MX Linux Forum

Well, as stated in the title, I'm quite fed up with non-rolling releases and having to basically start from scratch every 2 years years that Debian decides to upgrade. For context, I've been a Linux convert for the past 9-10 years

I love 99.9% of what mx offers - the specific mx-tools such as snapshot (used many, many times to clone my specific set up onto my two desktops and one laptop), the bash config app, the Nvidia driver installer on my one Nvidia machine (my bad), the awesome package installer, Codecs installer, Quick System Info for forum help, etc., etc.

What's essential to my everyday workflow, however, is i3-wm, personalised rofi scripts, fonts, themes, double-commander - all of which take a LONG, LONG time to set up just as I need/want on an xfce4 base.

Initially, I was well impressed by the 'migration' instructions supplied for upgrading from mx-21 to mx-23, and thought again 'Wow, mx are the greatest!'. Unfortunately, and indeed as stated in the aforementioned instructions, "A clean install is highly recommended for most users". Despite waiting for a while for bugs to be ironed out, the latest upgrade instructions simply didn't work in my case. I'm now, despite following the 'migration' instructions strictly, stuck in a constant loop of needing to enter 'sudo dpkg --configure -a' which freezes indefinitely, leading me once again to looking at alternative rolling Debian releases.

I simply can't and don't want to imagine going back to MS systems or Linux distros that don't permit me to clone my personalised settings from one machine to another, but I am once again exploring rolling Debian releases such as Sparky and Void, and god forbid, Arch-based distros such as Manjaro and Endeavour. But they simply lack the finesse and stability I enjoy and require so much from Debian/mx.

I truly cannot begin to imagine the amount of work and extraordinary effort required to maintain a Linux distro such as mx, and I am infinitely grateful to have been a user of such an amazing distro for the last 4-5 years since migrating from Ubuntu Mate, Mint, Crunchbang++, to mx.

Perhaps this rant rant could be summed up by a simple, personally disliked acronym of TLDR, but would a rolling release of mx be out of the question to avoid such annoyances every few years to remain a devout mx user?

*No intention to offend, btw. But after having lost 3-4 hours in front of my main PC and having bought a new ssd for the long-awaited upgrade, having to revert back to mx-21 for the foreseeable is somewhat irksome.

... but would a rolling release of mx be out of the question to avoid such annoyances every few years to remain a devout mx user?

Yes it is out of the question in its present state as you have discovered.

deanr72 wrote: Thu Aug 17, 2023 5:57 pm Despite waiting for a while for bugs to be ironed out, the latest upgrade instructions simply didn't work in my case. I'm now, despite following the 'migration' instructions strictly, stuck in a constant loop of needing to enter 'sudo dpkg --configure -a' which freezes indefinitely, leading me once again to looking at alternative rolling Debian releases.

Have you asked for help in resolving this issue?

MX to me is more like a slowly rolling as possible because there's some packages in MX's repos that are newer than ones normally available. Did you read the release notes to be aware of any gotchas when upgrading?

I hear your frustration. However, having been burnt a few times on rolling releases, I devised a process to update to a new version which is fairly painless. It certainly does require some effort, but the other really nice thing is that it is 100% done in a VM, and then once that is setup and ready to go it can be rolled out and tested to verify little down time.

My 'down time' from 19 to 21 was less than 30 minutes, and while I probably put in more than 4 hrs of configuring ahead of that, it was pretty painless in a VM and I did it in between my regular work loads - on my big machine.

The new laptop I am bringing up I have done slightly differently, however it also has been worked through the process and is just a little over an hour at this time, with approx 90% operational.

The point.. it can be done, but as with most anything planning it out, and then working the plan is pretty important.

If your headed out, then good luck. if you with to know more about the way I do it, then just hit me up and I will lay it all out. (i dont do i3-wm , just lots of xfce tweaking :-) and VERY heavy in apps and configs.)

