The OS keeps out of the way and it has all the things one needs for day-to-day computing.
I use Xfce.
Nothing is missing as in many other distro's. For instance (and so important like always) producing a live-cd via an MX Snapshot ISO and bags of other usefull applications.
It doesn't use too much memory, it is flashy fast and there are never problems with updates.
Very, very stable. I use MX for years now. This after and/or aside nice PCLinuxOS, Mint, even Ubuntu-versions and more.
A blessing it would be in my opinion when MX would be rolling. I hate new installs for the overhead of a lot of work after it.
No complaint until now, so a 10 out of 10.
Version: 21.3 Rating: 9 Date: 2023-05-18 Votes: 8
Still the king, and chugging along doing the work that needs to be done. KDE version is best and XFCE not far behind. Solid and faster than average with the best set of tools available in the Linux world. Choose between sysV and systemD, and enjoy whichever. Debian is the backbone and the software selection is great. If there is a shortcoming it could be said that the ISO could be slimmed down to be as fast as possible. I would love to have a bare-bones MX that I could build out. This is a minor issue, if an issue at all really. It can be counted on to be reliable.
I've been using MX for 3 months already.
I switched from Mint which I found limiting as I left my novice stage. Now I feel MX is the perfect distro for me. There are a few reasons for that.
Firstly - stability. Based on Debian Stable, which is the trademark of its own, the distro isn't prone to breakages at all. And it's got the huge package base, supplemented by software from MX repos, being often updated (incl. regular releases of Firefox, instead of ESR!).
Secondly - flexibility. It shouldn't matter whether it's older or newer hardware - thanks to AHS repos, MX should work on both. Moreover, it offers a 32-bit ISO.
Thirdly - ease to use. My DE of choice is Xfce, which doesn't get in the user's way and it's kinda intuitive. It's also low on resources and perfectly customisable.
Fourthly - MX Tools. More geared towards advanced users, but designed in a way that a newbie can get along quite well. Especially ISO snapshots are a killer feature - the ability to have an own copy of OS on a USB stick, ready to be booted, is something I wondered how could I live without during my 10 months with Mint.
Two small cons are an installer, which is a bit more technical than usual Calamares or Ubiquity and rather bland default theming, but that's not something you can't get used to.
Overall, the distro ticks all of my boxes for a great Linux experience. You should definitely check it out, if you haven't by any means.
Version: 21.3 Rating: 9 Date: 2023-05-17 Votes: 9
I will just add this to the MX tally...
Been using the 21 version since the release, some two years ago, and this is really a top-notch distribution
My desktop PC runs on Debian, really the grandfather of MX, and on the Lenovo laptop I tried to run several distros. Lenovo is not the most Linux-friendly hardware, so I had my troubles with different distros...but MX just worked out of the box.
I only missed my favorite old-skool MATE desktop, so I recently installed it on MX. Now, MX and MATE do not play nice together, but I managed up till now to solve any problem that occurred. As a consequence MX, with MATE desktop, will remain on my Lenovo laptop until its shelf life runs out. So, in conclusion:
Really nice distro, very intuitive desktop environment, no worries-no prob install and operations.
The scope and number of apps and programs is somewhat overwhelming. Most users will not even need half of all the programs that come with MX. Rookie users will have to settle for the default desktop managers, but they all operate perfectly. But remember: MX is Linux, so every feature can be reconfigured and/or replaced.
MX gives me peace, quiet and stability. Sometimes I just lean back in my chair and just stare at the system, and I praise myself lucky that I found such a brilliant OS.
Fantastic Distro! Their tools, the snapshot ISO creator tool! ... the devs have the right mentality, and the support group.. just Fantastic!
Having used Debian, mint and mepis for a long long time, MX hits the spot. XFCE rocks! KDE is damn good too! The configuration seems spot on, the stability is OUTSTANDING, and a great mix of already installed software.
I use MX for my daily desktop machine, my laptops, service computers and more. Using MX since version 17, it has only improved and gotten better and better with each version.
You may have tried other linux... but unless you have tried MX you are missing something!
Version: 21.3 Rating: 9 Date: 2023-05-10 Votes: 2
I used the Xfce version, which I preferred over the other variant (except Fluxbox which I didn't test) on an Dell Latitude E7240.
