MX Linux Forum

It has been a week since I installed Mx and loving it so far. I am a previous Arch user so my experience is probably a little unusual: I used Arch for years and learnt to set it up quite comfortably. While I won’t discuss the reasons to try a new distro I will say that MX-Linux attracted me with their useful tools and quick environment. It is an elegant layout and extremely functional.
The package manager makes sense and the use of a terminal alternative can go full cycle with the upgrade tool.

The usual trend for a distro is to be used it until the user finds out that something is missing. This makes it fail. So far it is not the case for MX. The high votes in Distrowatch and reviews are all well deserved in my opinion.

My previous distro , Arch is a great tool for learning but I found it a little unstable when updating. Further more, it has to be fully set up when installed, but when long hours are spent in vain because of critical errors, frustration sets in. I am grad MX makes me feel steps ahead and with a system solid and stable.

Another point of great appreciation is the forum and the community around it, glued together by the developers that stand strongly around it. I find it rare to be honest.

So I took this opportunity to pass on good impressions and positive signs that hope for a bright future.

I am not an expert in this but I am curious: what pushes developers to create a new distro? Is it mere creative drive ?
The will to collaborate and put together efforts that result in something that people will use and appreciate ?

Again, I am not an expert but how is the revenue generated if not via contributions and donations?

Thanks for reading !

I am not an expert in this but I am curious: what pushes developers to create a new distro? Is it mere creative drive ?
The will to collaborate and put together efforts that result in something that people will use and appreciate ?

Again, I am not an expert but how is the revenue generated if not via contributions and donations?

Two good questions. The second is easier than the first: we get donations (link on top menu bar here).

As to the first: I guess is that we had a "perfect storm" of people with great talent, diverse interests and capabilities,a common vision and the ability to work together. (That will probably make my fellow Devs laugh)

Thank you very much for the kind words. Beside the technical considerations, I think one of the best feature of MX is that being a small distro with a nice community you can influence its direction and choices by providing feedback and suggestions, so in as sense you can personalize it even before you put it on your computer (many of the devs work on it to make a better distro for themselves, we scratch our itch and if at the same time you make other people happy is a great feeling) That's one reason I came back -- long story, I started using MEPIS in 2004 (wow, it's been 14 years), and when people around here started to talk about customizing antiX to use a full-featured DE I got interested in the project -- at that time by the way I was an Arch user too) Updating Arch day-by-day was fine with me, never really gave me problems, although updating every day gets a bit tedious, but it also satisfies some kind of compulsion I guess...

MX itself came to be because MEPIS was no longer developed, its creator was busy with personal issues, antiX was a fine distro and still is, but not exactly what we envisioned to replace the user-friendliness of MEPIS, so we built on top of antiX something that is meant to replace the functionality of MEPIS. True, MEPIS was based on KDE, but then KDE people decided to go crazy directions and disappointed many people with a buggy 4.0 release (that apparently was not really meant for public, but the harm was already done) Debian Stable always had too old version of KDE and it was a pain to get something newer, in the end I was happy people here decided to go with Xfce.

Also, another good impression was given by the package manager. I think the whole idea is very well executed.
I tried many distros and their package manager was one of the main things that made me decide to turn back: for example, Elementary OS is a good distro, not great for many reasons. Personally, I had a hard time making the AppCentre and the APT package manager (Ubuntu iteration) not conflict.

In MX-Linux the main Package Manager (MX), the MX Updater and the terminal based Aptitude work together quite wonderfully. It all helps to make it feel like a solid distribution.

My question to the developers is:
-Are you hoping to expand the distro with more tools in the future? Would your direction point towards a "prettier/ modernized" UI?
-Do you expect MX to get to highest peaks in Distrowatch? (at the moment it is 11th, that brings all respect)
-Do you have a Distro that you really admire for idea and execution?

How are you hoping to expand the project?

Thanks! and good work!

Would your direction point towards a "prettier/ modernized" UI?

What do you mean by this exactly?

1. Are you hoping to expand the distro with more tools in the future?
2. Would your direction point towards a "prettier/ modernized" UI?
3. Do you expect MX to get to highest peaks in Distrowatch? (at the moment it is 11th, that brings all respect)
4. Do you have a Distro that you really admire for idea and execution?

Can't speak for all the Devs, but here are my personal reactions:
1. We are constantly evaluating what we have already and are on the lookout for other needs
2. Subjective question that seems unanswerable. Our reviewers have been very complimentary about the looks of MX-17
3. We have no expectations at all; the giants at the top are pretty settled in with resources that dwarf anything we have
4. We admire a whole bunch--starting with antiX! But we are not aiming to be another version of something that already exists

Well said Jerry and I agree totally with your comments.

anticapitalista wrote:

Would your direction point towards a "prettier/ modernized" UI?

What do you mean by this exactly?

Sorry it was a vague question,I admit it.
I ll rephrase:
- Are you considering putting many resources into the look and feel side of the distro?

