MX Linux Forum

Hi AVL and MX friends!

I see our brethren and sistas on the MX side are making use of the Northern hemisphere dark winter months to plan ahead so perhaps I will take their hint...

If you aren't aware the most recent AV Linux ISO ("Greatest Hits") had some significant refinements and also a MUCH lighter package and Application payload making it more of a "Base" Distribution than a desert-island-everything-but-the-kitchen-sink affair.. So, is this a better direction to go? Offer a solid base with all of the usual performance tweaks, Wine Plugin support and extra PipeWire utilities but little else?

What isn't on the table:

* Another Desktop Environment, I'm sticking with Enlightenment as default (Moksha may actually be a possibility, I really like it's development team and they would welcome and collaborate with an MX/Moksha variant). Note it is easier now to install XFCE4 and others if you want on your own. If you hate Enlightenment that's fine but I don't want to hear about it anymore...

Some of my thoughts about currently included stuff:

An awful lot of things in AV Linux are 'convenience packaging' for example Ardour, Reaper demo, Blender, Mixbus demo, Cinelerra-GG, Kdenlive, MuseScore, Avidemux, Audacity, Hydrogen and various Plugins. Yes, a couple of these may be in the MX Repos from time to time but since AV Linux is built from the regular MX AHS Repo and not MX Test Repo quite often I have to rely on AppImages, Vendor's bundles and other ways of getting this stuff onto an ISO in the most current versions at release time. All of it has to be custom wrapped in a Debian Package format to be built into the ISO and this takes an incredible amount of time to keep on top of... In particular Blender, MuseScore and Harrison Mixbus are massive and add at least a whole Gb of ISO space on their own!! ALL of these things are readily available from their own developers and Vendors so I have to wonder am I just running myself silly only to annoy people who only want one of those Applications to use? Is it unreasonable to expect a User to go to the Blender site or the Reaper site like everyone else does?

As is evident on AVL "Greatest Hits" I think a multimedia Distro should at least present some of the top options and since I have permission from the Ardour developer to distribute and share a fully functional version I would always want to keep the official Ardour bundle.. I think GIMP and Kdenlive are also essential at the very least as well, beyond that we get on to a slippery slope very quickly... And before you ask Davinci Resolve is not even a remote possibility and simply typing it's name has raised my blood pressure to an unsafe level. Suffice it to say if err... uhm...'DR' worked perfectly on Linux (which it does not on most stock Debian systems) it's proprietary license would prohibit redistribution and it explodes out to about 6Gb in size once fully installed and extracted so that's a non-starter..

OK, so with all that preamble off my chest what do the small cadre of AV Linux Users think? Is a smaller and tighter 'Base' the way to go? What do you uninstall first? (don't say Enlightenment!!). What couldn't you live without?

the fact that the deep system level audio tweaks are present, I would literally be happy with this "BASE" in pretty much any form you presented it, 23.5 was an absolute dream to install and get set up, not one tiny hiccup once I figured out I had an HDMI cable that was bad... this one feels like something worth paying for, full stop. I have no further input other than Thank you for your service and thanks to the MX team for making such a great starting point for you to work your magic on!

_blast0id

well, 23.5 was very well done, ngl

concerning demo apps, I only keep reaper, pending when ardour is a full fledged DAW in all ramifications, on linux, reaper will remain my go to option, not that I compose a lot...

if GIMP and Kdenlive are essential before it gets slippery slopey, I believe Inkscape is essential too, GIMP has become something to bother about since 3.0 RC1 & RC2, before that Inkscape + Krita/Photopea is a better combination

now concerning other alternative apps not in the 23.5 ISO, for example, cinlerragg, I believe they should be done with, they can be hosted on your server but should be no longer in the ISO moving forward...

don't be mad over my dislike of cinlerra, I have tested it out to see what it can do better than kdenlive or if there is something it does that kdenlive doesn't...

