MX Linux Forum

A hard and long look--much appreciated. He likes many things but finally finds too many problems and annoyances to use it for more than testing. Definitely worth a hard and long read.

https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/mx-19.html

I've not had much success with 19 on several tries at creating USBs with persistence which keep breaking, and one full installation which went tits up and left the 'puter needing a fresh install (not with 19!). I feel the name 'petito feo' would be better replaced with 'pathetic neo'. Just my opinion. Thankfully I'm informed that MX 18 will be supported until 2023 so either a better version than 19 will have emerged or I'll be so old that I won't be using computers any more!

i have read a number of this guys stuff and am skeptical about al of his comments. maybe way too picky. maybe biased. i bet if you looked at any distro or DE you will see little issues or random glitch; or some de's etc have other options more desirab;e than others. seems like there is no 100% distro ideal for any one person unless one makes his own. looking at a distro for what it has to offer and accepting what it has to offer is important. i also seem not to run into many of the issues so many people out there run into. sometimes i scratch my head and wonder what the heck this person did to et the glitches they experience. i like some Enlightenemtn and moksha stuff more than xfce and as i stated never liked xfce - yet what the team had done on mx18 and 19 which i have ran both have done a super job. i have learned that i can do different things with this or cannot do certain things with this than another can - but i try to accommodate the distro and use it for my needs or else i do not use it. sorry for the helter skelter rant and jumping around various points - but in a hurry to post due to my schedule - but wanted to hit a number of points. 18.3 was nice and so is 19. having a system that will last a few more years re: redoing it for me makes a lot of sense. so updating to 19 was crucial. also the new xfce was nice to see what that was about as well the new mx 19.

i would suggest that people take a lot of these reviews with a grain of salt or sand - whichever is smaller to you.

being critical to help the devs is one thing but just spouting out stuff that to me i have not run into as such is fuzzy.

mods/admnis feel free to delete as needed. no offense taken.

Most of his actual issues where with applications or XFCE, which he stated a few times, but not enough.

He has some things he dislikes specifically MX related, which isn’t much, but good to know.

Not too much MX can do about flaky applications and XFCE 4.14 needing things worked out.

In the end, you can’t make everyone happy with everything. But it’s not a bad review, I guess he had to end it the way he did to drive traffic and push MX to be better.

Something I agree with from the article, and why I'm loving KDE Plasma desktop after a few weeks of initially trying to love XFCE:

Now, here's the thing. Across the Linux desktop scape, among the actively developed environments, I think only Plasma has the right mix of looks and ergonomics, and suitability for fast, elegant work. This means visual consistency, menus, layouts, efficiency, and modern perks. So when you want to do the same with Xfce, which aims to be more sort of traditional, issues arise.

No question: Xfce can not match KDE for the kinds of effects enabled by a very large developer group and lots of money.

Jerry3904 wrote: Wed Dec 04, 2019 4:00 pm No question: Xfce can not match KDE for the kinds of effects enabled by a very large developer group and lots of money.

Effects are one thing and honestly I could care less. I personally would turn off compositing it it didn’t make Conkies look ugly. I’d rather remove the Conky that is rarely seen as it is.

But XFCE can meet all of his concerns about

visual consistency, menus, layouts, efficiency, and modern perks

And I think most are covered by MX.

I’ll take the XFCE Whisker menu over any fluffy menu system other DEs have any day. Simple, efficient, and elegant.

We better start working on a VR desktop soon, it’s all the rage, and it’s next on the list of desktop requirements for future reviews. Lol

I have long been a bit sceptical about some of Dedoimedo's reviews as he always has the perspective that they should work according to his own preferences out of the box and this is possibly the most egregious in that regard. Installing an OS is not a trivial thing to do and does require some learning and knowledge to accomplish and some perseverance to overcome issues with some hardware. Dedo often seems to feign naivety even though he must have done it many dozens of times.
I have never installed any OS that doesn't require some tweaking to be how I like it, sometimes many hours.
I do agree with him that Xfce is not as polished as some other DEs and this version 4.14 is still a bit raw and maybe the cause of some of his criticisms. Personally I think MX should make KDE Plasma the default DE just like it was in Mepis. Resource-wise it's at least as light as Xfce these days and functionality and looks are much better IMO.
He did give MX-19 7.75-8/10 and I agree with that, it's a solid release with a few rough edges and some of the MX tools and customisations are excellent and/or innovative. But I'd give my favourite KDE distro at least a 9.

SwampRabbit wrote: Wed Dec 04, 2019 4:26 pm
I’ll take the XFCE Whisker menu over any fluffy menu system other DEs have any day. Simple, efficient, and elegant.

