MX Linux Forum

This poll is specific for the upcoming MX-21 since it'll bring newer versions of both DEs, Xfce 4.16 and Plasma 5.20 (5.22?).
What will be your choice and will you be moving or staying?

What if you plan to have both DEs like you already have on MX 19?

I added that option.

I like the option to have one or both in the ISO like with AHS. If I want only one or no DE, we all know what we can do there!! MX LINUX baby!!

I chose XFCE4, but neither XFCE4 nor KDE (especially) play well in remote sessions with x2go. Therefore, I use the XFCE4 edition adding LXDE on top of it for remote sessions, though in remote sessions (like 500 miles away) I'll often just use the OpenBox window manager with LXPanel as the panel and PCManFM to manage the desktop. This comes out as light as FluxBox but with a completely bog-standard like user interface.

Xfce

Ditto Gordon, Xfce 4 Me 2.
For me Xfce is deserving of its flagship role in MX ever since the earliest times of this great distro. It's flexible, intuitive and can be prettied up as little or as much as one wants.

Fluxbox of course

... oh, and Xfce

Staying with XFCE (except with Openbox instead of xfwm)... It is a "known Devil" and I don't really want to take time to learn a whole new D.E. as complex as KDE or even Fluxbox to be honest... For me a 'simple' unencumbered light D.E. is the appeal of Linux being something unique and different than Windows or OSX. Just an opinion...each to their own of course!

I'm staying with Fluxbox ;-}

Fluxbox ( & Xfce - already on 4.16).

XFCE

I'm staying with MX-19.4 (KDE)

It ain't broke, don't need up dating.

XFCE. From a productivity standpoint, I don't see a compelling difference that would make me switch.

j2mcgreg wrote: Wed Jul 14, 2021 8:35 am XFCE. From a productivity standpoint, I don't see a compelling difference that would make me switch.

I agree. I hope MX devs can give us another MX 17/18/19 without CSDs and gtk2 integration for all the Qt and Python apps (uniform theming). It shouldn't be hard if they want to, however the damage Xfce devs did to "systray" might be harder to fix.
I think the recipe for success is found in MX 17/18/19. If users can make their MX-21 desktop look like their current desktop it will be a successful upgrade.

dreamer wrote: Wed Jul 14, 2021 9:45 am

j2mcgreg wrote: Wed Jul 14, 2021 8:35 am XFCE. From a productivity standpoint, I don't see a compelling difference that would make me switch.

I agree. I hope MX devs can give us another MX 17/18/19 without CSDs and gtk2 integration for all the Qt and Python apps (uniform theming). ....

So MX17-19 didn't have CSD apps? What about Archive Manager and simple-scan?

dreamer wrote: Wed Jul 14, 2021 9:45 am ... It shouldn't be hard if they want to....

Thanks for the offer, extra minds and hands on keyboards contributing to development would be a great thing.

dreamer wrote: Wed Jul 14, 2021 9:45 am ... I hope MX devs can give us another MX 17/18/19 without CSDs and gtk2 integration for all the Qt and Python apps (uniform theming). ...

gtk2 is pretty much dead, mixing and matching is half the reason for things not being uniform, this should be better with MX-21 as Xfce 4.16 is gtk3.

dreamer wrote: Wed Jul 14, 2021 9:45 am ... however the damage Xfce devs did to "systray" might be harder to fix. ...

The Xfce 4.14 systray has a lot of issues (well some of it is panel based but yeah), transparent and auto theme switching of the icons is one of them, we have a patched version of the panel in the MX-19 Test Repo because of this. So far, I see no issues with the Xfce 4.16 tray we have in MX-21, then again some folks put in quite a bit of work into getting things ready for it.

dreamer wrote: Wed Jul 14, 2021 9:45 amIt shouldn't be hard if they want to,
... I think the recipe for success is found in MX 17/18/19. If users can make their MX-21 desktop look like their current desktop it will be a successful upgrade. ...

IMHO I don't think anyone will have major complaints about MX-21 Xfce, its going to be very successful.

Although I have different laptops with XFCE, on my main desktop, I'm staying with KDE.

I have both installed. But I lean toward XFCE and use it most. I don't do much tweaking of themes. I think the defaults are great.

Seaken64

I used to be a KDE guy, back in the Warren days.

But I am fully won over and adapted to XFCE now, so little reason to switch.
If XFCE is stable like on MX19, I will be happy.