as for moving to moksha, if you are going to put in the work to better the aesthetics of moksha themes, fine, if not, I am okay with the very limited but well done themes on AVL 23.5...I understand that moksha might offer some ease to what you do, all I ask is that don't leave us with the very not pleasing options of moksha themes...

bugs:
- when typing the passcode to a wifi network, once you click on show password, you cannot edit in any way what you have been typing in the dialog box, this is an old plague

- black screen, sometimes when resuming from suspend/sleep or hibernate, AVL 23.5, how do I get out of it? by forcefully shutting down or using ctrl+f1 to reboot the system

how I enabled hibernate https://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/20 ... 21-10/amp/

Thanks @blast0id I appreciate the input.

@Aceediq Thanks for the suggestions! Yeah, if I had a dollar for every bug report about hibernate and suspend on Linux in general I'd be a very wealthy man. These functions are so dodgy and so commonly broken across Linux kernels I never use suspend or hibernate, I never test it or pay any attention to it. Most modern SSD computers boot within 30 seconds so I'm afraid I have no expertise about that at all.

To be fair Moksha is not terribly likely because it has no Wayland support at all and that seemingly will be increasingly important in the future. Moksha has a lot of familiarity involved because it is an E fork but I'd need to spend a lot of time evaluating it as production OS. As far as GIMP I would imagine next AVL would be into GIMP 3..

AVLinux wrote: ↑Wed Feb 05, 2025 3:07 pm Thanks @blast0id I appreciate the input.

@Aceediq Thanks for the suggestions! Yeah, if I had a dollar for every bug report about hibernate and suspend on Linux in general I'd be a very wealthy man. These functions are so dodgy and so commonly broken across Linux kernels I never use suspend or hibernate, I never test it or pay any attention to it. Most modern SSD computers boot within 30 seconds so I'm afraid I have no expertise about that at all.

To be fair Moksha is not terribly likely because it has no Wayland support at all and that seemingly will be increasingly important in the future. Moksha has a lot of familiarity involved because it is an E fork but I'd need to spend a lot of time evaluating it as production OS. As far as GIMP I would imagine next AVL would be into GIMP 3..

yeah, it didn't cross my mind before to consider changing the kernel, truly, most of my issues with suspend and hibernate largely stems from the kernel...but I don't welcome tinkering with kernel on linux

considering that I hibernated more than I shutdown/sleep when I still used windows, I'll have to find a workaround for this, over here electricity is not even as stable as rainfall in rainy season, so hibernation is a huge dealbreaker for me...I don't have the luxury of any time scheduling or procrastination when it comes to things being done with electricity

I'll have to install the stable linux kernel version in mx repo and see if it works for me, I hope changing kernels wouldn't mess up your tweaks? the last time hibernate worked properly for me was when AVL shipped two kernels back then, a stable linux version and your selected liquorix version...




and as for moksha, this is one of the reasons for linux low home user adaptation and market share, a lot of projects swim against the tide of the linux ecosystem, I came across news that support for x11 has been dropped for gtk5, why would people be so headstrong in putting in significant efforts in a project that is not future proof?

did you check out the wifi issue I talked about?

base is fine. wine yabridge combo is great.
i would drop blender and the like and concentrate more on the audio side of things.
i think if the base works as it should, then anyone could install the programs they like most.
a pack a la ubuntu studio installer would be top

I disagree in part with nudiecrudi on only focusing on the audio side of things. Muso's nowadays, and especially the up and coming ones need to be connected in a way that gives them a great head start which include more than just straight music production. There's no point in having a computer setup that only focuses on great audio pre and post production capabilities when the same machine can assist with other common tasks associated with the greater multimedia needs of this modern age.

With the likes of Social Media becoming the path forward for budding musicians who wish to make a name for themselves. Even the simplest of packages that facilitate graphics and video pre/post production will find their place in light of musos promoting their works.