We better start working on a VR desktop soon, it’s all the rage, and it’s next on the list of desktop requirements for future reviews. Lol

i agree. it is elegant. never been a fan of kde. i stayed away from it like holy water and a vampire. 2 cents.

I don't seem to be getting any reduced battery life, and tlp also seems to be working on my systems. Is this just a warning when booting with sysvinit?

Two, I noticed a system log error. TLP wasn't being used due to an error, which would explain why no power management kicked into action. I have always believed that TLP can't work around sub-optimal drivers, but if it's included, it should at least work. This can also partially explain the less-than-ideal battery life results.

Nov 26 15:49:56 tester kernel: <1052>[ 378.962211] systemd-udevd[4774]: Process '/usr/sbin/tlp auto' failed with exit code 4.

He based the "reduced battery life" and tlp not working apparently on one quick glance at the battery taskbar widget and its estimate of remaining time, as far as I can tell, and we all know that is never ever wrong.

As noted above most of the criticisms in the review are of XFCE or issues that are design decisions by the developers here.

That having been said, whenever I steer a friend toward MX, I give them a live USB that I have respun to provide what they are expecting before they see it for the first time:

1) I Move the taskbar to the bottom;
2) I Make sure that all file managers are double-click (I install nemo and make it the primary file manager)
3) I Install dockbar-x with the "Colors" or other suitable theme to give the Windows7 style in-place start icons that the reviewer (and most people) will look for.
4) I click each of the selection boxes in the "Menu" section of the Behavior tab of the Whisker properties box.

SInce I no longer use windows at all I was unaware of the samba incompatibility issue, but in the future I will make that change to my personal respins too.

I definitely believe that XFCE has a lot of life left in it and it is not desirable to move to plasma/kde, but these are steps that are easily addressable, without any criticism of the existing design choices being necessary.

Dedoimedo wrote: I believe Continuum was better put together, by ever so slight margin. Let's hope this ain't the end of a long, beautiful run. To be continued.

Some Perspective
MX-18 (Continuum) did not involve a change in the Debian release. MX-17 and MX-19 did. These Debian changes suck up a lot of our developer resources so a slight dip in usability from MX-18 to MX-19 is no surprise. In addition, we made great strides in improving the installer for most people. Problems with booting the installed system are not dominating the forums like they did for MX-18. With all the big changes we made, some usability regressions are not surprising.

Given the size of our team, the size of our job, and the size of our greatly increased user-base, I think we did a fantastic job. Sure, we have plenty of room for improvement and this review will help us improve (thank you Dedoimedo!) but despite outward appearances, we are moving forward at a rapid clip.

One area where I think we could improve a lot is having more formalized testing procedures. This boils down to better communication between the devs and the testers. ISTM our base of testers has not kept pace with our base of users. I hope that with more formalized procedures (like checklists) we will be able to make the best use of our testers and also make it easier for users to become testers. More generally, we should take a close look at how to make the most efficient use of our limited resources.

MX already has an unofficial KDE respin by Adrian--maybe we can do a little more work on it and do an official version, at least for 64-bit?

I think that since he has been using the same machines to test various iterations of MX, the fact that he now has some issues with, say, the installer when that was not the case before, should be considered seriously.

The artifacts in some panel notification icons: justified complaint since that problem isn't satisfactorily dealt with yet.

On the other hand, you also have to factor in that he is very OCD about aesthetics, so will definitely complain about those, even if it's not MX's fault (e.g. his complaints about Plank, what XFCE panel cannot do, the icon of Google Chrome not looking clear on Plank, etc).

Samba being less user-friendly now: this appears to be a general issue with Samba's current development, because Dedo has complained about it in reviews about other distros.
On the other hand, if MX could come up with the iDeviceMounter, it might be worth looking into making some tool (or just a tweak) to make Samba easier to configure and connect.

So, like all reviews, let's examine it objectively and learn from valid criticisms and just shrug our shoulders at the not-so-valid ones.

For testing protocols, perhaps Chrispop can let us know his SOP, since he is an experienced tester of MX.

A number of his complaints/problems have also been posted on this forum by others since MX-19 was released.
He is not the only one to complain about the Debian* Thunar single click default being retained in MX, it was also a very common complaint on Distrowatch when it was reviewed there.

*it may be the Xfce4 default, I have only used Debian and derivatives of it, my distro hopping is more about finding one I like than sampling all of them.

jeffreyC wrote: Thu Dec 05, 2019 12:25 am A number of his complaints/problems have also been posted on this forum by others since MX-19 was released.
He is not the only one to complain about the Debian* Thunar single click default being retained in MX, it was also a very common complaint on Distrowatch when it was reviewed there.

