MX Linux Forum

What I mean is: is MX the new hot distro after Manjaro and Solus?

It sure seems like MX suddenly is playing in the "big leagues" with Manjaro, Mint and Ubuntu (Xubuntu?).
Maybe it's a better question if MX was the Manjaro or 2018?

It's all a matter of preference. We do not consider ourselves a big league player. At least.. -I- don't.

We're a small team with an even smaller team of builders.

I would add that being a small team does things so that they work well and big with great solidity.
MX already earned its respect in the GNU / Linux world for the well thought out and developed things.

I'm not quite certain what the real question is; but then, I'm pretty dense. :lipsrsealed: To me the safe & true response is we are neither.

I don't think you can equate the 2.

As an independent distro with its own package management system (albeit forked from pisi), Solus is very much about wanting to give their users a curated, user-friendly experience. They need to ensure that despite being a rolling distro, everything works without the user having to do due diligence before installing updates, or having to maintain their system.

Thus they don't have huge repos, nor numerous apps doing the same job. For instance, you won't find tons of different file managers in their repos. They had Nautilus file manager for Budgie desktop and that was it, until they added their Mate and Plasma releases. So now they have dolphin and Caja file managers for those other 2 DEs as well. But I think that is all. I don't think they have Nemo file manager for instance (at least that was the case the last I checked).

MX on the other hand is based on Debian, so its repos are large and sprawling. You could find a million and one applications that do a similar job, and you could install all of them on your system if you wished. You could even make package requests for yet another application doing that same task, if it wasn't found in the Debian repos.

It's a more chaotic freedom. But then, it's not a rolling distro, being based on Debian Stable, so it doesn't have to worry too much about crazy updates from upstream that break the system.

I don't know about "new hot distro". It's getting a lot of play now, in part, because it's stable and runs very fast even on older PCs. People see it's based on Debian stable, yet packages are updated quite often so they can't claim MX is just trying to put lipstick on Debian with the same old out-of-date packages.

Systemd hasn't won universal acclaim just yet, so It doesn't hurt that MX has SysV as default init, yet still has systemd available if you want to use it, instead. Nearly all of the reviews have been highly favorable, both by users and those who consider themselves to be reviewers on youtube. The negative reviews I've seen have obviously been done by fans of other distros who feel somehow threatened by the rise of MX. My favorite was a short one that simply said MX is buggy so he will stay with Ubuntu MATE or Linux Mint. I doubt he even tried it before scratching out that masterpiece.

MX is laid out well, has the incomparable MX Tools, with the MX Package Installer, test repo and Debian backports. For many people it has everything they want and need, and for some it's just what they've been looking for. No bells and whistles, wobbly things, spinny things, or other whirygigs. It just works, and works well. And, most importantly, it has an engaged team of developers and support.

I would describe the MX ecosystem as being more closely analagous to "the LMDE2 of 2019"

please, please, please, MX...
do not become a major distro (I'm not telling anybody... )
small is better if you're not trying to make money or fame

Captain Brillo wrote: Tue Jan 22, 2019 8:21 pm please, please, please, MX...
do not become a major distro (I'm not telling anybody... )
small is better if you're not trying to make money or fame

Not the goal of MX in either case. Just trying to be as good as possible and serve the users.

Not sure anything Debian Stable would be described by the Linux community at large as "hot" :) There are not many people building on Debian Stable, and even less that are doing it right like MX.

JMHO,
The only way MX has of becoming a major player is if some altruistic soul comes along and donates the untold thousands necessary to qualify for a Secure Boot key of its very own.

beardedgeek72 wrote: Tue Jan 22, 2019 6:56 am What I mean is: is MX the new hot distro after Manjaro and Solus?

It sure seems like MX suddenly is playing in the "big leagues" with Manjaro, Mint and Ubuntu (Xubuntu?).
Maybe it's a better question if MX was the Manjaro or 2018?

Come on, "new hot distro". Hot maybe new not ... Mepis (2003) was around long enough, even longer than Ubuntu (2004).

Are Solus (2015), Manjaro (2011), Mint (2006) considered "major league", based on Distrowatch ratings? At least last 2 build on either Arch or Ubuntu, which are somehow closer to being called that.