The thought of testing the betas is getting exciting, a spare experimental partition is waiting for the beta iso.

I will sick to KDE as XFCE doesnt do so well on my main PC and its 1440p resolution.
The scaler in KDE for me works better

I love xfce, but I always a kde
Until mx hot an official kde I had xfce, but when I got kde officially, its more useful to me. There are many applications I use are kde, like krita or kdenlive or gwenview...
Kde is also very easy on system resources and it is more modern and rapidly developing

The desktop scale is better, the dolphin having a preview is useful, kdeconnect..this is an awesome program and kde looks more modern more controlled more configuration but same system resources utilisation

To add please see the link
https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/pla ... esome.html

https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/pla ... guide.html

I have multiple partitions that can be used as root, and have MX19 in both XFCE and KDE flavours. I am seriously thinking about keeping MX19 for XFCE but moving to MX21 for KDE. I could be persuaded otherwise, I guess, as KDE Event Calendar has reduced my dependence on Orage, though I have an alternate Orage deb that I've hacked in order to restore it to the System Tray using GenMon. I guess that I could also eventually get used to OK/Save/Cancel buttons appearing at the top of dialogue boxes rather than the bottom.

Did I miss some major release announcement? Where is MX21?

Sparky wrote: Fri Jul 16, 2021 10:31 am Did I miss some major release announcement? Where is MX21?

It’s in development and no there is no timeline on release. Any public alpha, pre-beta, beta will be announced when they are ready.

SwampRabbit wrote: Fri Jul 16, 2021 10:37 am It’s in development and no there is no timeline on release. Any public alpha, pre-beta, beta will be announced when they are ready.

Ah, ok thanks.

AVLinux wrote: Wed Jul 14, 2021 1:06 am Staying with XFCE (except with Openbox instead of xfwm)

Interesting. I moved from Crunchbang++ to MX-Xfce when I discovered that they use about the same RAM. The draw was that Xfce has window snapping, plus of course all the MX-tools (I use snapshot to copy my system onto different drives).

On Xfce, I 'turned off' the desktop and edited the right click menu so for all intents and purposes it could easily be mistaken for Openbox.

deanr72 wrote: Fri Jul 16, 2021 11:24 am

AVLinux wrote: Wed Jul 14, 2021 1:06 am Staying with XFCE (except with Openbox instead of xfwm)

Interesting. I moved from Crunchbang++ to MX-Xfce when I discovered that they use about the same RAM. The draw was that Xfce has window snapping, plus of course all the MX-tools (I use snapshot to copy my system onto different drives).

On Xfce, I 'turned off' the desktop and edited the right click menu so for all intents and purposes it could easily be mistaken for Openbox.

Not to derail the topic but for me getting rid of xfwm and xfdesktop both resulted in a reduction of about 100-120mb of RAM at Desktop load... I have 32bit XFCE4/OB systems that boot into the Desktop at 280-300 mb of RAM (64 bit seems a bit less reduced at about 380-400mb). Anyway may not matter to a lot of people but I still have a 32bit system in daily use.. With this setup I still have Whisker menu and the xfce4-panel so at first glance you don't even really know anything is missing..

Now back to the poll..

Well, I'd be evaluating both in a VM first, then possibly make a decision; currently use both on different systems.

Only prayer and its reward would be the kde-systemd boot works well without the nagging issues, mainly network sharing, samba, some settings etc... don't want to reiterate those further here.

On the other side, would like to see new mesa 21.2 stack with intel crocus gpu driver for systems upto haswell in AHS. They seem to spin-off older intel gpu support. Google "intel crocus" or visit phoronix for more info.

nly prayer and its reward would be the kde-systemd boot works well without the nagging issues, mainly network sharing, samba, some settings etc... don't want to reiterate those further here.

I went threw that 2 days ago....simple solution...boot into with system mb ......it was fixed for me..never booted back in after....
let me know what you think of xfce...i liike kde but but i find it runs way to hard....

Tweaked Valley wrote: Fri Jul 16, 2021 12:22 pm

nly prayer and its reward would be the kde-systemd boot works well without the nagging issues, mainly network sharing, samba, some settings etc... don't want to reiterate those further here.

I went threw that 2 days ago....simple solution...boot into with system mb ......it was fixed for me..never booted back in after....
let me know what you think of xfce...i liike kde but but i find it runs way to hard....