*it may be the Xfce4 default, I have only used Debian and derivatives of it, my distro hopping is more about finding one I like than sampling all of them.

Maybe we should do some polls, not ones that end super quick either.

Honestly, the single click thing might cause a stir by changing it to double click. Its not like its super hard to change it to whatever someone wants though so its a 50/50.

BitJam wrote: Wed Dec 04, 2019 10:42 pm
MX-18 (Continuum) did not involve a change in the Debian release. MX-17 and MX-19 did. These Debian changes suck up a lot of our developer resources so a slight dip in usability from MX-18 to MX-19 is no surprise.

I wonder - why did you decide to upgrade xfce version together with Debian version, since Debian changes alone suck up so many developer resources? This could have been an incremental process. For example, keeping xfce4.14 in MX test repo till the next point release of MX. (??)

One area where I think we could improve a lot is having more formalized testing procedures.

From my limited perspective, I agree.

I would in fairness add that people seem more forgiving of dolphin file manager in KDE/Plasma being single click, than of any other file manager in other DEs doing the same thing.

Because from what I can recall, dolphin has been by default single click since forever - or at least since I first used Mepis (KDE4) around 2006/2007. And I'm currently still using Plasma (and thus dolphin) in Neon and Sabayon, where Plasma is kept pretty vanilla.

@asqwerth, jeez, when I saw the topic of this thread "Dedoimedo: the end of a long, beautiful run?".

I thought he had died, or, at the least he had shut down his web site!

It was only notsheet about a distro! lol (censorship sucks)

I'm much happier now. :)

Now, I'll be quiet...

I had installed Plasma on MX-19 running in a VM this morning, then logged out and selected it as my default DE. It just now took me 15 minutes to find out where to disable single-clicking to open stuff. It's not an option within Dolphin anymore, it's a system-wide setting. What I wonder is, how do people who prefer single-clicks accomplish common tasks such as selecting multiple files?

It's funny, but up until two years ago I panned any distro that didn't come in a KDE/Plasma version. Now that I've gotten used to Xfce I can't stand all the bling, gewgaws and floopydoopies. It reminds me of Windows before I turn off all those animations and junk, which along with changing the theme and menu to Classic style was one of the first things I always did. If that's what Dedo prefers, good on him. Some of us prefer an OS that stays in the background and lets us get things done instead of trying to entertain us with unessential eye candy.

That being said, he raised several very valid points about MX-19: the known glitch in the panel's notification area that some people have that shows artifacts of another icon, the fact that samba and bluetooth connectivity could be easier. Some of the things he complained about are rather odd though: the plank docker? Come on, that's an add-on. It doesn't ship with MX. If he's going to review distros he should stick with what comes with 'em, not with things he's installed. If he wants to do that he could have easily installed and logged in with Plasma, then no more complaints that MX looks "so '90s." (It's not called patito feo for nothing.)

I suspect that he wrote what he did partially due to having a deadline to make. It's partially clickbait. He should know by now that every major version release of any OS is going to have a few bugs during the first couple of months or so. That's why the wise hold off on upgrading to the latest versions until after the first dot-release (or the first service pack in the case of Windows.)

komer wrote: Thu Dec 05, 2019 1:46 amI wonder - why did you decide to upgrade xfce version together with Debian version, since Debian changes alone suck up so many developer resources? This could have been an incremental process. For example, keeping xfce4.14 in MX test repo till the next point release of MX. (??)

Just to be clear, that wasn't my decision. I remember conversations about it but I did not pay attention to them. I'm not saying it was a bad decision, just saying it wasn't mine.

I imagine there was probably a clamor for it and after testing it seemed good enough or the benefits seemed to outweigh the detriments. And that could very well be true. Our "about" page used to describe one thing that makes us different from many other distros. Our "thing" is we port foreign packages and backport unstable packages to Debian stable in our community repo. We have a forum for it: Package Requests / Status. So it's in our nature to be more cutting-edge than Debian stable. That's what we do.

We started out as a small distro. Just a few years ago (2016, I believe) we were hoping to break into the top 20 at DistroWatch. Now we are famous for being famous and our very small dev team is, in some ways, struggling to keep up with all the new input from our greatly expanded user base. In addition, there could be a psychological factor that more perfection and polish is expected from us because we are now so popular. I could give you some very specific examples of this. For years I said we were blessed by our relative obscurity because it gave us a chance to develop our systems and work out the kinks without being overwhelmed by user input. IMHO, we've had more of a struggle with MX-18 and MX-19 due to our higher profile and greater popularity.