Easy to install, setting up dual boot with windows was no problem at all on my system. Everything worked out of the box. Some minor things(e.g. brightness changes with Fn in steps of 2 instead of 1) or was very easily resolved with the forum or the documentation.
Easy to install apps as long as they are Debian packages.
Not so easy - 3 different GUI preinstalled apps for installing & updating packages, but only synaptic has a easy accessible archive to resolve problems with updating, installing and removing apps. Orphaned packages not consistent over the package managers.
Flat-package and App-image broke after some base system update and could be revived by manual reinstalling some dependencies. (the same packages worked without problems in Mint).
Easy to adjust appearance and behavior of Xfce to my preferences.
User experience and default parameters are for me a little less consistent as Mint Linux. That it's less polished and pleasing to eye was for me not relevant.
After using it now about 3 month as primary system, it's a close race with mint xfce with open end for me.
Easy to customize, rock solid and all major packages available.
Debian based so no problems getting apps.
The XFCE version is to my opinion the best.
I use it together with polybar and albert and plank as launchers.
I don't use the XFCE panel (bar).
On older hardware still good performance.
Installs as a breeze, continues in the same time it asks you for your information.
Tried Gnome spins, like Fedora and Ubuntu, but keep returning to MX Linux.
No more Arch or desktops with Gnome or Plasma anymore for me.
Great tools!
You can make a snapshot of your installation, put it on an USB stick and install it on another PC.
I tried it, with my laptop, desktop and even on my old Imac.
Works flawlessly.
Also driver installation is available.
This is (for me) a keeper!
Version: 21.3 Rating: 9 Date: 2023-05-08 Votes: 3
The installer: it had some odd quirks. First: I couldn't under any circumstances change the layout of the partition order.... for example, let's say partition 1, p1 was boot, p2 was root, and p3 was home.... If it previously had been p1 boot p2 home and p3 root (because the format for the installer, using remaining space, etc. was the worst I've seen since salix. It's unintuitive and outdated.) So even when going to an outside disk/partition manager, creating a new layout, creating the partitions maually, it refused to let me change the order. Even though I had created a new layout, it still saw p2 as root even after a reboot. I eventually decided to leave them and try it anyway using the up arrow to "use the remainder of the disk" (I shouldn't have to do that in 2023.) So, for this reason, the loss of 1 point. (Even if this issue is isolated to the AHS edition, the installer is still outdated).
The Positives: The workaround for not having systemd is pid 1 works great, basically just keeping systemd installed and referencing it like any other library. The flatpack addition is a big plus, it had all the modern mesa / vulkan installed by default. It's already set up for testing and backport repos which all work great. The updater seems like a synaptic frontend with extra features. My steam games (proton), etc. worked flawlessly out of the box even with the stock MX kernel, I eventually installed Liquorix and the system has been running fantasic for months now. The AHS edition, is stable but with the added benefit of the newer firmware and graphic stacks, audio, cpu, etc. pulled in (I had been doing this on other distros (namely Devuan) for a few years now. So the fact that I now have more free time, makes this Distro a huge plus!
Others: Going on almost 3 months now, the laptop has had only one issue, the default kernel would perpetually start the laptop with screen brightness almost off, was having to brighten it on each boot. I installed the Liquorix kernel (which is in the repo) and this issue was immediatly fixed.
Final thoughts: I can easily recommend this distro to anyone for any purpose, I can't belive it took me so long to try it. As a previous reviewer had mentioned, the installer has some quirks, if you're trying to dual-boot, it's always best to back things up first. If you're looking to scrap Windows all together (my recommendation) As a single-o/s computer this distro works great, fixes basically everything wrong with Debian's core policies.
Version: 21.3 Rating: 9 Date: 2023-05-08 Votes: 2
MX Linux is a remarkable Linux distribution that offers a perfect blend of stability, performance, and user-friendliness. Based on Debian's "Stable" branch, it benefits from Debian's extensive software library while maintaining its own identity. The default Xfce desktop is fast, responsive, and intuitive, with a sleek and modern design that is easy on the eyes. However, for those who prefer alternative desktop environments, separate editions with KDE Plasma and Fluxbox are also available.