Sorry, didn't get what you meant in the solution... system mb...?

Sorry autism( really doesn't suit this type of speaking to one and other)
so when it it will say in terminal that you are missign system.md.PP1 cannot......yada yada...

restart your pc...MX boot with come up.. act fast things gives you like 4 seconds before it decides your fate for you....you have an option to boot into the same the enviromant you are currently working in but it will have the optiong.... MX LINUX 14.2 cinnanom (system 32)....hit that one.....go intot the terminal and run everything you had an issue with becaus it lacked it....reboot back into the regular environment and you are good as gold...i hope...worked for me lol

@Tweaked ValleyPlease try again. I am completely lost. Do not understand what you are trying to say.

Seaken64

^^ No offence, but I better leave that. Hope MX21 KDE systemd works better for me. That's it.

I noticed that Garuda Linux Xfce and Linux Mint MATE come with Qt5 Configuration Tool by default. It is also available in Buster repos, but it has to be configured to be useful (the app gives a helpful hint).
I never missed it because I was happy with the gtk2 style, but considering MX Xfce has many Qt apps, maybe qt5ct should be default on the ISO?
The Qt based desktops let you configure gtk, so why not let other desktops configure Qt? (MX Fluxbox and Xfce)

I might go with KDE but it depends on which version of KDE is going to be in MX21, otherwise I will stick with XFCE.

Mauser wrote: Mon Jul 19, 2021 8:04 pm I might go with KDE but it depends on which version of KDE is going to be in MX21, otherwise I will stick with XFCE.

Thanks to the hard work of @norbert Preining, Debian Bullseye will be much more up to date this time with a KDE plasma-desktop version of 5.20.5.

And Norbert is continuing to plow ahead, making the 5.22.x packages available in his own repo, and pushing with the Debian KDE team to get 5.21.x into the Debian Experimental repo. Here's one of his recent posts in our forum about his work: http://forum.mxlinux.org/viewtopic.php? ... 7c#p639655

Because of Norbert hanging out in that thread, you can usually pick up the latest news regarding Debian KDE efforts there: http://forum.mxlinux.org/viewtopic.php? ... 87291b357c
Or he maintains a blog where he posts relevant news about the progress of the Debian KDE project: https://www.preining.info/blog/

andyprough wrote: Mon Jul 19, 2021 11:09 pm

Mauser wrote: Mon Jul 19, 2021 8:04 pm I might go with KDE but it depends on which version of KDE is going to be in MX21, otherwise I will stick with XFCE.

Thanks to the hard work of @norbert Preining, Debian Bullseye will be much more up to date this time with a KDE plasma-desktop version of 5.20.5.

And Norbert is continuing to plow ahead, making the 5.22.x packages available in his own repo, and pushing with the Debian KDE team to get 5.21.x into the Debian Experimental repo. Here's one of his recent posts in our forum about his work: http://forum.mxlinux.org/viewtopic.php? ... 7c#p639655

Because of Norbert hanging out in that thread, you can usually pick up the latest news regarding Debian KDE efforts there: http://forum.mxlinux.org/viewtopic.php? ... 87291b357c
Or he maintains a blog where he posts relevant news about the progress of the Debian KDE project: https://www.preining.info/blog/

Excellent! Thank you for the excellent news. I will go with the KDE version of MX21 if it has the "Kickoff menu" if I named it correctly that you can see here in the first photo. https://9to5linux.com/first-look-at-kde ... tions-menu I just wish the KDE developers would make the application menu resizable vertically and horizontally like the Whisker menu that XFCE has by dragging the edge. Unfortunately when I ask for this on https://forum.kde.org/ I get the reply of they don't understand what I am talking about even though I add a picture of what I am talking about. I can only hope that one day they will understand and make it resizable.

Seems like you need at least 5.21 to get the kickoff menu. Personally i'd prefer MX21 to stick to 5.20 which bullseye will provide (and is presumably better tested). Within a year of release or so, if the then-current plasma5 version maintained by Norbert is still compatible with the QT5 libraries shipped with bullseye, then a possible (optional) upgrade from the MX test repo might be welcome. MX is based on debian stable for a reason and i like it that way.