Why cant you just localise all your critical dotfiles, save and restore them after re-installation? I mean you can pretty much retain most of your personal customization by preserving your home folder during re-installation..On KDE this works pretty well and there is also the new user-installed-packages-tool that provides another additional layer for an overall quicker process to get up to speed after the unfortunate re-installation.. I mean yes it is indeed still work that has to be done albeit considerably less than maintaining windows after an upgrade but surely its worth it, right

anticapitalista wrote: Thu Aug 17, 2023 6:13 pm

... but would a rolling release of mx be out of the question to avoid such annoyances every few years to remain a devout mx user?

Yes it is out of the question in its present state as you have discovered.

We are not going to... wait for it... roll over for you.

i am old and slow motion re: updating the newer versions when i do; however - using some notes and experience and also another laptop as a reference pont for settings etc. i can usually set it up in about 5 hrs. and i am picky and that sure beats 2 days or so in the past. MX is worth everything. as i said - 5 hrs max as such and i am good to go. seems very fair to me. 21 is still good for a year or more just in case. i use the XFCE version and i updated 4 laptops in a couple of days. and i f i used some of the toold offered and knew more about this all i bet it could install in 1 1/2 hrs - 2 hrs. so even at trutle speed 4-5 hrs is worth every penny to me to run MX. ask for help as others have noted. great group of people here and active particiapting developers are always there daily for help.

Maybe you should try Siduction.

wanted to add that mx 21 may be good until 2026 but not sure about all of the security updates - the same LTS as debian Bullseye?

I’m no expert but from your description I’m thinking preserving your home folder would have gone a long way.

I feel your pain. It’s not easy. And the very things that we do to make mx as flexible as it is make upgrading more complicated.

Maybe we could do better but there just aren’t enough hours in the day to do better than we do.

The only way to maintain any kind of rolling release without going absolutely crazy would be to either stick even closer to debian than we already do or to stop piggybacking the Debian repos.

Even flowing Debian testing would eventually break something on mx.

But I understand.

My MX-19 KDE ain't broke and don't need fixin'. Everything works just fine, thankyouverymuch. I'll update to MX-29 or whatever it is when my current OS no longer works for me.

by then you will be grandpa mark - eh? :-)))

uncle mark wrote: Thu Aug 17, 2023 8:10 pm My MX-19 KDE ain't broke and don't need fixin'. Everything works just fine, thankyouverymuch. I'll update to MX-29 or whatever it is when my current OS no longer works for me.

I second this sentiment. I maintained a machine on Linux Mint 18.3 long after it had fallen out of support, and I only really noticed it had been end-of-lifed after yet another routine "apt-get update" returned no new packages for a couple of months. Depending on how you look at it, sometimes, and from a certain point of view, Linux can be a little too stable, and a little too reliable.

MX Linux updates mx-* packages nearly every day, so I'd notice a similar unsupported MX install much faster.

That being said, I tend to be very judicious about performing an upgrade. Purchasing a new hard drive in advance of the re-install is pretty typical for me if I can afford it, just so I can retain the old install and fetch an old file if I find I need it a few days or weeks later. Before an old drive gets repurposed or relegated to a closet, I put a sticky note on it with the OS, the machine name if applicable, and the start and end date of its life of service.

Every time I start wondering about if I should move to a rolling release (like Arch/Artix/EndeavorOS, Void, Rolling Rhino, etc.) I remember that one time in 2022 that DistroTube lost a day of his life fixing an Arch-based snafu in one of his production machines. DistroTube is a Linux YouTuber, so he draws his primary source of income by filming, editing, and uploading Linux-based content to YouTube. And as an Arch user, his income-deriving workflow uses Arch, a rolling release. And one day, as happens sometimes, Arch broke his workflow. If he'd been running something release-based, he would have been just fine and he could have uploaded his video and monetized it on time. There's a reason major companies don't run Arch on their servers. They'll run Red Hat or Debian or SuSE or a derivative. And only part of the answer why lies in the ability to pay for a corporate support contract. A big reason why companies avoid rolling releases is because testing new patches before users can get them is a major factor in improving the reliability of the platform.

If you're tired of upgrading once every two or three years? I get you. So am I.

But the alternative is unthinkable.