One of the standout features of MX Linux is its simplicity and ease of use. The operating system is designed to be accessible to both novice and advanced users, with straightforward configuration and settings that are easy to navigate. Additionally, MX Linux is highly stable, making it an ideal choice for those who prioritize reliability. The medium-sized footprint also means that it runs well on older hardware, providing a great option for users who want to breathe new life into their aging machines. Overall, MX Linux is a fantastic distribution that offers an excellent desktop experience without sacrificing performance or stability.
Version: 21.3 Rating: 9 Date: 2023-05-04 Votes: 8
MX is Still the one solid as a rock, dependable and going as strong as ever. I use this distro to rescue others, and my FIL and his friends in retirement home use it and love it. Can handle rough use from newbies, and yet with plasma it is pretty intuitive for them to figure out. Even now after using for years MX still amazes and surprises me. There are doctors offices that I do business with that are happy with MX as well. Not having to worry about the security weakness of MS is a load off their minds.
I first installed Mx Linux in late 2018 and have continuously upgraded to all versions up to 21.3 and each time I have appreciated the extensive documentation that both in the live and on the installed version appears directly on the desktop! It is a manual that in Italian is no less than 249 pages, fully translated that guide you through system preparation, installation and maintenance.
Using this distro on a work computer I appreciate so much the stability ( it comes from Debian Stable and not Sid like Ubuntu) because it never crashes: of course the packages are less updated than on Arch, but if you really need it there is the test repository with much more updated packages and it is active flatpack with everything up to date.
During one installation grub got corrupted, but turned the pc back on with the installation stick and looked at the manual I ran MX Boot Repair which recognized both Windows and Linux installation. On reboot everything worked.
This is not an S.O. for gaming, it is for those who need security at work!
Version: 21.3 Rating: 1 Date: 2023-05-01 Votes: 0
Before I begin, I would like to clarify that the purpose of this text is not to gratuitously attack MX Linux, but rather to provide a constructive critical analysis of the operating system, highlighting the negative points that may affect the user experience.
MX Linux is a Debian-based operating system that has gained popularity in recent years, especially among users looking for a low-resource alternative and ease of use. However, despite its advantages, MX Linux still has some negative points that need to be addressed.
One of the main negatives of MX Linux is the lack of an easy-to-understand installation guide for users. Although the installation process itself is not particularly difficult, the steps involved can be confusing for inexperienced users. MX Linux does not have a step-by-step installation wizard, which can be a hurdle for new or less experienced users.
Another negative point of MX Linux is that in some cases, the installation operation can damage other operating systems that are already installed on a dual-boot system. Many users have reported issues when trying to install MX Linux on a system that already has Windows or another operating system installed. This can be a big problem for users who rely on a dual-boot system for work or study.
Additionally, another problem with MX Linux is the lack of detailed documentation for advanced users. Although the operating system is easy to use for most users, some more experienced users may encounter problems when trying to customize the system or make advanced tweaks. The lack of detailed documentation and support can make solving these problems difficult and frustrating.
Another issue that users have with MX Linux is that it is not as up-to-date as other Linux distributions. This can be a problem for users who need more recent features or who depend on specific software that may not be supported in MX Linux.
Furthermore, MX Linux may present hardware compatibility issues on some systems. Although the operating system is generally compatible with most modern devices, some users have reported hardware problems, such as issues with drivers or performance problems on older systems.
In summary, MX Linux has many positive points, such as low resource consumption, ease of use, and stability. However, it also presents some negative points, such as the lack of detailed documentation, hardware compatibility problems, and problems with the installation process on dual-boot systems. If you are thinking of using MX Linux, it is important to be aware of these issues and consider them when making your decision.
Installed Mx-Linux XFCE: Installed WebullDesktop, when add to panel the app don't show right the icon and really I dislike the XFCE desktop, seems to me much more polished Mint Cinnamon. in the middle I see many things to like in MX-Linux and I decide to install the Budgie desktop to give a try. This is it!!! All is working perfectly now, the system is the most lightweight, nice and responsive, easy to use what I see in all my life of distro hoping.
