MX-14 beta 2

[uncle mark]

Have you tried MX-14 on that Chromebook? If so, how is it running compared to Ubuntu crouton Xfce.

I would like to try it, but I don't know of any chroot for it besides Debian and Ubuntu. Not sure what would be involved in someone creating a MX chroot. It might be worth considering in the near future as Chromebook sales are taking off. I have to think MX would fly on my Chromebook, as would AntiX.
Here is some info about Crouton:
https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton

I've been looking for an excuse to buy a Chromebook. If you guys could come up with an MX that worked like Crouton, that would put me over the edge.

[golden45]

Wow xfce beta 2 which installed without any problems -- great system.I have used meta package installer to install
Icewm
mate
kde ststem
lxde
gnome
All of these systems which are available after installing them using xfce beta 2 - you can logout and choosing which system to run from the login menu which one you want to use .you can run different systems at your will.
Thanks anticapitalista for the meta package installer this allows anybody to try different systems and try them as they want by log out and login choosing what they want to run.

[entropyfoe]

I was not able to boot the first beta on the test system.

(A7n8X MB, Athlon XP 2500 (1.8GHz single core), 3G RAM.
The machine is of early windows XP vintage, a good target population for such a medium weight operating system.
For me that is a key divider, modern systems are dual core or more.
Older single core systems need more efficient software, and hopefull enough RAM.

I did not try patching beta1.

The second beta waas (13.98) downloaded, verified md5, verified burn, and booted.
Seemed to hang, black screen with the white bar where the panel would go.

CNTL ALT backspace, (? what else) and up popped a log in
logged in as demo, started browsing the file system with Thunar, a Win XP hard drive,
and the system locked, for minutes not reacting to any mouse click anywhere on the screen, couldnt open a terminal, nothing

ctl-alt-sysrq REISUB

Rebooted
(seems to load slowly, but it is older hardware)
Everything fine, logged in as demo.

I will do further testing as I recall my earlier xfce usages.

So far looks good, not sure about that first boot, maybe I was impatient and should have waited longer?
I browsed the same drive again, and did not lock up.

[muskt]

My desktop is relatively speedy.
I7-930
6G Ram
Nvidia GTX550TI
WD Velociraptor 320G 10000RPM Drive (for this distro).

I have a multi-boot system, and starting from scratch probably wouldn't be fair.
So, I started timing from the GRUB prompt when I selected MX-14.
I entered the password as quickly as possible.
I also have a 5 second delay in my Conky.

From the beginning to the time Conky was on was 53 seconds.

I do not know if that is fast or not--seems pretty speedy to me.

Edit: Hmmmmmmm! I just logged out and rebooted into a "mature" install of Win 7 and it took 13 seconds.

Edit #2--Big dummy--Win7 is on an SSD. Sorry 'bout that.


Jerry in Anchorage

[BitJam]

So far looks good, not sure about that first boot, maybe I was impatient and should have waited longer?.

For me it seems to take forever for the XFCE desktop to appear. I'm hoping this is something we can improve before the final release. From my experience I think you just needed to wait more. OTOH I don't think it is good for users to have to wait so long to get to the desktop. Running in VirtualBox, it takes 15 seconds between when it switches from vt1 until I get a desktop background. The whole process takes about 30 seconds.

Maybe I'm spoiled. My development system (with an ssd but only a scsi-2 bus) boots in 15 seconds.

BTW: you can get the seconds between when the machine booted and when a process started with this command:

Code: Select all

cut -d" " -f22 /proc/XXXX/stat

where XXX is the process ID. If you use "self" then you will get the time the cut command started. If you use "$$" then you will get the time the shell you are in started. The times are displayed in hundredths of a second so something that started 30 seconds after the machine booted would show "3000".

I poked around a little and most of the XFCE processes started within 15 seconds of boot but for some reason it takes another 15 seconds before I see the desktop bg image.

[m_pav]

This is a good time maybe to remind people that Alt-F5 is mapped to the screenshooter (see QuickStart).

Why are we mapping the screenshooter to this key combo when almost every system I have ever encountered has its screenshot tool mapped to the purpose built PrtSc key I have seen on every keyboard since I started with computers in 1995.

In such a move, I fear we doing the equivalent of trying to reinvent the wheel. Laptops have started coming out with a dedicated PrtSc button, my 2 laptops both have one as does our reception PC at work and our public internet terminal, my wifes Logitech Wireless Desktop 520 has a dedicated PrtSc key and I use mine almost every day. I'd be loathe to have to replace it with anything else.

[Gaer Boy]

+1. Even my old netbook has a PrtSc key.

[malspa]

Workaround to get a Screenshot button on the panel:

I went to Panel Preferences > Items tab and added a launcher (from the top of the "Add New Items" window). From the Items tab, selected the launcher and clicked the "Edit the currently selected item" button. In the next window, clicked the "Add one or more existing items to the launcher" button, selected "Screenshot," clicked the "Add" button.

Not the quickest way to go about it, but this Screenshooter launcher works.

[Jerry3904]

This is a good time maybe to remind people that Alt-F5 is mapped to the screenshooter (see QuickStart).

Why are we mapping the screenshooter to this key combo when almost every system I have ever encountered has its screenshot tool mapped to the purpose built PrtSc key I have seen on every keyboard since I started with computers in 1995.

In such a move, I fear we doing the equivalent of trying to reinvent the wheel. Laptops have started coming out with a dedicated PrtSc button, my 2 laptops both have one as does our reception PC at work and our public internet terminal, my wifes Logitech Wireless Desktop 520 has a dedicated PrtSc key and I use mine almost every day. I'd be loathe to have to replace it with anything else.

I use screenshooter with a keystroke because I am often doing captures with something open that will close if I click somewhere else, and b/c screenshooter allows for a rectangle to be drawn, saving me a crop step, and--in the case of my AAO722 laptop, the PrtSc doesn't seem to work.

[Gaer Boy]

I haven't noticed much feedback about grub-customizer. I used it early on to change the default menu item, which was fine. Now I tried to change the appearance slightly - the default text is a bit cramped.

Careful - the Appearance settings make a great sledgehammer! Taking heed of the warnings, I cautiously tried increasing the point size by 1. This completely corrupted the grub screen - double-spaced text, character-drawn borders and a distorted graphic background. A number of attempts failed to revert to original settings, so I will have to repair grub. It's sort of usable at the moment, so no priority.