EDIT: typo

@deanr72 We might be able to alleviate your pain here by encouraging you to make full use of the features packed into our Live-USB when a fully featured Live USB is made with our own Live-USB-Maker tool, which makes persistence possible.

The key to making this work for you is a fast, really, really fast flash drive, like the phenomenally cheap but damn good Netac US2 types I use (external SSD in a USB Pendrive encolosure), and they're dirt-cheap, almost to the point of being embarrassingly cheap for what they offer. The other assist that may work for you is our packaging team who love to help, though I can not speak for them in regards to your particular situation.

Most people do not know they can run our fully featured Live USB and write back changes to it that you made while running it live? Persistence I hear some respond, yes, but even without persistence it's possible, just not as refined in therms of levels of testing and control. That in itself may be worth considering because it could be your lifesaver with such a customised work, but please do read on....

Setting up a fully featured Live USB to run with persistence is very easy and when using persistence, it is possible to either save them to persistence files as desired, lose them by rebooting, or to write the changes back to the drive when you're happy with the progress to lock them in. Using persistence in this way is very much like pre-staging what's coming up next, and piece-by-piece, locking them in and working on the next level till you get it right. The beauty of persistence is, after you've written back the changes, you can choose to boot without persistence and test them, as it were, on a regular Live-USB, with the exception, you'll be running your own personally remastered Live-USB.

I've done this and used some hand-picked configs from my daily driver that I've pulled into the Live-USB with persistence session. Those I wish to keep, I copy them, ensuring all conventions are withheld to avoid stepping out of the boundaries into the appropriate location in the Live USB's /etc/skel and when I save the changes back to the Live-USB, they will be there when I next boot it as a regular Live-USB for testing or installation!, yes, they will be written into the home folder of every user created thereafter because when the users homedir is created the contents of /etc/skel are written into it.

I did this for the 6 machines I manage within my family and it saved me hours of repeating the same thing on every machine. Just insert the Live-USB, boot without persistence and install, though on my daily driver, I booted with persistence because the installer carried over all the personal configs and apps I wanted in my own installation. Dual-purpose, totally magnificent and even a beginner could use this system.

I hope you give this some consideration.

You've got to treat and appreciate rolling and fixed release distros for what they are - different, with their own pros and cons. Rolling distros - of course you get the latest version of packages so that is certainly one of its advantages.

But the OP overlooks a few tihings -
Sure, with rolling distros (eg Arch, Debian Testing and Sid), you only install once for the resting of the distro's life on the computer. However, that assumes you don't hit a big snafu or bad update you can't solve. If that happens, you still have to spend time either reinstalling (I assume you backed up your data and dotfile configs) or restoring to an earlier state (eg Timeshift) and THEN STILL HAVING TO SOLVE THE ISSUE OF WHAT WENT WRONG. That is still precious time spent.

MX/Debian Stable downloads - every 2 to 5 years you download an iso of 2-4 GB. Regular updates (say every 10-14 days) for Debian Stable are what? 200-300MB?

Arch-based distro downloads - only a single iso download for the rest of your life (if you don't completely mess up an upgrade). Regular updates every 10-14 days - 1-2GB's worth of downloads each time. Eadwine Rose checks here in the forum every second Sat (I think) of the month when Debian releases their accumulated stability updates for the month just to make sure there are no issues. That's just for 400-600MB's worth of updates. In that time you might have downloaded 3-4 GB of updates in Arch-based distros.

Time spent installing/troubleshooting a distro:
MX/Debian Stable - not much. Maybe 5 hours every 2 to 5 years for a fresh install and configuration? Day to day, most updates are fine because Debian stable updates stay within a fixed base/core. No massive changes in the base.

Arch-based - maybe 5 hours for that initial install and configuration.
Day to day running: to be safe, you check the Arch news page/distro forum before every upgrade in case there are manual intervention steps you have to take (eg the recent one if you use Budgie desktop), you are expected to maintain your system (sometimes an update informs you that certain root config files have to be assessed and maybe changed, or that file permissions for certain packages have to be changed). And of course some upgrades may not go that smoothly so you spend time reading up online and trying to resolve the issue.