Mx-Linux gives all the necessary tools to made the system easy to use, practical, customizable...
With 4GB Ram, using Firefox, TuxKarts there is not use of swap at disk at all!! I see the swappiness is setted by default to 15!!! Nice touch by the developers and seeing the htop very clean I understand how much love is put in this distro.
Version: 21.3 Rating: 9 Date: 2023-04-26 Votes: 0
I have been using the 21.3 kde plasma version for 1 month. I was very pleased and surprised by the speed of the system. I have an old i5 that is nothing worth saying anything about and it now behaves like a brand new cutting edge laptop.
I did not encounter any problems and everything runs well, wired, wireless, file system, usb keys, nothing jams it.
The system runs well using a fraction of the available resources.
Graphics support is smooth and movies and music play well without lag.
I may load a few games on it later on to get a better feel for the graphics drivers quality.
Overall a very fast, usable and stable system, I really enjoy using it.
Version: 21.3 Rating: 1 Date: 2023-04-25 Votes: 0
If you don't like Systemd, I don't see the point of using this distro when you could just use Devuan. They not only removed Systemd, they also have support for Runit and OpenRC, aside from just SysVinit. Plus, it's not some heavily customized, glossy distro unlike MX Linux. When you enable all these fancy widgets and background processes, it kills the point of using a lightweight DE like Xfce. Those "MX Tools" are so useless that you might as well just stay on Linux Mint (theirs are better). It's not hard to install Package Update Indicator (taskbar notification for new updates, can be worked with Synaptic or GNOME Package Updater) or Timeshift (for system backups), for instance.
I recently tried the fantastic Live USB Maker to create an encrypted thumb drive with persistence to, initially, boot into my MBP with a dead dGPU. Run with the Dolphin's videos on creating a usb with persistence and remastering it certainly helped a lot.
Then I figured why not just boot the Mac to MX Linux on this usb drive instead, since I rarely use the Mac as a daily driver. I was not hopeful as I read about the linux wifi driver issue with this old MBP. However, wifi came up right away, even before I unblocked the b43 driver. It's been a smooth sailing operation ever since. Many thanks to the devs for creating this fantastic distro!
Version: 21.3 Rating: 9 Date: 2023-04-19 Votes: 0
Continues to be dependable, reliable and smooth as butter. Using systemD for software compatibility, and just keeps chugging along. So good its almost boring, stays out of the users way and provides excellent tools to prevent or recover from self made catastrophe. This distro has stood the test of time and remains at the top with other great distros(Debian & Mint). There is one slight bugaboo, if we could have a bare-bones KDE version it would be ultimate.These Devs have thought of just about every contingency a person can face and built a distro to handle it.
Version: 21.3 Rating: 5 Date: 2023-04-12 Votes: 0
XFCE version shuld be "Suitable if your PC is a few years old" according to the website of this distro,
but, it's 1.8 GiB, huge and slow.
And it's Debian-based distro, so MX Linux, Debian based, XFCE desktop for old PC's 1.8 GiB.
Thank you!
But I have decided to download Debian himself, 48 MiB,
After installing it I just typed in the Terminal the following line:
# sudo apt install --no-install-recommends xfce4
and now I have very small, nice XFCE desktop for old PC's :))
Just awesome, isn't?
Have fun :)
Version: 21.3 Rating: 1 Date: 2023-04-11 Votes: 0
I have installed this twice, only to discover that it is not possible to have a bootable encrypted installation. This immediately makes it useless to me as a primary fully installed operating system.
As a live system it's no better, as it cannot mount a LUKS encrypted drive:
"udevil: denied 73: fstype 'crypto_LUKS' is not an allowed type" will come up even when using the "cryptsetup" command.
No encryption = no security.
At best, it's a live system that can be remastered & snapshotted on the fly, which is something that can be done on quite a few other distros all of which are much faster. MX Linux is like treacle.
And although MX Linux is based upon antiX which is based upon Debian, it's not giving anything back to Debian!
The remastering tools work only on antiX derivatives, which is not very community spirited...
There's nothing that can be done on MX Linux that cannot be done on Slax, the difference being that MX Linux starts as an ISO of 1.5 to 2.4 GiB that is quite likely to break as bloat is removed, whereas Slax starts as an ISO of less than 300 MiB that is not likely to break as modules are added or subtracted.