For example the Elementary Os team have spent most of their time and resources thinking how to improve the UI, what direction to take and they are delivering on that.

Are you thinking the interface need improvements or you are satisfied with the feel the distro gives to the user ?

My own thoughts on this. The UI is predominantly dictated by XFCE which is the DE we use. We do not intend to recreate that. I see no need to do so let alone having resources available for such a task. The concentration of the dev team on the UI has been around providing specialized MX Tools and it has been a primary focus of the team since the inception of MX. So that has and will continue to be a primary focus. That includes what tools to create, the look and feel of the tool presentation and what underlying tools are used to create them. Our devs are never fully satisfied and constantly look for improvements.

MX Linux is the perfect distribution for me. My hat is off to all those who have dedicated time and energy to it.
My personal impression is that the look & feel is close to perfect. After messing around with kde for a while I realized why xfce is the default and only supported desktop.
For those who are linux enthusiasts, hobbyists, etc, go try out Manjaro. You can get a beautiful KDE desktop there. However, you might pay a price for being on the bleeding edge. Still, it's probably a bit easier ride than Arch.

I'm done with that, I have a computer to get work done, and when I'm not getting work done I'd rather not be looking at it.

we do try to make Xfce look nice.

just take a look at screenshots of mx14 to see the progress! Lordy was it an ugly child!

dolphin_oracle wrote:we do try to make Xfce look nice.

just take a look at screenshots of mx14 to see the progress! Lordy was it an ugly child!

Indeed. I interpret UI and appearance as two different things. UI is how the user interacts with the system, appearance is how it looks. In addition to the concentration on UI a lot of effort has gone into making MX look good. There is an Art Team that focuses on this with input from devs and all users.

Very comprehensive answers! Thanks guys!

How is this for a UI on a Chromebook? Looks pretty much also stock to what was replaced by google. Being a Arch user. You should recognise it. It is not MX. But a X is in there.

viewtopic.php?p=437475#p437475

Love that Xfce just gets out of your way and allows you to do what you need. Wouldn't change a thing. MX is great. Xfce is perfect for it.

Future versions will be using XFCE-4.14, whenever that gets finished, so there will no doubt be changes in the look due to the switch to GTK 3.

I have an aging System76 Pangolin laptop, which even with a new battery, only gets ca. 3 hrs. of battery life max. So I tried a few "lite" linux distros that feature lxde and openbox. Unfortunately, I didn't like how they looked or functioned; I also didn't notice much improvement with RAM once I installed my favorite apps. I've had good luck with xfce in the past, so I decided to check out MX-Linux 17.

Once I installed it as well as my usual software, I restored my files, settings, etc. from my backup drive and couldn't believe that everything ran just the way I prefer--right out of the box. MX-Linux 17 boots fast and runs better and quicker than most other distros I've tried.

Many thanks to the devs and others who contributed to MX-Linux 17. It's a keeper!

Thanks for the good words! Could you click on Start menu > Quick System Info and post the output (it copies automatically) so we can see the system? Always like to know what it's running on...

Stevo wrote:Future versions will be using XFCE-4.14, whenever that gets finished, so there will no doubt be changes in the look due to the switch to GTK 3.

If we assume XFCE will transition as MATE did there will no doubt be regressions porting from GTK 2 to GTK 3. Some applets will not make it. GTK 3 color picker is a complete mess. Scrollbars will autohide. GTK 3 draws black squares before the application is shown (but apparently I'm the only one experiencing this). That said, much is already GTK 3. Maybe XFCE devs are doing the right thing and taking it slow. There is no point in releasing XFCE GTK 3 just to say "Look we did it", much better to port one thing at a time and make sure it's up to XFCE standards. I think that's what they are doing and since I like GTK 2 it can't go slow enough. If I were superrich I would fund a QT5 port of XFCE. I wonder how many millions that would cost. Judging from LXQT it's no easy thing to do. A QT desktop that isn't KDE is kind of needed to keep the balance in the Force.

Sorry I'm late to the party!

vince_ita wrote:[...] how is the revenue generated if not via contributions and donations?

AFAIK our devs don't get paid. I don't think we would last long if they did. Maybe less than a week.

As for Elementary OS. Every distro has a different focus. Their focus is clearly on looks and mimicking the look and feel of Macs and Windows. I think they did a great job!

1) IMO, our primary focus is to build on top of Debian Stable which is usually very very stable and somewhat out of date. Then we backport tons of packages from Debian Testing and put them in our community repo. IMO this is the greatest added value we provide because our users get a great combination of stability and recent versions of programs. I think there is a forum here for requests to have packages backported. If you want a more up-to-date version of some package, just place a post there.

2) Our second consideration (at least when we started) was to be light enough to run well on netbooks. IIRC this was the primary itch and the creation of MX let the team of back-porters from Mepis to get back to work on a maintained distro.