Which actually takes more time overall?


Other rolling distros that may not require much user intervention and seem to have easier updates:

Solus - upgrades are certainly easy. However, limited repos, future murky. Currently the question hanging over its head is what happens when (if??) it is rebased on Ikey's Serpent OS.

Void - upgrades, wihle terminal based, are really easier and problem free. Repo of binary packages is not that big compared to Debian or Arch (I include AUR in this) though.

PCLinuxOS - it is more of a gentle rolling distro. Upgrades are fine (you can do it through Synaptic), but I do find their repo nowhere near Debian/MX's.



You have to decide what's best. There is always some compromise. For MX, some posters here have already given you tips on how you can freshly install MX and make the configuration go faster.

Note: Fedora is a separate case - their in-place upgrades work well for me every year (I upgrade 2 releases behind -- takes 3-4 hours each time though!) but even then, there are always some stray packages that don't take the migration well or have been deprecated so you have to spend time after the release upgrade sorting that out.

As others have touched upon...

MX does such a good job of providing kernels and firmware as well as updating, backporting so many upstream Packages that although the Rolling Release thing can't happen you can simply skip a new Debian release and get the double lifespan of using the same base system over 2 full Debian releases. As a current example stick with MX-21 until Debian Trixie comes out in 2 or 3 years, that would get you a 5 or 6 year run between reinstalls..

Like the folks still using MX-19, that's a pretty good run! Nobody likes the stigma of running 'oldstable' but the MX devs really shield you from a lot of that with the diligent Packaging across so many releases.

If I didn't have AVL Users depending on me I would not be moving to MX-23 Bookworm, MX-21 has been an apex experience IMHO.. I think the Linuxsphere is moving in several ill-considered directions currently but that is going way off topic for this thread..

I've wished for a unified physical hardware model for years now. Just the amount of technology already in existence being blocked to consumers is most of what truly holds back ALL devices of any kind. We are basically fed with the "carrot-on-a-stick" method. This entails making it complex and varied beyond belief, by intention. For no good reason at all except control and power/money. I firmly believe if the technology that exists was released to the public you wouldn't even know what you were looking at much less how to use it.

So you have endless amounts of technolgy that is not agreed upon and is constantly changing, hopefully for the better, but as has been proven many many times, not for the better.

This means that any agreed upon gui/os for any one of these devices will simply never happen because no one ever agreed on the hardware itself in the 1st place. The whole system is like a dog chasing it's tail making it impossible to create a truly 'rolling' release that anyone can simply install and never have to reinstall.

I have wished for a unified architecture since ubuntu was announced. But that's like wishing all the Korean & Japanese electronics were available in the US.
Take the dvd region code nonsense. That was on purpose, for no good reason other than the control thereof.
The Framework laptop is as close as your gonna get to a rolling release of anything. Till something new (carrot) is put out.

By the time you get all the way down to the OS/GUI, you have to consider all the physical hardware nonsense shenanigans it's supposed to go on.
MX devs are HEROS in this respect. You guys are real troopers. SystemD? nah, that's just an option. BTW, Siduction states they came out with systemd before debian. Woohoo, another complication no one asked for. Basically we need to agree on the hardware first before we start worrying about the GUI it uses. But since that's being hidden and rolled out in tidbits, intentionally, this makes that impossible. At least I know I can run mx21.3 with kernel 6.3 for years if I like. That's good news. I ran mx19 for only a few months and then clean installed 21. The dance between whatever current drivers you may need and the software that runs on it. The real trick is in buying and holding onto hardware YOU control and not the manufacturer at this point. I wish we had a framework cellphone option. The radios need to be seperate, not "fused" like it is now.

"roll over 'for' you", That's a good one.
Please excuse this long rant.

For me.. I think the "near perfect Install" is really in a vm. I have tried desperately to create perfect computers for years, with the goal of NOT having to reload a bunch of stuff every X ... but I have found that for me, there is a fine line between what I want to do - and how I want to do it.