@Mauser try installing Simple Menu from KDE Store. I like that a lot as it also reminds me of Whisker (not resizable though) and the new Kickoff is quite similar to it. You can save your Favourites to the icon pane in Simple Menu as well.

https://store.kde.org/p/1169537/

Simple menu has been around for quite a few years and still works as of the latest Plasma version, so it will work with Debian's Plasma 5.20.

I'll be changing to KDE with MX-21. I love XFCE, but after installing the kde-plasma desktop from MXPI, I'm converted.

After a reboot, the KDE session restores multiple windows and their positions accurately; this didn't happen in XFCE which was a minor irritation. I can even have wobbly windows with KWin, so no need for Compiz.

I might have put a separate thread for a recommendation for MX21, but this thread seems to get more eyeballs; hence posting here:

MX21 XFCE Suggestion

MX Tweak/Tools > "Completely remove Fluxbox" button.

I believe they have the scripts ready for it and can be implemented easily. Much needed for those who will never use it for various reasons and don't wish the stuff lying on their installation.
Not many have the skills or experience to do the stuff; so new and existing users will find it useful. I know many use fluxbox a lot daily; so nothing changes for them.

Here's one of my old threads for that matter: viewtopic.php?p=599070#p599070
With the recent updates and progress of mx fluxbox, I wonder if the info on above thread is still valid and completely purges it.

agnivo007 wrote: Sat Jul 24, 2021 1:18 am
MX21 XFCE Suggestion
MX Tweak/Tools > "Completely remove Fluxbox" button.
Here's one of my old threads for that matter: viewtopic.php?p=599070#p599070

You can go to MX Package Installer > Popular Applications > Window Managers and uninstall MX Fluxbox. It works well, but might leave a couple of packages. Do a MX Fluxbox search in Synaptic and remove remaining packages manually.

For MX-21 it seems there might be a separate MX Fluxbox iso.

dreamer wrote: Mon Jul 26, 2021 11:11 am For MX-21 it seems there might be a separate MX Fluxbox iso.

Pure speculation, just because it was stated in the last edition of Vogue magazine, doesn't mean its true.

I wonder which edition of Vogue that was that Dreamer read that in, care to share?

July edition

SwampRabbit wrote: Mon Jul 26, 2021 12:16 pm

dreamer wrote: Mon Jul 26, 2021 11:11 am For MX-21 it seems there might be a separate MX Fluxbox iso.

Pure speculation, just because it was stated in the last edition of Vogue magazine, doesn't mean its true.

ceeslans wrote: Wed Jul 14, 2021 8:12 am So that would be MXFB-21 Base, i.e. a minimal Fluxbox-only edition of MX ??? I'd find that really awesome!

Jerry3904 wrote: Wed Jul 14, 2021 8:28 am Yup, that's the plan.

I have kept:

--thunar
--xfce4-appfinder
--xfce4-power-manager
--xfce4-terminal

I guess you missed that thread, @SwampRabbit ...

viewtopic.php?p=644038

Fake news ... ppl need to stop trying to find out or know what we are doing ... we barely do ourselves

Ow! Hahaha... anyway; we'll see soon.

I voted Haven't decided but the more I use 21b with the latest Xfce and its much improved Thunar the more I think I'll stay with that flagship release.

The beauty of it all is KDE can always be run from a live usb whenever a change is desired.

Xfce, ich möchte es simpel und light.
Ein desktop soll nicht nerven, sondern programme starten.
Hardware, bios, treiber, desktop sind unterbau, es geht nur um programme, damit arbeite ich.
Natürlich muß die gesamte kette funktionieren, aber im endeffekt gehts um die tools.
Ich habe mir ein aktuelles ubuntu im virtualbox angesehn, seltsames zeug. Nicht cool.
Bling bling und bunte icons bringen mir nichts.

Uralter eindruck: os/2 war super, administration war wunderbar, das hat schlicht funktioniert, es gab nur kaum gute userprogramme.

Yes sorry, my fault.
Everything was translated to german here, I missed the google bar on top of the screen :/

After checking out MX-21 KDE I will be going with Xfce because KDE Plasma 5 has highly annoying popups. The worst popup is the one at the top center of the screen which caused additional unwanted panels being created. It was a real pain to figure out how to remove these panels since the KDE forums are not what they once were in the past. Being all this I understand adding all kinds of features, but this has become ridiculous because they get in the way. This is not a distro issue, but a desk top environment issue. I am sticking with Xfce.