Again to compare, both MX Linux and its website look dated, the documentation is all over the place, whereas Slax and its website are up to date, concise and collected.
I really don't see why people rave about MX Linux, I really don't see the 'wow' factor, and I have no compelling reason to use it.
Version: 21.3 Rating: 9 Date: 2023-04-09 Votes: 0
For me nine only for the documentation and the tools created to ease the use for newbies.
Unfortunately 0 cause:
Release after release they don't solve the issue created by network manager to users which have a D-Link DW-L 131 Rev. E1 (the same which still persists release after release in Fedora) which makes connection tries loop never ending without the ability to connect to the hot spot.
It could be maybe easily solved updating NetworkManager or switching to connman cause with almost all distros with an up to date NetworkManager or connman the connection is established flawlessly.
Connection works flawlessly also with a simple wpa_supplicant config file piped with dhclient (the way I use on my Devuan Minimal personally crafted daily driver) to get the address with the same usb dongle which doesn't work in MX-Linux and Fedora.
They could get rid of systemd.
Only aesthetically but it matters, the splash screen seems to come directly from the seventies.
For who has working usb dongles it worths a lot more.
One of the best, most stable linux distro's ever. I have tried many and this one flat out works.
The dev's put a lot of time into creating great tools and supporting it. I use my computer hard, and MX Linux not only withstands the load, it excels at being my daily work load. And the support groups is awesome, as well as listening and responding to user requests. THE best linux forum I have been on!!!
Their snapshot tool is better than any i have found, and creates a solid backup / snapshot that can move to new hardware, in or out of a VM.. truly in a class by it self! The entire system runs amazing, and using the AHS repos you have VERY near the latest kernels and drivers out there.
MX Makes Debian better!! NO QUESTION!
Version: 21.3 Rating: 9 Date: 2023-04-07 Votes: 0
It is just one of the most solid well built, distros made(Mint is great too). MX has great tools, and massive software selection. MX has stood the test of time, years of uptime now with nothing major(or minor)as far as problems. I have placed MX on dozens of installs for friends and family, and no disasters at all(I do not use sysV for compatibility sake). I am so happy I have the choice to use SystemD or SysV(Choice is what Linux is all about). If I had one wish though, it would be to have more modularity(easily remove apps not needed) and or less software in initial iso, so MX is as slim as possible. Thank you devs for the OS we can count on.
Version: 21.3 Rating: 1 Date: 2023-04-06 Votes: 0
I love the idea behind Debian-based distro's, stable and reliable and every package is available. The big downside is that MX breaks too easily and frequently, although this may be the fault of its corrupt packages. I just cannot depend on this distro to manage my important work because I will not risk losing it. It is a shame because it seems nice. It is just too delicate for my needs and I may as well go back to using Windows(jk). I currently use Mint which has never, I repeat never broken on me.
Version: 21.3 Rating: 2 Date: 2023-04-06 Votes: 0
I don't recommend it for daily use. First I lost windows boot menu after installation. I installed again, then there was a black screen. It worked when I installed 3 times. But then it didn't recognize Windows 10. After hours, I found a way to add it to boot menu. It took more than 4 hours to install Nvdia drivers. After that linux kernel wasn't recognized Grub. Then it frozen, desktop environment wasn't displayed. I searched to fix it. After hours I removed Intel video driver and it worked!
I was happy to use Nvidia till I opened Qt Creator. Qt Creator and other Qt apps controls are too small. It has scaling problem. I tried to use parameters for GTK and Qt for high DPI scaling.. It didn't work. Even if this worked, I'm sure there would be another problem. For the good side, its performance is somewhat better than Ubuntu.
(MX KDE, ran from customized USB 3.0 and/or frugal install, for 3 years)
Pros:
- MX RemasterCC tools (snapshot to live ISO; live persistence operations while running live; remastering to a fresh OS while running live) are INCREDIBLY convenient. There's a LOT of talent behind this, because these operations shouldn't feel as trivial and automagic as they do in MX!
- AntiX project. That's a pro in itself.