You mention AppImages used in it you may want to consider this lovely little idea I found just the other day for installing and keeping them up to date if they are in the creators repository of packages he does called AM or AppImage Package Manager. It works fantastically in two methods the am and appman, the first being a system wide tool that can do installs in the user home or any directory you want for only a single user to use. The appman is for a user to do their home directory install for the method, I choose this. Such a simple thing to setup create a ~/.local/bin make sure it is sourced in your .bashrc to have it in the path. Copy the appman script into it make it executable and run it telling it where you want the AppImages and all of its/there configuration data installed to and go on your merry way of searching for and installing the AppImages you want. You can also use it to create and mange your own repository of packages to be installed by the users of your system. Something for you to consider


https://github.com/ivan-hc/AM
https://portable-linux-apps.github.io/apps

m_pav wrote: ↑Thu Feb 06, 2025 5:23 pm I disagree in part with nudiecrudi on only focusing on the audio side of things. Muso's nowadays, and especially the up and coming ones need to be connected in a way that gives them a great head start which include more than just straight music production. There's no point in having a computer setup that only focuses on great audio pre and post production capabilities when the same machine can assist with other common tasks associated with the greater multimedia needs of this modern age.

With the likes of Social Media becoming the path forward for budding musicians who wish to make a name for themselves. Even the simplest of packages that facilitate graphics and video pre/post production will find their place in light of musos promoting their works.

perhaps i didn t explain well my thought. as one of the goals is to keep the distribution light, i meant i would like the audio settings working at best as a base, but of course we need video edit also. but maybe one could leave out heavy weights like blender, gimp and other programs and if one wants, he can insttall them after on their own.
i have been using kdenlive and obs alright lately.
of course anyone can have their own opinion. i won't mention e....

alright. i do not want to open a new post.
i come from not being able to install e 23. i got rid ow windows, made a single partition and installed e 23 and i am using as it is now working without many error messages i can tell you that i am starting to like it.
i am been very resistant so far, but it gave me grudges the many times i have tried to test it.
now it seems fluid.
you know glen i said many times i appreciate your creations, but this one was hard to like.
i am doing it now . better late than never.
i had a spell with ubuntu studio, but i come back to papa..

nudiecrudi wrote: ↑Fri Feb 28, 2025 8:41 am alright. i do not want to open a new post.
i come from not being able to install e 23. i got rid ow windows, made a single partition and installed e 23 and i am using as it is now working without many error messages i can tell you that i am starting to like it.
i am been very resistant so far, but it gave me grudges the many times i have tried to test it.
now it seems fluid.
you know glen i said many times i appreciate your creations, but this one was hard to like.
i am doing it now . better late than never.
i had a spell with ubuntu studio, but i come back to papa..

nudiecrudi wrote: ↑Fri Feb 28, 2025 8:41 amyou know glen i said many times i appreciate your creations, but this one was hard to like.
i am doing it now . better late than never.

well I for one will sleep better at night now... lol... we're happy you're happy though! welcome to the AVL fam hehe

I don't really have any strong opinion about what should or should not be done with AV Linux 25 but I do wonder if doing a clean reinstall may become necessary or if just installing all of the MX updates, as these come along, will be good enough for keeping everything current?

I do have a suggestion about making a change to your YouTube video on "Getting Started with AV Linux 23.1!"

Why not put in chapters so that one wouldn't have to re-watch the entire 1 hour, 26 minute and 50 second video from start to finish if you're looking to revisit a specific detail about AV Linux?

I don't have any experience with doing this myself but this will supposedly not be too difficult according to the instructional web pages I was able to find:

"Easy Ways to Add Chapters to YouTube Videos" (https://www.wikihow.com/Add-Chapters-to-YouTube-Video)

"Video Chapters" (https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9884579)

Hi,

Somebody actually did this in the YT comments. If you scroll down a few comments somebody was kind enough to bother already..

I'm not a hardcore Youtuber so there is much I need to learn about polishing the content.. I'm kinda stunned that anyone watches at all and that I have any subscribers, it's not something I really have pursued other than doing the content for info purposes..

AVLinux wrote: ↑Sun Mar 02, 2025 11:27 am Somebody actually did this in the YT comments. If you scroll down a few comments somebody was kind enough to bother already..