Yet another way to see it is that, especially with our antiX roots, we've been a very R&D oriented shop. There was often a frantic rush and Herculean efforts to add finishing touches and finishing features to our releases. We went from conception of the distro to the first release (MX-14) in just a few months! That's insanely fast. In some ways our beta-testing is more like alpha-testing (in terms of the number of people) so there is now a huge jump in users between beta and the final release. With our larger user base, we may need to switch to be a more production oriented shop. The main difference between production and R&D is the quality control step which is what I was talking about with more formalized testing. The downside of becoming a production oriented shop is we become less nimble. Changes will need to go through a quality control phase before they're released. I don't know exactly how this will play out.

If you ignore the XFCE and app stuff, it's a pretty good review - although it does remind me of something that occurred to me when 19 was released...

I was surprised how early the release date was, especially considering the new Debian base plus a new XFCE version. IIRC, didn't December used to be the month for major releases? And if so, would an extra month of development/testing made any difference to any of the complaints in the review? (I suspect not)

I used to enjoy reading his reviews but eventually felt that by spending superficial amounts of time with distros, those reviews obviously aren't the same as reviews written by someone with hands-on long-term professional working experience. With that said ...

... I've experienced strictly snapshot and iso creation problems with MX 19 until just a couple of days ago. Finally, for the first time in a couple of months, a snapshot was created properly which was then possible to be installed on two other laptops (one of them 14 years old with 1 GB of RAM) without presenting me a black GRUB> screen. For awhile there, there was something wrong with either the snapshot creation (which actually worked) or the live .iso from the snapshot creation (which failed strictly during boot, afterwards).

Aside from that I believe that MX 19 is the nicest, most polished MX yet. We're not living in an age of strictly "power & performance" anymore. A lot of people like to actually feel good about what they're seeing and doing on a machine while having to look at it 5+ days out of the week for 8+ hours out of the day. There's absolutely nothing wrong with combining power, speed, performance, and attractiveness. At this very moment, the only MX Linux "gripe" (a ridiculous one I'm sure) that I have is with the dark themes. I've been looking for that perfect dark theme for the past couple of years now. The best one out there (IMO) is Blackmate by the developers of the Mate desktop. Works on MX 19 too. It's just a tad too light in a couple of places though, but aside from that it's perfect.
So aside from superficial stuff, I'm extremely pleased with MX 19 and feel that the developers did a magnificant job. :)
Dedoimedo also did a magnificant job, considering the little amount of time that was spent on a review.

PS: If you look at the number 1 slot on distrowatch for the past 12 months, that speaks for itself as well.

.

ChrisUK wrote: Thu Dec 05, 2019 3:27 amI was surprised how early the release date was, especially considering the new Debian base plus a new XFCE version. IIRC, didn't December used to be the month for major releases?

Yes, that was partly/mainly because we tried to release antiX before we released MX due to the developer overlap and initially the overlap of having the same lead dev for both distros. We developed them in parallel this year which might have put a strain on devs who work on both.

And if so, would an extra month of development/testing made any difference to any of the complaints in the review? (I suspect not)

TBH, I think we were getting diminishing returns from our small but extremely dedicated group of testers. I discuss the reasons for this and a possible solution in my post above yours. TL;DR: we have a very low ratio of beta-testers to users.

I agree with you it's a good review. And honest and useful. Dedoimedo's reviews have always been extremely useful.

if MX has gnarly bugs, i haven't managed to find any

suffice to say, i absolutely love this distro and wish i had found it earlier ... after sticking it on 4 laptops without hitch, i am on the verge of becoming evangelical about it

Regarding XFCE 4.14, I personally didn't have any objections to introducing it in MX19 myself.

I'd been on the gtk3, pre-4.14 version on Manjaro for quite some time, as it slowly developed and rolled towards 4.14-final. And on another Manjaro install, I was on gtk2 XFCE 4.12 until 4.14 went final, at which point an update just rolled Manjaro over to 4.14 automatically.

In both installs, 4.14 seemed ok and very usable to me, although my use case is admittedly very simple and run of the mill. I also didn't have icon-artifact issues in the panel in Manjaro**. So this was and still is a puzzling issue to me.

As for whether Dedo's reviews are clickbait, I don't think so. He is just very fixated on aesthetics, and also likes to review distros from the viewpoint of a newcomer who would not know how to use the command line or edit config files in order to get things to work. If he has to resort to that to get something to work, that is a minus point in his review. He can also be overly dramatic in his prose at times. Accept the relevant stuff and don't bother about the rest.


** NB. although Manjaro has a different update notification icon problem even now, namely that the tooltip for the update icon shows up below the icon and panel, so if you place the panel horizontally on the bottom edge, the tooltip message can't be seen since it's cut off by the bottom of your screen. It's fine if your panel is at the top.