- Frequently updated, including visually.
- Never broke.
- Never faced any problems I didn't create myself.
- Great repos! The Debian repos, plus flatpak support, guarantee excellent software access.
Cons:
- Not many desktop environment choices. This is barely a con - what they do have works wonderfully.
- If you intend to use it in a regular install, I'm sure it'll work even better than it does on live - however if you don't intend to use the RemasterCC (or other MX tools, which are a FANTASTIC suite of applications) then MX loses a lot of its main purpose. I could still see it being super useful for having a mirror of your main system in a live USB, but if you don't want to use the live features at all, there are more polished options.
General review:
Just incredible.
Having a system be this stable, this fast, and this convenient, with such incredible tools as snapshot creation, persistence, frugal installing, remastering while running the live system, it's just amazing - I feel like I'm using an internally installed system even though I'm running live.
Good for tinkerers. Will work wonderfully out of the box too, but the DEs aren't super customized.
Whichever problems I did have were not related to MX, but to KDE.
STRONGLY recommend. Basically a midweight ultra-polished AntiX with better repos and better DEs.
Version: 19.4 Rating: 9 Date: 2023-04-03 Votes: 1
There is a quirk in 'MX suspend' with some monitors.
After suspend and power off: monitor shows short flashes of what's happening but no more than that. I have here a HP 1955 which gives that trouble.
HP 1702 which I happen to have too, does fine then.
After some switching on and off HP 1955 it does sometimes fine again. But I don't know what it is. It is ugly. :lol:
Great OS by the way, I use it for six years now after PCLinuxOS, Mint, Lite and more testing,
and MX works so smooth. Hope it stays this way after opdate suspend of course.
The most attracing feature for me is the ease of customising by creating own snapshots and isos with provided mx-tools.
Start MX, customise, cleanup, remaster and have your own iso bootable from USBstick runnig even from ram with usb removed after boot.
Use cases:
- customised for onlinebanking, remote access to work, recovery system, ...
- Portable in my pocket and I can ask anyone to use his PC for my personalised desktop while abroad
- get rid of cookies, cache and browsing history while running in ram
- test new software while running in ram without garbling existing running config or system
Until recently I was using rolling release KDE distros. Sadly, they both had stability issues that rendered them unusable. I toyed with the idea of installing the MX version of KDE, but that desktop is at its best with the newest versions of the Plasma Desktop. There is no way I would put a Debian based KDE desktop on my machine simply because the updates take forever to come to the user. XFCE is a different story. Yes, Debian is still slow to update but XFCE isn't impacted as much as the always updated KDE desktop. I've used a MX XFCE distro in the past and it was ok, better than average. When XFCE 4.18 came out I was intrigued with the changes they made, and when MX XFCE added it to its Wildflower version I just had to give it a try. Wow!!! What a fine release it is. I have it loaded full of applications including 30 flatpaks. Many are large KDE apps yet everything runs fast and stable. I am so impressed with MX-21.3 AHS XFCE. While I can't tweak it to the extent I can with a KDE desktop I still can get it looking pretty nice. It's going to be fun relearning the XFCE desktop. Kudos to the MX developers for making such a wonderful release. I highly recommend this one.
It's been more than a month since I have fully switched to Mx Linux Fluxbox, from dual booting with Windows 7. I have removed Windows 7, since I hardly need Windows. Mx fluxbox is the best for my old laptop, which is from 2008, dual core, 2 Gb RAM. Since Fluxbox requires less RAM to run than Xfce, I can save about 300 Mb. And it is customizable. Stable, lightweight and it works just fine. It is not as "user-friendly" when it comes to configuring certain things, but it is easy enough for me, with the little experience that I have in Linux. Editing config files is simple once you read the proper instructions and pay attention to relevant details.
Version: 21.3 Rating: 3 Date: 2023-03-22 Votes: 0
I've tried this OS version 21.3 KDE. It's friendly and simple on a first look.
But after the first update my wifi network dissapeared completely! I've been able to revert the changes using Timeshift, but still it looks weird. My wifi adapter is Intel Corporation Wi-Fi 6 AX201 160MHz. Haven't find any solution to fix that so far, so I'll stay on Kubuntu.