3) In addition, we use the build system and the live system from antiX. This helped us replace the Mepis lead dev who left for greener pastures. The live system is touted to be: The Most Extensive Live-usb on the Planet!. I would characterize it as the best live-usb on Planet Earth. I am probably biased but I still think it is true by a large margin.

Points (2) and (3) mesh well. MX is not as lightweight as antiX but it is still lightweight-ish and IMO is much lighter than Mepis (due to XFCE vs. KDE). We are probably lighter than Elementary because it is based on Ubuntu and Gnome. I'd say MX is a hybrid or combination of a heavy-ish distro and the very light antiX.

If looks are your top priority (as it seems to be for some reviewers) then you shouldn't choose MX. If you are looking for something reasonable light that is more "user friendly" (GUI-oriented) than antiX and has great stability combined with recent versions of many programs then you are right in our sweet spot. Likewise if you are looking for something "user friendly" that you can run live then you are also in another one of our sweet spots.

Our live system has an extensive list of features. A long time user the the Knoppix live distro (one of the first ever live distros and the starting point for our live system) switched to live MX-14.3 back in late 2014 or early 2015. MX live has been his main system ever since. But even he was not aware of some of our key features such as the automatic frugal install which has to be the fastest installation of a main-stream Linux distro by a wide margin. Here it takes about 20 or 30 seconds. I would stretch it to about a minute if you want to ponder the 3 questions we ask you (what existing partition to install to, what size to make the root persistence file, and what size to make the home persistence file).

The best MX / Mepis / Distro so far. Everything has worked right ootb for me. I came to Linux right around Simply Mepis Mepis 6 version. With each of the preceding versions, I have struggled with a few things. (Getting a printer set up here or a sound card working there) And it seemed to me that with each version the fixes were different that the version before. Maybe that is just me.

With MX 17 everything has worked right out of the box. Printers found and set up smoothly, settings and preferences and settings remembered and saved at install. Changing the kernel was a snap within the system. The Developers have really done a good- no, mak that GREAT job on this distro.

Even going from 17 to 17.1 was like a huge, positive step!

Also, can not forget the help at the forums and the kindness the "elders" show among themselves and especially to nerds or newbies like me.

Jerry3904 wrote:Thanks for the good words! Could you click on Start menu > Quick System Info and post the output (it copies automatically) so we can see the system? Always like to know what it's running on...

Sure, here it is:

System:
Host: g33zrpangolin-performance Kernel: 4.15.0-1-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64
Desktop: Xfce 4.12.3 Distro: MX-17.1_x64 Horizon March 14, 2018
Machine:
Type: Laptop System: System76 product: Pangolin Performance v: panp9
serial: N/A
Mobo: System76 model: Pangolin Performance v: panp9 serial: N/A
BIOS: American Megatrends v: 4.6.5 date: 06/25/2012
Battery:
ID-1: BAT0 charge: 37.9 Wh condition: 43.7/48.8 Wh (90%)
CPU:
Topology: Dual Core model: Intel Core i5-3230M type: MT MCP
L2 cache: 3072 KB
Speed: 1197 MHz min/max: 1200/3200 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1197 2: 2082
3: 1889 4: 2207
Graphics:
Card-1: Intel 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller driver: i915
v: kernel
Display Server: x11 (X.Org 1.19.2) driver: modesetting
unloaded: fbdev,vesa resolution: 1366x768~60Hz
OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Ivybridge Mobile v: 3.3 Mesa 13.0.6
Audio:
Card-1: Intel 7 Series/C216 Family High Definition Audio Controller
driver: snd_hda_intel
Sound Server: ALSA v: k4.15.0-1-amd64
Network:
Card-1: Intel Centrino Wireless-N 1030 [Rainbow Peak] driver: iwlwifi
IF: wlan0 state: up mac: 58:91:cf:52:fd:b4
Card-2: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller
driver: r8169
IF: eth0 state: down mac: 00:90:f569:fe
Drives:
HDD Total Size: 465.76 GiB used: 23.15 GiB (5.0%)
ID-1: /dev/sda model: ST9500423AS size: 465.76 GiB
Partition:
ID-1: / size: 455.45 GiB used: 23.15 GiB (5.1%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1
ID-2: swap-1 size: 2.00 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sda2
Sensors:
System Temperatures: cpu: 56.0 C mobo: N/A
Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
Repos:
Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/antix.list
1: deb http://repo.antixlinux.com/stretch stretch main
Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian-stable-updates.list
1: deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ stretch-updates main contrib non-free
Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.list
1: deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ stretch main contrib non-free
2: deb http://security.debian.org/ stretch/updates main contrib non-free
Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-chrome.list
1: deb [arch=amd64] http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main
Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mx.list
1: deb http://mxrepo.com/mx/repo/ stretch 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: 200 Uptime: 5 min Memory: 3.75 GiB used: 1.12 GiB (29.8%)
Shell: init inxi: 2.9.05

Find it polished and refreshing; a great job from a great team and community!