I'm not a hardcore Youtuber so there is much I need to learn about polishing the content.. I'm kinda stunned that anyone watches at all and that I have any subscribers, it's not something I really have pursued other than doing the content for info purposes..

I see it now. It looks like the fellow did all of the hard work of deciding where to place the chapter breaks for you. Looks like all you might need to do will be to copy and paste this information in the way that those instructional web pages specify.

I currently have AV Linux MX Edition 23.2 in a VirtualBox and have a few things to note.

• In a live boot, the Firefox icon has a purple background. In the installed mode it appears normal.

• Thunar File Manager has a different icon compared to other distros both in live and installed.

• The Conman document differs from the Conman app found at ^, Settings >, All >, System >, Conman UI Setup.

• Why two 'Start' buttons, each having differing content?

• Attempting to open the PDF file gives an association dialog. There are 2-3 PDF viewers in MX, were they removed?

• I totally agree a user manual is a huge task but it looks like a minimal Quick Start guide with 'known issues' is in order.

• After looking at the Conman document's treatment of WiFi, the need for ^ is 'voted for' a second time.

• The systray icon for networking is vastly different than other distros. After being clicked, the icon changes to a cloud-like type. A reboot restores the original icon.

• Both left and right click options on the network icon appear to be nonfunctional.

I will do a bare metal installation later today and continue looking to see if the reported issues above persist.

PS: yesterday I spent some time updating the AVL Wikipedia article.

FullScale4Me wrote: ↑Sun Mar 02, 2025 4:40 pm I currently have AV Linux MX Edition 23.2 in a VirtualBox and have a few things to note.

• In a live boot, the Firefox icon has a purple background. In the installed mode it appears normal.

• Thunar File Manager has a different icon compared to other distros both in live and installed.

• The Conman document differs from the Conman app found at ^, Settings >, All >, System >, Conman UI Setup.

• Why two 'Start' buttons, each having differing content?

• Attempting to open the PDF file gives an association dialog. There are 2-3 PDF viewers in MX, were they removed?

• I totally agree a user manual is a huge task but it looks like a minimal Quick Start guide with 'known issues' is in order.

• After looking at the Conman document's treatment of WiFi, the need for ^ is 'voted for' a second time.

• The systray icon for networking is vastly different than other distros. After being clicked, the icon changes to a cloud-like type. A reboot restores the original icon.

• Both left and right click options on the network icon appear to be nonfunctional.

I will do a bare metal installation later today and continue looking to see if the reported issues above persist.

PS: yesterday I spent some time updating the AVL Wikipedia article.

Hi, and first thanks so much for volunteering your time on the Wikipedia article, much appreciated!

Your observations are valid and some have been addressed in the most recent 'base' ISO...

In general, Enlightenment's developer has designed Enlightenment to be installed from Package Management and a turnkey Live Boot system is not something he appears to have any interest in supporting or facilitating to the point that I have stopped asking after a few mailing list dustups. There are a few holes that I have had to duct tape over and my duct taping skills are slowly improving. I think it's fair to say there are reasons why Bodhi and Elive Linux are both using modified forks of Enlightenment but I am determined to make a go of presenting Enlightenment in it's pure form but indeed 23.2 is still kind of raw in some areas. I have to release these things into the wild to get informed about how stupid I've been.. The latest 23.5 ISO might be a better place to jump on board.

- Hmmm not sure about the firefox Icon BUT Enlightenment has a known issue where it ties Icon themes to the computer hostname so it is unfortunately a known thing where the Evolvere Icon theme on the Live session gets changed to Enlightenment's rather disappointing 'Enlightenment-X' theme because usually the User (or the installer) will assign a new hostname. Simply going to the settings once installed and selecting another theme will fix this. This may explain the Thunar Icon changing as well? *Note the 23.5 ISO has moved to Papirus Icons.