My main point was to move from Ubuntu derivatives to Debian or elsewhere, but I was unsuccessful to install Debian alongside my existing Kubuntu/Windows.
Looking forward to have this bug fixed by MX guys
Version: 21.3 Rating: 7 Date: 2023-03-17 Votes: 0
I am using linux as a secondary OS besides windows [AMD Ryzen laptop] or chromebook.
Feel comfortable with a minimal stable debian based distro.
I have been testing several distros like debian, tuxedo, zorin os and lubuntu.
Finally stick to MX Linux KDE with the newest kernel. I like the look and feel and snappiness.
Also tools like boot options, live usb maker and snapshot are handy.
There is no distro which is perfect, So here some cons:
- does not support secure boot
- installer does not allow installing GRUB on a separate boot partition. Have to be shared with Windows
- there is no minimal install iso
- there are a few bugs like missing variables in .profile or background apps that suddenly stopped
- snap apps like authy will not run, as snapd log complains that kernel is missing dbus and network
Version: 21.3 Rating: 6 Date: 2023-03-14 Votes: 0
I have MacBook Pro late 2008 (8 GB RAM with Core 2 Duo CPU) from which I have pulled the optibay drive and replaced it with 480 GB SSD with intention to install MX Linux, KDE version. Installation went smoothly, GRUB placed it’s files into EFI partition of disk where El Capitan resides. So I’ve got a proper dualboot machine. All - keyboard backlit, speakers volume, Wi-Fi, bluetooth, webcam, are working properly. I was not able so far to reproduce touchpad functionality close to MacOS X, but it’s expectable. Overall system performs quite well and included software runs way faster than it's analogs of El Capitan, residing on another SSD. So, definitely the MX Linux deserves it's rating I find here, considering that I have tested other distros that I am not going to mention.
Now about some CONS:
1. Nvidia driver installer from MX tolls did not actually install the driver, but it advised what command should I run and then I have installed the driver. After the installation the keys that adjust the screen brightness ceased to work and, even though, they show the level of brightness, the actual brightness of screen does not change.
2. A mix of MX tools and KDE settings is quite confusing (like Discover and MX Package
Installer) resulting in messy system.
3. Sometime under moderate load machine hangs and have to reboot it.
4. Sleep and Suspend do not work properly. After opening up the display, the machine cannot wake up properly and display stays off, even though the machine is working.
Conclusion: It's good but not perfect. My most complain is the mess of KDE's stuff not sitting well with MX tools.
First and foremost, this operating system is incredibly user-friendly. The interface is intuitive and easy to navigate, making it accessible for even the most technologically challenged individuals. Additionally, the system runs smoothly and efficiently, with speedy startup times and minimal lag or crashes.
One of the standout features of this operating system is its versatility. It is compatible with a wide range of software and hardware, allowing users to customize their experience to suit their specific needs. Whether you are a creative professional in need of powerful design software or a gamer looking to optimize performance, this operating system has you covered.
In terms of security, this operating system is top-notch. It comes equipped with a variety of security features, including firewalls, antivirus software, and frequent updates to protect against the latest threats. This gives users peace of mind knowing that their personal information and data are safe from prying eyes.
Overall, I highly recommend this operating system to anyone in need of a reliable, user-friendly, and secure computing experience. It is a fantastic choice for both personal and professional use, and I am confident that it will exceed your expectations.
I've been using MX Linux for two years, and I can't say anything other than unbeatable, fantastic! For me, the best by far that I've installed in years. It comes with the complete basics, and then you can add packages. I have installed it on iMacs; intel, i3 and older too, all perfect. The first installations, having no experience, did not fit well, they were my fault. I recommend it, you have to try it. Goodbye to Windows 11, especially since I don't have TMP. To navigate, for office, for daily use, MX Linux. Greetings
Version: 21.3 Rating: 1 Date: 2023-03-09 Votes: 0
Keeps getting worse... go with the original Debian distro instead. MX linux is probably one of the worst derivatives, slow, over bloated, and totally over rated. It loads forever and shuts down even longer! Why shutdown at all?! No hibernate, and if it works, it should take 1:30 min just like Windows or faster to return! It can't view webp animated pics and is pretty unresponsive slow with performance, save dialogs etc. Why even the need for it when there is AntiX, which needs half the processes to load! What are all these processes good for except only to haul precious cpu/ram for nothing! Also I often lose wifi and audio sometimes vanishes mysteriously. Firefox isn't GPU HW accelerated, had to install flatpak Chrome for this.
