Should I switch to MX?
Posted: Thu Dec 24, 2020 7:55 pm
I started using Linux full time in 2011, after the second time my Windows XP became infected with FBI Moneypak (budget computing -- live antivirus was too much of a performance hit).
I started with MEPIS 11, chosen mainly because it had a similar interface to Windows 95/98/XP Classic. Over the intervening years, I've used AntiX (don't recall the version, but it was 2011-2014 time frame) because my second desktop machine was too slow to handle a heavier distro, then in 2014 I switch the main machine to Kubuntu 14.04, and in 2017 I installed Ubuntu Mate 16.04 -- which I'm still riding, but the poor thing is just about dead (EOL in four months).
Over that time, I've been somewhat remiss in not spending hundreds of hours reading man pages, trying to learn hundreds of commands with many thousands of options and switches -- with the result that my level of confidence at the command line is limited. I'm not a CLI newbie; I used DOS 3.31 for three years before Windows 3 dropped -- but that DOS had fewer than 20% of the number of commands a modern Linux does, and those commands were generally simpler in terms of fewer options.
So now, every time I look for a solution to a problem, the answer is "install Ubuntu 20.04 and see if that fixes it." Problem is, I'm really, REALLY tired of installing fresh, and to a large extent learning a new system, ever two to five years (and yes, I'd have had the same problem with Windows -- since I jumped on Linux, there have been four versions of Windows with three significant changes in interface).
What I'm looking for is a system in which uprades are a more gradual process. "Rolling" seems like what I want -- but the only rolling systems in Debian are bleeding-edge, based on Testing or Unstable repos, and this isn't a hobby system; it's my production machine (and my laptop, which will get the same OS as the desktop, doesn't get used a huge number of hours in a year).
I was just referred here from the Antix forums, where I'd gone because I read that Antix was rolling-Stable (it's not, and never has been; instead, it had, more than a decade ago, an upgrade script that probably never worked any better than Ubuntu's -- which starts, as its very first operation, by disabling all third-part repos and ppas). The suggestion was that I ask here about reducing the pain of version upgrades.
All I really want is to not have to spend a weekend fighting with my computer unless I'm making a major hardware rebuild (and my hardware is mostly fine -- video card is a little out of date, but I'm not a heavy gamer). Should I switch to MX?
I started with MEPIS 11, chosen mainly because it had a similar interface to Windows 95/98/XP Classic. Over the intervening years, I've used AntiX (don't recall the version, but it was 2011-2014 time frame) because my second desktop machine was too slow to handle a heavier distro, then in 2014 I switch the main machine to Kubuntu 14.04, and in 2017 I installed Ubuntu Mate 16.04 -- which I'm still riding, but the poor thing is just about dead (EOL in four months).
Over that time, I've been somewhat remiss in not spending hundreds of hours reading man pages, trying to learn hundreds of commands with many thousands of options and switches -- with the result that my level of confidence at the command line is limited. I'm not a CLI newbie; I used DOS 3.31 for three years before Windows 3 dropped -- but that DOS had fewer than 20% of the number of commands a modern Linux does, and those commands were generally simpler in terms of fewer options.
So now, every time I look for a solution to a problem, the answer is "install Ubuntu 20.04 and see if that fixes it." Problem is, I'm really, REALLY tired of installing fresh, and to a large extent learning a new system, ever two to five years (and yes, I'd have had the same problem with Windows -- since I jumped on Linux, there have been four versions of Windows with three significant changes in interface).
What I'm looking for is a system in which uprades are a more gradual process. "Rolling" seems like what I want -- but the only rolling systems in Debian are bleeding-edge, based on Testing or Unstable repos, and this isn't a hobby system; it's my production machine (and my laptop, which will get the same OS as the desktop, doesn't get used a huge number of hours in a year).
I was just referred here from the Antix forums, where I'd gone because I read that Antix was rolling-Stable (it's not, and never has been; instead, it had, more than a decade ago, an upgrade script that probably never worked any better than Ubuntu's -- which starts, as its very first operation, by disabling all third-part repos and ppas). The suggestion was that I ask here about reducing the pain of version upgrades.
All I really want is to not have to spend a weekend fighting with my computer unless I'm making a major hardware rebuild (and my hardware is mostly fine -- video card is a little out of date, but I'm not a heavy gamer). Should I switch to MX?