Next update give an option for minimal install.

[Buck Fankers]

I just customize my live-USB and throw it in the drawer for when I need it.

I'm assuming you also have video about this.
I really need to find time and start watching every video you made last few years.
And btw, thanks for making them!

[dolphin_oracle]

Your welcome!

[malspa]

you can already have a minimal install
by removing all the apps you dont like before installing within the running liveSystem and tick the option to keep changes made in Live System

This is great, but would it be too much trouble to offer an official "minimal" iso? So the user doesn't have to bother with removing apps in the live session.

[BitJam]

This is great, but would it be too much trouble to offer an official "minimal" iso? So the user doesn't have to bother with removing apps in the live session.

It is called antiX, our lighter sister distro. It offers 3 different flavours of minimalism: full, base, and core. They are all lighter than MX. So we already offer you 4 different iso files to choose from all with different weights.

The problem is that different people have different ideas of what goes into a minimal system. IMO having us add a 5th iso in addition to the existing 4 would probably not be worth the effort. Building and maintaining two different versions of MX would be a lot of extra work for us. In antiX we tell people that it is easier to customize your system by starting with a more minimal flavour than you want and add things rather than start with a bigger flavour and remove things.

Also, if you are using a live-usb (made with live-usb-maker) then you can save your changes even without persistence by using live-remaster. This is like a streamlined way to make a snapshot and then make a live-usb from that snapshot. We just update your existing live-usb with all the changes you've made.

In fact, many people just run our systems live without bothering to install. We also offer a frugal install for both antiX and MX which creates a live system on your computer. This requires less disk space (and is much faster) than doing a normal install. I have literally done a frugal install and booted into the installed system in less than 30 seconds. Some distros take this much time just to boot their live system.

We know we can't please everyone with the packages we select. That is why we offer tools like persistence, live-remaster, and snapshot. It is also why we give you 4 different starting points to make your own system from. If MX is not light enough for you I highly recommend starting with one of the flavours of antiX. IMNSHO, when you look at MX together with our sister distro antiX, we offer, by far, the easiest way to create a custom version of Linux exactly to your tastes. We've put in a lot of hard work to make this easy for you.

If you want to make your own custom version tailored exactly how you want it then you have come to the right place. I think the easiest way is running live and using live-remaster. Once you are done, either live or installed, you can use snapshot to make an iso file you can distribute. If you want to make your own spin-off distro then we offer the build-iso tool which we use to create all 8 of our distribution iso files.

[dphn]

Hi BitJam,

I've done this with my MX-LMDE respin. It's now updated to MX Version 18.

But this is really triggy to create a systemd-shim system like the original MX on the antiX core. First I must purge all the nosystemd stuff so that I can start to build a system with systemd in it. Also there is a few antiX stuff only for antiX and not for MX. (for example the antixsources to build systems on Debian testing or sid, this is not recommandable for MX!)

O.k. all this is possible when you know, what you must doing and I think MX-developers do the same when there creating a new version on a new Debian base. I'm creating such systems since Summer 2018 and now my systems working fine. I am now able to create systems with different DEs, different configurations and I know, what MX packages I must install for that or leave it. For example the following situation. When I want to create a system with MATE DE I didn't need the desktop-defaults-xfce-mx17 package for xfce. But I need the files located in /usr/local/bin from that package to run some MX-specific things. Find that out is really hard work.

Think, the TE want a similar minimal iso based on systemd-shim. So the desktop-defaults-mx-core package must be installed for systemd-shim instead the antiX-core defaults but without pre-configured xfce and software stuff.

I will say that antiX is a different system than MX. Easier is to create a full nosystemd version on antiX-core. Install your desktop and your software compilation on the core-system. Make a snapshot of it and you have your own personal collection, but this is not MX. It's antiX.

[jbMacAZ]

Some of us love MX besides the fact it doesnt hardly install on my PC that has a 32 bit uefi but that is a whole different story.

It clearly depends on what device you are targeting. Very few distro installers even boot UEFI32. I just did 2 MX installs on my T100CHI without too much trouble. My first install was from an old remastered persistent MX-17 liveUSB. The only hassle was the grub install. No errors were reported, but no MX grub menu after reboot. It's odd, because the MX entry was present in the ESP, but my Asus ignored it and went to the next grub. Another Linux on another partition found MX17 after an update-grub. That installation worked well until I did a large upgrade to MX18. Apparently, too many updates - the system still ran, but was somewhat flaky.

The second (re-)install was with MX18. Once a new MX18 liveUSB was created, installation worked great including grub install. I'd love to see grub updated to the newer version that is Manjaro friendly (Sparky Linux has it), but MX supports UEFI32 without hacking the ISO for my device, so I'm happy! It still needs some configuration and drivers to enable some of the hardware. If those are added to the liveUSB, then the installer will transfer them. The remastering really grants a lot of control over the installation.

[BitJam]

Fair point dphn. If some wants a different init system or a different packaging system then antiX may not be a good starting point.

If the OP is willing to live with the limitations of antiX then IMO that solves the problem. If they would much prefer a subset of MX instead then I suggest making a list of package they want to remove or a list of packages they want to keep and maybe we can work on a script to make that happen. If you think others might want the same thing then you could offer the stripped down version as a snapshot respin. I could be wrong but I don't think there would be a lot of enthusiasm here to maintain that version but maybe we could try to help make it easier for you to create it.

[freefreeno]

I had to leave MX to for two reasons.
1. In a few other Distro's with same desktop environment I can run chrome without any and I mean any screen tearing.
2. And I found a minimal install that offers just that. No bloat of any kind and also no screen tearing right out of the box.
I would love to still be on MX and yes I will remove almost everything because I use my PC just as a around house play toy and to learn and I have learned a lot from learning to tweak my own stuff but for some reason no matter how many tweaks I do to MX my Intel HD 620 graphics driver has the worst screen tearing I have ever seen and that is with tweaks and completely stock and with Modesetting and with Intel. I will not name where I am currently at because I am not here to bash on MX but to solely tell you why I have left. As far as there is not many Distro's that install with 32 bit uefi well that is false because in the past year I have installed at least 10 and until MX-18 it was a major problem here and not really any where else. I am not worried about that because you fixed that problem for me with MX-18 but the deal breaker is screen tearing no matter what I do and there shouldn't be. I have i5 7200u with intel HD 620 and yes its no power house but plenty good to run any Linux Distro and run it well but I can't say that I enjoy the screen looking like waves are going thru it every time I scroll in firefox or chrome. I will say that MX is the most responsive Distro I have tested out of the last year but that doesn't matter when I can't enjoy for screen tearing. There you go bash away at what I have said. I am brutally honest person and people hate me for it because the best I can figure out PEOPLE would rather me lie to them than to tell the truth. I expect the same honesty from others so I have no problem with it. Pretty much I love MX-18 but I cant a minimal and it doesnt matter because I cant stop screen tearing.

[Jerry3904]

OK, bye. It's a good thing there are more than 300 distros out there, huh?

[anticapitalista]

Including a community made minimal MX to test out.