BitJam wrote: Wed Dec 04, 2019 10:42 pm One area where I think we could improve a lot is having more formalized testing procedures. This boils down to better communication between the devs and the testers. ISTM our base of testers has not kept pace with our base of users. I hope that with more formalized procedures (like checklists) we will be able to make the best use of our testers and also make it easier for users to become testers.

Very much agree.
Do you think of improvements inside the forum?

Dedoimedo also did a magnificent job, considering the little amount of time that was spent on a review.

Yeah, that's the point. Very few reviewers actually take the time to look carefully at the distro before popping off. This review must have taken Dedo many, many hours and I know I speak for the MX Devs in saying we are grateful for that careful attention.

He always gives us a lot to think about.

The bottom line for me is that the review is very useful. Consider if Dedoimedo was a beta tester. The issues he raised would be evaluated by the devs and solutions pursued, Obviously it is a review on a release but the same process can be pursued. The general opinion of the devs that I gather from this thread is that they see this as another opportunity to make improvements not only in MX as released but in the release testing process as well.

JayM wrote: Thu Dec 05, 2019 3:14 am I had installed Plasma on MX-19 running in a VM this morning, then logged out and selected it as my default DE. It just now took me 15 minutes to find out where to disable single-clicking to open stuff. It's not an option within Dolphin anymore, it's a system-wide setting. What I wonder is, how do people who prefer single-clicks accomplish common tasks such as selecting multiple files?

I'm a long-time single clicker and I can think of at least 3 way to select multiple files in Dolphin. PM me if you want to know more, it's drifting too far OT for this thread.

richb wrote: Thu Dec 05, 2019 6:01 am The bottom line for me is that the review is very useful. Consider if Dedoimedo was a beta tester. The issues he raised would be evaluated by the devs and solutions pursued, Obviously it is a review on a release but the same process can be pursued. The general opinion of the devs that I gather from this thread is that they see this as another opportunity to make improvements not only in MX as released but in the release testing process as well.

I think that you have a really clear perspective on this richb.

Critics are useful...In fact, his distance/remove from the day-to-day turmoil of our development process is what makes his POV particularly useful.

We see how hard it is to create the product...he just looks at the end result. In the end, we can't do that (on our own) without removing ourselves entirely from the process of development/creation.

I'm sure there is criticism that the devs need to address (and have been already doing). Dedoimedo does love his drama though.

He concludes: I believe Continuum was better put together, by ever so slight margin.

But leaps to this in the following sentence: Let's hope this ain't the end of a long, beautiful run.

i read his 17 reviews and he loved it and maybe rated 9.5???? out of 10? then 18 went down and he said mx went backwards as such - my words. rating less, and now this is even worse of a rating.

i never ran virtual and never cared to try. i do not run live usb either; but i run live installed on my machine and use it everyday. and in my experience both 18.3 when i came to mx and now 19 have been excellent. I am actually very impressed at the work the team has done!!! and i USE my laptops and rely on them for many things. the couple of questions i had was being new - the couple of issues were fixed and the 2 may have been an anomaly. as a USER and DAILY - my opinion is that his comments - not all - are rather sketchy and over the top. I am not a geek - wish i was but i got it to run on 4 systems. 2 thinkpads, a dell inspiron and and old macbook white plastic model.

A long time ago as a fan of MX I requested Dedoimedo review it. his first review caused quite a kerfluffle here and I was mortified ; BUT the Devs here took his criticism and used it to make MX better. later reviews were complimentary and he loved the improvements. I think his latest review just points out some things he sees as regressions. he does like to be dramatic at times but overall I think he likes MX and wants it to succeed. I think the MX team is very responsive.

Stevo wrote: Wed Dec 04, 2019 10:45 pm MX already has an unofficial KDE respin by Adrian--maybe we can do a little more work on it and do an official version, at least for 64-bit?

hear, hear

After reading the link.

My take away?

The dude quit smoking weed when testing which we all know makes one irritable.

that's funny.

Let's hope this ain't the end of a long, beautiful run

for Dedoimedo.

Dedoimedo works for Canonical now, selling Snaps.

His recent talk seems a little awkward, because it's quite obvious we can't be friends when Snaps depend on:
systemd
Canonical Store
automatic updates/system backdoor

I think Dedoimedo is great, it's just that when money enters the picture there are always conflicts.