- The Connman PDF document predates that addition of Connman UI (cmst) which was provided because Enlightenment's Connman frontend is extremely Spartan for more complex WiFi needs. The mimetype tuning on AVL 23.2 also probably needed some work but to my knowledge QPDFViewer should be there and the PDF mimetype handling may be better on 23.5.

- There are 2 menus because some people like a Classic menu and others like a text-searchable menu, this practice was also discontinued on 23.5 however Win + M will bring up the text searchable 'Run Everything' menu..

- To be clear the Connman WiFi PDF is not normally needed, it's not the 'normal' way. I've only had one very old Dell laptop where I needed manual intervention otherwise for most cases clicking the Connman network Applet and checking the WiFi tickbox usually 'just works'. However I may consider Gnome Network Manager on AVL-MXe 25. Probably the PDF should be removed from the Desktop and placed elsewhere..

- The Connman Applet isn't actually in the systray, it is an Enlightenment 'module' so it is just a panel launcher like all other Enlightenment-native applications. As I'm typing this a right-click is bringing up the settings and a left-click opens the very spartan connection manager.

I appreciate these kind of detailed questions, too often people are just angry because it's not XFCE4 and leave in a huff where a few questions and descriptions of what the actual problem was will (a) make me aware of potential things to fix or document and (b) help the User to get acquainted with what has changed and hopefully get over prejudicial biases.

Now I have AV Linux MX Edition 23.5 bare metal installed on a Dell N7010 and note:

• Conman feels a lot more usable with a dark theme (same version used 23.2 and 23.5)

• The Conman tray left click now has 'minimize', 'maximize', and 'WiFi Connections' that are usable.

• When the Cconman app is raised, both the top and bottom toolbar overlay portions of it. This hides the configure button on the WiFi tab. Clicking and dragging the Conman top bar allows resizing. Laptop 1600x900 screen.

• Both toolbar tooltip float directly under the mouse pointer rather than offset by ~100px from it.

• Thunar File Manager still has a different icon compared to other distros both in live and installed.

• The Conman document now seems superfluous and distracting. Replace with a quick how-to get the GUI Conman up onscreen.

• Systray 'Check for updates' prompts for a password.

• After an update check is done, the systray icon briefly shows updates are available and then goes back to the normal (default) icon.

• The Uncomplicated Firewall is off - MX 23 default is on.

• The mouse double-click behaviour is annoyingly different compared to stock MX 19-23.

• Opening MX Package Installer triggers a password prompt.

• With no Office suite included, could Abiword and Gnumeric be included?

• App smbclient not included but is an essential tool for diagnosing Samba kerfuffles.

• MXPI no checkbox content in popular Apps for installed apps. VLC opens from toolbar. Checking it in MXPI gives a blue Install checkmark but no reinstall.

• Typing CTL-ALT-T does NOT bring up a terminal window. In MX and other distros it does.

• In the Conman app none of the details are shown when a WiFi connection is edited. All named but blank.

I'll go back to it again tomorrow. I'm not using it as a daily driver as I don't want to change anything.

Hi,

Thanks for taking a look! Just heading off to bed and will answer in more depth tomorrow,

To start..

Win + T will get you a terminal, and before you ask right-click on the 'terminology' terminal screen will get you to the settings. Ctrl Alt T is not used in Enlightenment.

smbclient is a good catch, I know very little about networking, will add in future ISO's.

As far as MXPI it should ask for a PW, it requires elevated privileges, as should 'check for updates' since it needs to run apt stuff.. MX tools are as provided by MX, I don't mess with that stuff so no idea about the checkmarks.

The apt-notifier systray Icon will sometimes show an Icon theme Icon briefly when updates are detected and then it will revert to the custom systray Icon which will reflect whether there are updates (info circle for updates available and checkmark if system is up to date).

It's an Audio Video focus and the various DAWs, Video Editors and Audio Plugins eat up a lot of space, an Office Suite is where I draw the line and is easily available from the Package Manager, Abiword has had problems for years, most people want LibreOffice and I need that space for other things on the ISO

Perhaps I should have been clearer about installed applications, like my example VLC. This is a good example of why I hesitate posting my 1st go at writing something. Usually what the world sees is the 3rd or 4th edit (or more!).

