have tried. Clear, comprehensive and easy to navigate and understand. Linux Lite's equivalent is not bad, but the MX one is definitely the best I've seen.

While I'm handing out bouquets, let me add that MX (version 16.1, anyway!) offers the best "out-of-the box" experience I've had. With PCLinuxOS I had problems over Broadcom wifi. With various Ubuntu derivatives (Lite and others) Bluetooth hasn't always played nicely. So far, MX-16 has performed brilliantly. MXTools is helpful for non-experts. And the options (not easy or not available in many other distros) to run from USB or SD card, and to remaster (which I haven't yet tried) are extras which set MX apart. I can't understand why MX isn't a lot higher up the popularity charts.....