A REALLY good lesson was to run windows and understand WHY my machines would get wonky weird and I found that a VM with my dev tools, or a vm with my graphics tools was good and didnt pollute the other.

But linux really gave me the best of both. I can have a nice, clean linux load, and then have VM's for development, or for specific need, and keep a clean, fast host - unencumbered with the schtuff I need / want to work with.

MX gives me the ability to run great software and a great OS with little issue. And if I want my heavy, dev environment, I have "a VM for that" and scripting up the install I want for either one can make a clean, fresh install as needed!

Thanks for the responses. Quickly, to answer some of the questions posed:

- I haven't asked for support because I like to try and solve problems myself first. I created a snapshot of my system before upgrading and used this on a new SSD which I intend to use instead of the one I'm using now. I'll try again, of course, when I have time, and see if I can't get it working.
- I did read the upgrade or 'migration' notes carefully, yes. And followed them to the letter. Firstly, I was not able to 'sudo apt install mx23-archive-keyring' from terminal as it couldn't find the package. I was, however, able to install this from the package installer. The upgrade then stalled at 81% so I did 'sudo reboot' as per the instructions. Upon reboot I encountered problems with the kernel and the package installer would not start. That's where I'm at at the moment...
- I did think about (and may still do) the other option of installing mx23 with the option to keep the home folder in place. Many of the other changes I've made to my system, however, involved change in the etc/ folders and these would have to be done manually again presumably. Thus trying the upgrade first.

I'm also aware that running mx-21 for another year or two is an option and may indeed just decide to do this. Or install mx-23 on another drive and get it set up over time with a view to creating a snapshot once it's all set up. I was just disappointed that the upgrade didn't go as smoothly as I had hoped but, just to restate, I really do know and appreciate that mx is by far the best distro out there - so thanks again for all the effort and help for such a great product and wonderful community.

Rant moved to chat forum.

thinkpadx wrote: Thu Aug 17, 2023 7:27 pm wanted to add that mx 21 may be good until 2026 but not sure about all of the security updates - the same LTS as debian Bullseye?

Yes.

Chris

deanr72 wrote: Fri Aug 18, 2023 1:51 am The upgrade then stalled at 81% so I did 'sudo reboot' as per the instructions.

I too had a go with the upgrade on a barely used MX21.3 disposable installation I had on a machine I use for testing only, and it did complete, but on completion after rebooting I tested many apps and found our QSI would fail to populate and try as i might, it wasn't going to work. I do recall having to leave the machine for somewhere near 30 minutes in a somewhat unresponsive state while the rtl8812 and rtl8821 drivers were being installed. Thew dev team had some discussion about this because they are seriously slow to install and/or upgrade.

If your machine doesn't have Realtek Wifi and doesn't use Realtek drivers, you can remove them to get rid of this issue. I do wonder if your freeze was related to this very thing.

What I personally do:
- I maintain a "post install script" which includes all the commands/code that makes the new system into the one I need, meaning for example: adding new custom repos, installing software, downloading and installing fonts, changing default shell, adding custom aliases, putting some stuff into config files, etc.
- I use konsave to backup my Plasma settings into a single file - it contains fonts, some dotfiles, Plasma configs, etc. You can also add your own custom folders/files to ii so much more can be backed up and stored in a single file to restore everything easily:
https://github.com/Prayag2/konsave

There is also a GUI clone of konsave called Save Desktop, it supports more DEs than Plasma:
https://github.com/vikdevelop/SaveDesktop

Alternatively you can also take a look at Spiral Linux:
https://spirallinux.github.io/

It is not as good as MX Linux, but is basically a nicely preconfigured Debian Stable, which can be easily turned into Debian Testing by switching the repos.

deanr72

I don't know what is bad about MX 21
It has security support until 30 Jun 2026
https://endoflife.date/mxlinux

It is well tested and waiting a while longer before upgrading will just make sure MX23 will also be better tested before the serious upgrade is done.
If you switch fast after a release is available the risk of bugs is normally bigger.
I really like people who are men enough to take that risk because they help clearing the road for the rest of us.