Igor Ljubuncic is a physicist by vocation and a Linux geek by profession. He works as a developer advocate at Canonical, and comes with many years of experience in the industry, including medical, high-performance computing, data center, cloud, and hosting fields. To date, Igor’s portfolio includes 15 patents, 16 books, several open-source projects, numerous articles published in leading journals and magazines, and presentations at prestigious international conferences like LinuxCon, CloudOpen, OpenStack days, IEEE events, and others. In his free time, Igor writes car reviews, fantasy novels and manages his award-winning blog.

https://conf.linuxappsummit.org/en/LAS2 ... peakers/23

Why can't we all be friends?
Bridging the gap between the developer and the user - with snaps

"Developers just wanna have fun." --Tuxi Linuxer

Making an app isn't easy. Making a distro isn't a walk in the park, either. When you combine the two, things become really complex. And then, you add users to the mix, and it's chaos. We believe that strong, productive communication between developers and consumers of their software is essential to a successful and vibrant ecosystem. Our attempt to bridge the gap between the two sides is through snaps.

Snaps are confined, standalone Linux applications bundled with all the necessary dependencies to run independently. They are designed to simplify development and deployment of software, and make it easier for users to discover applications. This presentation unveils the boffinry behind snaps. It introduces and highlights the steps needed to package applications as snaps, with focus on KDE software, including concepts like the build snap, content snap and the KDE extension. By moving all the cruft behind the scenes, now it only takes a simple recipe to build KDE software with speed and ease.

Beyond the nuts and bolts, this session also elaborates on the relationship between developers and users, on the attempt to simplify software distribution and packaging, and the desire to make the Linux software accessible to the widest possible audience. The audience will also learn about the Snap Store, badges, card, metrics, and other tools designed to help both developers - and users - just have fun.

https://conf.linuxappsummit.org/en/LAS2 ... /events/12

ForWIW wrote: Thu Dec 05, 2019 3:11 pm Sorry, Dedo does NOT work for Canonical ...

Let me quote again:

Igor Ljubuncic is a physicist by vocation and a Linux geek by profession. He works as a developer advocate at Canonical, and comes with many years of experience in the industry, including medical, high-performance computing, data center, cloud, and hosting fields.

I think you got this one wrong:

ForWIW wrote: Thu Dec 05, 2019 3:11 pm The other link provided is a summary of the contents of a specific presentation of which Dedo is a participant (the description is NOT Dedo's words, but the presenter"s)

Dedoimedo IS the presenter.

ForWIW wrote: Thu Dec 05, 2019 3:11 pm Folks need to take a deep breath and be more circumspect before critiquing someone and spreading disinformation

That's good advice and I fully agree.

Man has this thread gotten lost in the swamp. Too bad.

The Devs have put together a spreadsheet of the many issues he raises and are reviewing it. At first glance it's quite a hodgepodge and we're trying to sort it out ATM.

ForWIW wrote: Thu Dec 05, 2019 5:50 pm but attempting to denigrate the reviewer adds NOTHING

Dedoimedo does work for Canonical and he does promote Snaps. I don't understand why you are upset. This doesn't make Dedoimedo a bad person. It's just something that people should be aware of. And honestly I don't think too many people are aware of that.

I don't think Dedoimedo would be offended in the slightest (by facts). He seems to be a chill person. Yes, let's get back on topic...

Not bad, but like I've seen before:
He is madly in love with KDE/Plasma, so that skews much of the review. With KDE you can endlessly tweak to your heart's content. Xfce can be tweaked, but it doesn't have 2-3 settings to do the same thing, and does not feel as hyper-adaptive as KDE/Plasma.
I think he really does like MX 19, he is just not madly in love with it like his favorite Plasma distros.
Would also add that MX 18 does feel more polished and mature, and it should as it has been around much longer than MX 19. Give MX 19 another year or so and it will feel more polished and mature as well.

Right. No question that Xfce 4.14 presented us with significant challenges.

No problem, mistakes get made (but luckily never by me...). Let's all concentrate on making lemonade instead of cursing the lemons.

rokytnji.1 wrote: Thu Dec 05, 2019 1:04 pm After reading the link.

My take away?

The dude quit smoking weed when testing which we all know makes one irritable.

Hehe.. Comment of the year. As I said earlier I think he wants MX to succeed. but this comment is

Absolutely. In its simplest form, we create a Wiki entry that perhaps gives a suggested template, and everybody just uses the Comments (no sign in, no coding) to record the info.

But there are better ways...grouped by manufacturer would be a good start.

Let me consult with our webmaster on this, thanks. I'll start a new thread when ready--great question BTW.

I'll offer a few points:

1. The Deodo reviewer is confused. Why?

He is trying to review MX Linux from 3 different perspectives:
A newbie - (which he is not)
A techie - (comparing his experience older MX versions )
A designer - with very subjective preferences.