The MX Package Installer should have offered an Uninstall button, but it did not. Somehow it's awareness of the installed apps is off a bit. Gimp, Inkscape and Kdenlive all show not installed in MXPI but do open from the top toolbar.

Scrolling through Enabled Repos shows several green checks indicating apps are installed.

I'll zap my 23.2 VirtualBox and make a 23.5 install to see if any is reproducible.

AVLinux wrote: ↑Sun Mar 02, 2025 5:24 pm
- To be clear the Connman WiFi PDF is not normally needed, it's not the 'normal' way. I've only had one very old Dell laptop where I needed manual intervention otherwise for most cases clicking the Connman network Applet and checking the WiFi tickbox usually 'just works'. However I may consider Gnome Network Manager on AVL-MXe 25. Probably the PDF should be removed from the Desktop and placed elsewhere..

There is also nm-tray if you want a Qt front-end to network manager.

AVLinux wrote: ↑Sun Mar 02, 2025 5:24 pm
- To be clear the Connman WiFi PDF is not normally needed, it's not the 'normal' way. I've only had one very old Dell laptop where I needed manual intervention otherwise for most cases clicking the Connman network Applet and checking the WiFi tickbox usually 'just works'. However I may consider Gnome Network Manager on AVL-MXe 25. Probably the PDF should be removed from the Desktop and placed elsewhere..

the connman pdf helped me out a lot as on my machine, a lot of times connman doesn't see some networks again after being disconnected...

so most times I used the restart command in the PDF to restart connman, easily ctrl+c ing and ctrl+v ing

in mxlinux ho problemi di configurazione yabridge mentre con avlinux 25 non posso usare simultaneamenta wi fi ed ethernet connection ( scheda AUDIO XAIR 18)

@Luca You are on an English forum, please translate your post to English, thanks :)

in mxlinux I have problems with the yabridge configuration while with avlinux 25 I cannot use simultaneous wi fi and ethernet connection (AUDIO XAIR 18 card)

Hi,

Well, which system do you want to fix? Yabridge should work fine on MX except for one problem... Wine and yabridge are broken after Wine-Staging 0.9.21 and I believe MX now ships Wine 10.X so you will need to downgrade Wine on MX for that (I can help you).

As far as AVL and the WiFi problem you can use Menu-->Applications-->Internet-->Connman UI Setup for more detailed WiFi connections if that helps:

Hi,

Two quick questions, with possibly longer answers ;-)

1. Is the idea that an existing AVL_MXE-23.2 installation can be upgraded to AV Linux 25, or will it be a complete reinstall?

2. If a complete reinstall, what is the time frame on 25?

I have a machine on which I need to do a rather complex installation and would appreciate being able to keep it for a few years, as I will have to write documentation and train users (almost all volunteers who know nothing about Linux).

Hi,

Since AVL 25 will leap from Bookworm to Trixie it will be a full install unfortunately.. Even Ubuntu Studio has a completely borked upgrade from one Ubuntu LTS to another, if a Ubuntu team can't get this to work there is no hope for me because in that case it doesn't just involve AV Linux packages being updated it will meant the whole Debian and MX base will be updated. Even MX doesn't usually advocate upgrading from one platform to the next, they usually advise a fresh install as well.

As far as time lines... Debian Trixie being officially released and then however long it takes for MX-25 to follow suit and after that AVL-MXe 25. At this point I would guess next fall at the earliest..

OK, no problem — I didn't know you were holding out for Trixie. I'll grab the bull by the horns.

Most of the volunteers will use the machine only once every three weeks in a live performance environment, so I'll have to do a lot of customisation of the E defaults, as I can't expect them to learn a completely new paradigm on how basics work just for a few hours every three weeks.

I'll be assiduous in my documentation. Maybe it will help others.