I've been an MX user since Jan 2019 and am very happy with the OS. But, I'm always wondering if the grass might not be "greener on the other side of the fence". So, just for grins, I took a look around using DistroWatch to give me an idea of the most "popular" distros. And, yes, I'm aware, it's all about click count over there and not so much popularity but it's a good place to start. Each of the distros I sampled have strengths, but all are missing something when compared to MX Linux.
I have a scrap 320GB disk laying around and decided to have a bit of play:
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Model: Jmicron Corp. (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdf: 320GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags: pmbr_boot
This, then, is the disk with the various distributions installed:
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sdf 298.1G
├─sdf1 512M boot
├─sdf2 swap 16G
├─sdf3 ext4 20G Linux Mint
├─sdf4 ext4 20G Fedora
├─sdf5 ext4 20G LMDE4
├─sdf6 ext4 20G Sparky LQT
├─sdf7 ext4 20G Devuan
├─sdf8 ext4 20G SolydX
├─sdf9 ext4 20G SolydxK
├─sdf10 ext4 20G
├─sdf11 btrfs 20G openSuse
├─sdf12 ext4 20G
├─sdf13 ext4 20G
├─sdf14 ext4 15G
├─sdf15 ext4 15G
├─sdf16 ext4 15G
└─sdf17 ext4 16.6G
- Linux Mint - too close to Ubuntu for my liking. They do a good (very good) job of removing the commercial aspects of Ubuntu, but ... And, it seem a little (very little) laggy when compared to MX and a couple of the others.
- Fedora - Of all the times I've installed Fedora over the years (probably tried 5 or 6 times), I've never gotten it to install and run without issue. This latest attempt was the best of these attempts, but there was still something that just felt "off".
- LMDE4 - I've always like LMDE, it's the flavor of Debian upon which I "cut my teeth". And, to be fair, it's a really good offering - very stable, light, quick, etc. But, it's missing some of the golden goodness found in MX and it's always got the stigma of being the red-headed step-child in the LM universe. It just doesn't get the love it deserves.
- Sparky - I created the label and it should have been LXQT, but I mis-typed and I'm too lazy to go back and fix it. Didn't feel the joy and, I may have not delved into it far enough to become completely comfortable with it, but I couldn't find/install some of the tools I like (i.e., gparted, among others).
- Devuan - This is, in my opinion, still a work in process. They have a good foundation going and it's completely stable enough, but the tools and toys are still not on par with what is available in MX.
- SolydX/K - It was to this distribution I moved when I "fell out of love" with LMDE. This was back in the days when they were tracking Debian Testing and the community was active, interested, friendly, and really working the product. Make no mistake, they are still active, interested, and friendly but the development team is not what it was in the beginning and they are no longer working that almost impossible task of tracking Testing. They migrated to Debian Stable - just like most other Debian derivatives. And, they are stable. If MX were to, for some reason, be discontinued, it is to Soldyd that I would move.
- openSuse - This is the "Leap" version, their stable release. And, WOW - this is a really HUGE product. Because I know most of what I need to know about the others, it is this one that I might keep after I blow away the rest - just for exploration, experience, and learning. When compared to Debian, they do many things in a different manner and, to my mind, that's exciting.
BTW2 - I discovered that with more partitions on the disk, all disk operations take longer. And, it's not a linear function.
