Some minor improvement ideas for MX

[djh]

First off, I have to say that MX-15 is a near perfect distro - so a huge thanks to all who made it happen!

A couple of nice touches in MX not always found in other distros: the built-in exFAT support and the inclusion of spotify in the excellent MX Package Installer.

Now, before I settled on AntiX MX as my Linux OS of choice, I tried several other distros and inevitably there were a few things I noticed on the way which could be added to MX:

1. The best default boot loader I have seen so far is the one used in Manjaro Linux. My PC dual boots with Windows 10 and Manjaro correctly lists it as "Windows 10 (loader)" in the Grub menu whereas MX is calling it "Windows Recovery Environment (loader)". But the really nice thing about the Manjaro boot loader is that it remembers what you last booted and offers that as the default rather than always reverting to the first option. I know that non-newbies will figure out that they can fix things with the (thoughtfully included) Grub Customiser but I would suggest that "previous booted entry" should be pre-set when installing MX and that the Windows entry got right immediately.

2. The start panel after installing - What's nice in Linux Lite is that it prompts you straight away to click on a highlighted "Install Updates - Do this first" button on the Welcome panel. On first using MX I wanted to install Beyond Compare but that needed Lintian installing first, so natuarally I brought up terminal to do sudo apt-get update, upgrade, install etc. Only later I realised some of that was already available by right clicking the synaptic icon in the taskbar. I think being prompted to install updates straight after installation would be a good thing,

3. I'm getting a non-working bluetooth icon appearing in my taskbar - but I don't even have bluetooth on my PC !

4. I am seeing occasional window lockups and other weird refresh failures - very odd because my PC should be plenty powerful enough (Quad core i7, 16GB, nVidia GK106)

5. My machine has two drives, a 256GB SSD to host Windows 10 and MX Linux plus a 2TB HDD. Why am I always being asked for my root password to access the HDD and sometimes to access the Win10 partition and even some but not all USB flash sticks? Is there somewhere I can turn this unwanted check off?

But again, these are just a few gripes - overall, this is a very, very nice distro, congratulations!

[dolphin_oracle]

Nice points.

1. My windows 10 does the same thing, so +1 on that. Less sure about the "boot last OS" option.

2. This is an excellent point, and probably would fit well into the welcome screen.

3. The bluetooth manager launches even if you don't have bluetooth hardware. This can be disabled in Session & Startup. It would be nice if that was handled automatically. Or blueman set to not autostart.

4. ?? no clue.

5. I wrote a wiki article about this one, at least for internal partitions. Maybe it will help. suffice to say that its a "feature" not a "bug" in the debian world, but it can be modified. http://www.mepiscommunity.org/wiki/syst ... t-password

With the usb keys, it might depend on the particular filesystem. If you want to pursue that, start a thread dedicated to that issue.

[kmathern]

1. The best default boot loader I have seen so far is the one used in Manjaro Linux. My PC dual boots with Windows 10 and Manjaro correctly lists it as "Windows 10 (loader)" in the Grub menu whereas MX is calling it "Windows Recovery Environment (loader)".

I have Win 8.1 here. In the Grub menu the entry is "Windows Boot Manager (on /dev/sda2)", I think that's what osprober came up with. sda2 is the ESP (EFI System Partition).
Maybe Manjaro has an updated (or customized) version of osprober that more closely identifies the Windows version?
I'm not sure if it's all that important to identify the exact Windows version anyway.

[Jerry3904]

4. I am seeing occasional window lockups and other weird refresh failures - very odd because my PC should be plenty powerful enough (Quad core i7, 16GB, nVidia GK106)

Can you please post the output of

Code: Select all

inxi -G

[djh]

@dolphin_oracle
Indeed, thanks! I hadn't noticed Session & Startup. But yes, it would be better if blueman was only enabled/started if bluetooth hardware is actually detected.

@kmathern
I could live with "Windows (loader)" but "Windows Recovery Environment (loader)" is just plain clunky.

@Jerry3904
$ inxi -G
Graphics: Card: NVIDIA GK106 [GeForce GTX 650 Ti]
Display Server: X.Org 1.16.4 drivers: nouveau (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) Resolution: 1920x1200@59.95hz
GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on NVE6 GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 10.3.2

[Jerry3904]

$ inxi -G
Graphics: Card: NVIDIA GK106 [GeForce GTX 650 Ti]
Display Server: X.Org 1.16.4 drivers: nouveau (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) Resolution: 1920x1200@59.95hz
GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on NVE6 GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 10.3.2

Thanks. A number of us have had better performance from the proprietary nvidia driver which we install by using sgfxi.

[djh]

Thanks. A number of us have had better performance from the proprietary nvidia driver which we install by using sgfxi.

Thanks, that worked and I now have this:
$ inxi -G
Graphics: Card: NVIDIA GK106 [GeForce GTX 650 Ti]
Display Server: X.Org 1.16.4 driver: nvidia
Resolution: 1920x1200@59.95hz
GLX Renderer: GeForce GTX 650 Ti/PCIe/SSE2
GLX Version: 4.5.0 NVIDIA 361.28

Note: I think the guide needs updating - after running sgfxi for a second time, it came up with a prompt to "start-desktop" which I did. Stuff happened and then I was dropped back in a full screen terminal. I logged in for a third and final time as root and then manually ran "startx" which put me back into root's desktop. I rebooted, logged in as myself and all was fine with the new driver setup as above.

[Jerry3904]

I will look again, thanks. I just changed it but maybe I missed something.

[djh]

One strange thing - after doing the sgfxi stuff, my desktop reverted back to the lake side default instead of the nice black cat I had selected. Is this normal?

[entropyfoe]

During the install on MX-15, we are offered a chance to control what services are installed.
For desktop machines, I un-check the bluetooth and spam assassin.

I have not need for those services, so less installed, less chances for a security hole.