NEWBIE:
If you want to know what a newbie thinks, ask a newbie. Ask me and the many others who have identified themselves as new posters to MX Linux on the forum.
You'll get a completely different response. He doesn't represent my views (nor should he). He is tainted by his bias of 'thinking to know what new users want'.

When I installed MX Linux I was looking for 1/: Stability, 2/: helpful forum for assistance 3/: some customization (but not much).

I just want a system that works and is stable. I remember an MX Linux poster (an older person I think) mentioned this well when he said 'most users don't want something they have to constantly deal with the technical". He's right. If you're targeting the new users, then this should be MX's focus.

other examples:
On Thunar:
'You get single-click in Thunar by default, and this can be confusing and annoying". (to whom?? to a newbie? I am a new user and accept this as a feature, something to learn, pretty simple.')

_> it simply isn't flexible enough for everyday use. You can't reorder the sidebar, and those Devices at the very top are useless." (again, to whom? I didn't want to re-order the sidebar and the device names help me when a USB is plugged in.)

'more accessible to people outside the circle of diehard penguin-loving geeks' (which he was using it as in the past)
but then says: " some polish that can be done here, as we don't want newbs failing themselves with a nerdy Web interface."

So he is saying: MX has better clean up some points or there is danger for newbies. This can't be further from my experience.
I enjoy the interface but more importantly if I can't figure something out - I have the resource of the forum to help. (see my points above).


Techie:
Then there are some hard-wired technical people on this board who want to get down to the kernel with changes. If you're targeting the deep level techie, then this should be your focus.

From a technie perspective he is contradictory and mentions ridiculous points without recognizing the trade-off:

First: '550 MB of RAM, which is 150 MB more than MX-18'
Then: 'I do like MX Linux, and it is improving in many aspects.'

More features and improvements required more MB. It is a circular statement ' add more features (good) but the size has increased (bad), yet they are interdependent.


Designer:
I almost laughed when he said: " the device serial in some cases, which feels ugly." Ugly to whom? to a new user? to a former mac user? to a graphic designer?
Certainly not to me. This is the most subjective area which 10 different people will have 12 different opinions.

If you're taregting complete aesthetics, this will require focus on design.

Here is the problem:
Reading the over-blown reaction to the review, the problem is MX is reacting, versus acting. This is exemplified by BitJam's own words;

[i....]our very small dev team is, in some ways, struggling to keep up with all the new input from our greatly expanded user base. In addition, there could be a psychological factor that more perfection and polish is expected from us without being overwhelmed by user input. ....[/i]

Any organization cannot be all things to all people. That means every feature that every single person wants does NOT have to be considered as each person has finite resources, time, energy, opportunities, etc.

If you try this approach of everything, you'll be scattered and running from one fire to the next trying to appease everyone. That is what BitJam is saying.

By association, if you read AntiX, it's focus is on one thing: being a light distro requiring low resources. (at least that was my take). Mr. Dolphin Oracle excludes features based on this, not adding every item that every user asks for because he knows his vision for AntiX.

I'm not saying MX Linux doesn't, but I believe a bit more focus is required on what the developers want MX Linux to be.
Reading BitJam's point then, I believe MX Linux has to ask themselves 'who and what is the priority right now'?

So when someone says it doesn't have this feature or that, you can say ' that's not our focus".
example: Elementary mimics a mac user's experience, and the focus is on a design experience.


My Point:
Perhaps the developers can have a powwow and determine what the priorities are and for whom.
Once that is finalized, one-off reviews that are inconsistent and subjective will not drive the next decision phase - that should come from within.

Again, I appreciate the stability of MX Linux and the developers' time and effort.
However, developers that are overwhelmed and racing to catch up to please everyone is not sustainable.

One thing Dedeo's review might have caused is a pause to evaluate what's important, and that's not a bad thing.

Thanks for your efforts.

p.s.
.... and I would be remiss if I didn't point out the rich irony of his seeking to make money from reviews from 'free and open software', from which thousands of hours of volunteer time are committed.

https://www.dedoimedo.com/advertise-new.html

Says more about the person that any review ever could.

man that is very nice!!!!

And very wrong:

--Mr Dolphin Oracle is not the lead developer of antiX, that would be anticapitalista
--the MX Devs are not confused about concept and audience, still following founding principles laid down in 2014
--the overreactions in this thread are by users, not developers

Yeri wrote: Fri Dec 06, 2019 3:14 pm Here is the problem:
Reading the over-blown reaction to the review, the problem is MX is reacting, versus acting. This is exemplified by BitJam's own words;

[i....]our very small dev team is, in some ways, struggling to keep up with all the new input from our greatly expanded user base. In addition, there could be a psychological factor that more perfection and polish is expected from us without being overwhelmed by user input. ....[/i]

Any organization cannot be all things to all people. That means every feature that every single person wants does NOT have to be considered as each person has finite resources, time, energy, opportunities, etc.