Before MX I was using a rolling upgrade that was starting to fall apart.
After that I don't want to push the developers very much about it, and I think a waste of 4 hours (training) can't be that bad.
But frustrating of course if you expect a straight road with no bumps.

There are often many ways to do things but always taking install notes to remember every configuration detail can save a lot of time. I can see you wisely do that.
It is not just about being able to upgrade but also a matter of being able to restore in case the hardware melts down.
Again it is a matter of taste and needs but if possible in order to avoid too many complications it can be a good idea to limit yourself a bit in the configuration.
Snapshot is one of the greatest computer tools I have ever seen but I am not sure it is recommendable in general for installations on computers for very serious work.

I wish you the best luck with your next attempt.

Eadwine Rose wrote: Fri Aug 18, 2023 3:06 am Rant moved to chat forum.

My very first experiences with Linux as an OS were, many years ago, with Arch. It was a steep learning curve but I got a system up and running after a while and was reasonably happy with it. Then I went away for a few weeks... no PCs for the whole time... and on switching on my precious Arch install... broke while trying to update itself. Broke completely, became unusable. Undeterred, I tried again, only for the same thing to happen again a couple months later. Since then, rolling is dead for me.

By contrast, I was pleasantly surprised how relatively easy it was to go from my old 19.4 install to 23. There was a lot of stuff to remove, yeah, and a lot of stuff to add, and some hairy things I'd clean forgotten I had done. But I reused my 19.4 /home and so my apps, almost without exception (rofi was one), ran like before. It was still a lot of work as there were many smallish changes outside of /home but it was not nearly as bad as I thought.

Just my 2c.

Thanks Dearth. That flatpak ap SaveDesktop should be handy indeed. Works with xfce and will even reinstall your flats, PLUS your theming hopefully. I have added some mouses and icon sets not in the repos by hand and if it can restore that that would save some bs time for sure. I'll have to work on scripting for the debs I keep as backup locally. Libretto here we come. maybe next year

@davidy I assume that you noticed that SaveDesktop v. 2.9 is in MXPI>Flatpaks - I'm on MX-21.3 Xfce.

Before you go, I'd just like to contribute my own $0.02 to this quandry.

A while ago, I made a video on migrating from Windows to Linux, and one of the core things that I talked about was the philosophy of use you need to have when running MX, Debian or any similar distro. Specifically, you shouldn't ever feel pressured to upgrade (unless you absolutely need the security updates). A lot of time and work and effort is put into every Debian Stable release, and also every MX Linux release. By the time you get the next stable MX release, everything should be incredibly polished. Everything in the MX stable repo should be tested to hell and back to make sure everything works together seamlessly. So, if your existing MX installation is working for you, you don't need to change it. It will continue working indefinitely with the MX team making sure that no breaking changes are introduced.

There's been this attitude lately in the overall software world that you HAVE to update ALL the time, and if you don't stay up to date, you're just gonna get left behind. With MX Linux, we build something out, ensure that it's fully stable, and then... We use it. Oftentimes for years and years. Again, if you need them, security updates are very important, but beyond that, updates, both big and small, are incredibly optional. Don't think of them as mandatory chores but as optional bonuses and small enhancements.

@Arnox Very much agree. It's now a regular occurrence that a new version of an app is either (much) bigger or less powerful or both. I am now extremely careful, even reluctant, when updating software and often test-drive a new version for a few days before committing. There are two exceptions: one, as you wrote, is security:

Arnox wrote: Mon Aug 28, 2023 3:29 amAgain, if you need them, security updates are very important

The problem there is that it's very hard for a non-specialist to decide whether a certain security update is really needed or not. I prefer to err on the side of caution.

The second area is very new hardware. Often that'll not run as well (if at all) with older versions.

anticapitalista wrote: Thu Aug 17, 2023 6:13 pm

... but would a rolling release of mx be out of the question to avoid such annoyances every few years to remain a devout mx user?

Yes it is out of the question in its present state as you have discovered.

For me too, the stability is the priority one. And now a MX23 tool exists to easily reinstall the users packages.

There is only one correct answer on when to install security updates: once they're available for your system.