You need to be around a bit longer and have a considerable user base... Who has come close to MS, Apple, Android shares? Ubuntu had enterprise backup (SuSe, RH same) it's what helps to propel a distro to the "major" club. Do we want that, can we have that, what about freedom!?

Anyway, Linux segmentation is a major obstacle.
The first thing some guy asks even first day joins this forum is "how do I install KDE, Mate, Cinnamon"? Even better, "how do I do my own distro from MX"...

I'd really like to put the new Windowmaker on antiX or MX, see how it works and I will try, guilty!

aledie wrote: Wed Jan 23, 2019 3:04 amAnyway, Linux segmentation is a major obstacle.
The first thing some guy asks even first day joins this forum is "how do I install KDE, Mate, Cinnamon"? Even better, "how do I do my own distro from MX"...

We welcome and encourage this! We've put a lot of effort into making this as easy as possible. The live system in particular was designed to make it easy for you to make our own customized version. With various forms of persistence, live-remaster, roll back, and even snapshot, we offer a number of ways for you to easily back out of changes you don't want. Then once you've built a system you like you can use use snapshot on the live system to distribute it to others. The next step is to use our Build-iso system so you can produce your distro year after year the same way we make antiX and MX. Yes, people have done this and it is encouraged. Well, at least one person.

I'd like to see a "market place" (free of course) of antiX and MX snapshots. One key element would be a list of packages added and removed so you can see what other people are doing before you download and boot. There could be evolution, growth, and cross pollination. I think antiX and MX could benefit greatly from this. At the very worst it would be a confirmed that we already have the perfect mix of packages.

@BitJam: Ok, I see your point, maybe it is what Linux is, we do what we wish to without being forced anything upon.

By the way, I recall Slitaz had something called flavors, a script can be installed from the repos and executed the way it changes your distro to the look and setup someone else created. You can pick and install different flavors from the list approved. No iso downloads, the package manager does the job... Did we ever use a similar concept? Recall there versions different in size, DE, target group like edu, ham radio etc.

aledie wrote: Wed Jan 23, 2019 3:48 amBy the way, I recall Slitaz had something called flavors, a script can be installed from the repos and executed the way it changes your distro to the look and setup someone else created. You can pick and install different flavors from the list approved. No iso downloads, the package manager does the job... Did we ever use a similar concept? Recall there versions different in size, DE, target group like edu, ham radio etc.

Wow! That sounds really cool. AntiX has flavours but they are mostly small, medium, and large. Good starting points for making your own custom system. I think the closest thing we have to Slitaz flavors are the package installers. They are a little more fine-grained than what you describe but that may not be a bad thing.

Our cli-aptiX program is a command line version of Synaptic. It is set up with several groups of recommended packages. But once again, you get to pick and choose which packages from the group you want installed. You can pick them all or most of them or just a few. OTOH, I think our package managers can be more clever and make sure that when you want to install something, it gets installed so it works on our system. I recall some recent threads where someone says they tried to install something like Wine and it was messed up and not working. The suggestion, of course, was to undo the damage and then install it via the package installer.

10 Most Promising New Linux Distributions to Look Forward in 2019

With Mx Linux and antiX topping the list!

philotux wrote: Wed Jan 23, 2019 6:15 am 10 Most Promising New Linux Distributions to Look Forward in 2019

With Mx Linux and antiX topping the list!

Please post this in a new thread! (if it hasn't been done already)

When was Solus hot? (rhetorical question, no answer needed)

I'm the system administrator for a small school about 700 miles north of me. I'm contemplating the use of MX on the staff's desktop computers sometime in the future. About 2007 I switched all of the desktop users from Windows over to Mint. Mint was popular with the users and we had a good run. Around 2011 or so I moved everybody over to Gentoo with Gnome 2.~ desktops. I moved them into LXDE when Gnome 2 became unsustainable. That's been a good run on old P4 computers.

We started the process over a year ago of upgrading hardware and moving the users back to Mint, now 19 w/XFCE. But, over the last year as I've become increasingly familiar with MX, I'm finding it more stable and easier to manage than Mint. As enterprise users go, we're small potatoes, but I'm thinking of MX as a stable, easy to support desktop for getting work done in the real world.