If you try this approach of everything, you'll be scattered and running from one fire to the next trying to appease everyone. That is what BitJam is saying.

No, I'm saying we are a small dev team, and we (or some of us) are struggling to keep up with all of the new input and higher expectations due to our new-found success. The changes I was discussing will probably affect me more than most of the other developers. We are like a gangly teenager who has had a sudden growth spurt. We have a history of quickly responding to input from users and reviewers. IMO this quick response to complaints is one of our great strengths. I hope we can keep it up despite the enlarged user-base.

The unfriendliness that erupted in this thread is a good example of gangly growth. We've been known for having kind, friendly, useful forums. Eadwine Rose suggests we ask ourselves before posting: is it KNIT?

Is it Kind?
Is it Necessary?
Is it Informative?
Is it True?

If the ratio of devs to users in the forums is dropping then we may need to make some extra effort to keep the forums as friendly as they've been in the past. This would not be a change in focus but rather a response to maintain our focus in changing circumstances. I completely agree with Jerry, we are certainly not trying to be all things to all people. Our focus has not changed even though our challenge has. Despite the addition of some fantastic devs over the past few years, our ratio of devs to users is falling. This is the new challenge we face.

Hi
I re-read my post. Don't see anything 'unkind', if the reference by Bitjam was that.
It was fact-based and using the reviewer's own words. Not sure if there is an issue with calling out inconsistencies. Debate is healthy.
I found his review muddled and without focus, that opinion is as valid (and possibly erroneous) as his I suppose.

Jerry3904 wrote: Fri Dec 06, 2019 4:08 pm -the MX Devs are not confused about concept and audience, still following founding principles laid down in 2014
-

I'd be interested to know what the precise mission is of MX Linux if you have it. As a newbie you've done a wonderful job selling the vision to me, intended or not. As I said, stability and assistance were key. I could recommend MX Linux to anyone I know.

Jerry3904 wrote: Fri Dec 06, 2019 4:08 pm the overreactions in this thread are by users, not developers
-

Actually, this is now page 7 from one small MX review, reactions from 3 developer's and many users. I never heard of this guy before someone posted his review link, so in the act of publishing it in a forum rather than on the testimonial page is asking for a reaction from the many many users who really like MX Linux.

I just don't get why this guy's review receives so much attention when it's not even a qualified and new users aren't ever contacted. Just doesn't make sense.
That being said, I'd be happy to help out with creating some feedback effort to soliciting options from new users to pass them to the development team.

BitJam wrote: Fri Dec 06, 2019 5:01 pm IMO this quick response to complaints is one of our great strengths.

Didn't mean to misinterpret your words BitJam. No doubt you are able to respond quickly, my point is priorities. The way you phrased it sounded like MX is trying to meet the demand of every nitpicker (of which each one of us is at some point), however, it should not be at the expense of what MX stands for or the focus is on.

Anyway, didn't mean to stir the hive but if something should be called out it should raised.
Thanks again.

Jerry3904 wrote: Fri Dec 06, 2019 4:08 pm And very wrong:
-........ is not the lead developer of antiX, that would be anticapitalista

Never heard of this person, it always Mr. Dolphin Oracle I see on the vides. But thank him as well. AntiX is a great distribution.

Yeri wrote: Fri Dec 06, 2019 5:42 pmI re-read my post. Don't see anything 'unkind', if the reference by Bitjam was that.

I'm sorry I was so unclear that I caused you to re-read your post. I didn't mean to imply your post I replied to was unkind. Again, I meant what I said. I see the unkindness displayed in this thread as an example of our growing pains.

BTW: not only is anticapitalista the lead developer of antiX Linux, he was also the original lead developer of MX Linux. IIRC we had recently completed the automated build system for antiX called Build-iso. The lead Mepis dev had resigned leaving behind a very active and friendly developer community. IIRC, MX Linux was the brainchild of Jerry but anticapitalista stepped up and used the antiX build system and antiX live system to create MX Linux along with all the great devs from Mepis.

Dolphin_oracle was doing antiX videos before MX Linux existed. I believe I had suggested someone start doing videos but I don't know if dolphin even saw that suggestion. Perhaps great minds were thinking alike. It's unusual to have a lead dev also do instructional YouTube videos but I guess we are all a bit unusual here. You don't have to be unusual to work here, but it helps. This is really our core strength. We have a fairly (or extremely) small group of very talented and hard working devs who, for the most part, get along and work well together without a lot of bureaucracy. It's quite an amazing thing. Like an old Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland movie about people banding together to create an amateur backyard musical.