I know many people that use Linux, and not one of them recommends MX linux to new users. Sure it has tons of programs installed and many more are available in their package installer, but in reality probably no one ever installs any of them, total waist. Do yourselves a favor a try a different distro that is no doubt better and more user friendly than this one.
Version: 21.3 Rating: 8 Date: 2023-03-07 Votes: 0
MX Linux XFCE is the top of the list of distros, that I’ve tried over several years as functions worked “out-of-the-box” and the repo is extensive and includes my most useful apps, including Veracrypt. However I have had a problem to install v21.3 onto a Macbook Air, early 2014 as it failed to recognize its internal SSD. I just found the older version v19.2 seems to work ok. Currently my work-around is a Live-USB v21.3 and of all the distros the Live USB option with persistence is a great tool seems the best. However not sure how to have a login password on the Live USB to protect my email or messenger services. The old Macbooks are great bits of hardware and relatively cheap. MXLinux runs very well on a 2010 Macbook Air as the sole OS.
Version: 21.3 Rating: 8 Date: 2023-03-05 Votes: 0
I would give MX Linux a 10.0 if persistence was achievable when creating live USB drives. I have tried the internal USB maker, which is amazingly not intuitive for Linux noobs, as well as UUI, Rufus, and Ventoy. I still (after several years of trying) am not able to add persistence to MX Linux. Linux Mint and Ubuntu derivatives have this option as easy as adding an app. I do not understand why this is so, but in any case, it's a big deal for those of us who use live USB drives often -- and across base operating systems, eg, Windows and Linux distros.
I normally would not complain and instead simply find a video or youtube video that clear explains how to do it on various operating systems, specifically with Ventoy using Windows. Why? Because Ventoy is going to be my go-to program for creating live USB's, Remarkably, I have not found a single clear English explanation on each of the steps. That being said, MX Linux installed works like a charm, is reliable, stable, intuitive, flexible, and contemporary. I love it! I have all but stopped distro hopping, but lack of persistence for MX Linux is driving me crazy!
Excellent distro. I like XFCE, which is highly configurable.
I first started with Mepis, which worked out of the box.
Then, I tried many other distros (probably over 30).
I worked for quite some time with OpenSuse, ubuntu, xubuntu, mint, etc.
I have been using MX for about 3 years and I just love it and will stick to it.
I personnalise my desktop and add various packages that
come from other desktops (Gwenview, dolphin, konqueror, etc.).
Then all changes are put on a usb stick, which can be used to
reinstall quickly (10 mn) the system or used as live on other computers.
So easy. I just love it.
After trying all the "popular" distro's out there, and checking latest releases, I am always back to MX, it does the things you want it to do and gets out of the way. Stable is a given. Never had a breakage.. for those that believe there is too much pre-loaded, welll, 2 things :P #1- you can uninstall packages easily using the package manager, install what you want from multiple repo's and #2- you are free in this Linux world we have to choose another distro that you feel meets your needs and hope it doesn't break :) BTW, the tools MX dev's have included from the start are all beginning to be added to other distro's :) Says something about how other dev's minds align :)
I stumbles onto MX in an offbeat way, and I love it. Windows 10 was the tipping point (even a MS dev I met recently said as much) I started looking for some other OS, and, as I had experimented with LInux in it's early days (with all that fun) I decided to see if I could figure it out a few years back.. tried mint, kubuntu, Manjaro (all the top of the "chart" distro's) working my way down the list.. (I still have about 10 CD with my early experiments.) I liked the Mint KDE version, got things all working (still dual booting at the time) but, then, Mint decided to drop support for KDE and so, I swapped to Kubuntu, was happy.... til it broke on me after an update... (glad I was dual booting still) so I dl'd MX & burned a thumb drive... and there it was.. it did everything I needed.. never broke and about 6 months later I just disconnected the drive I had windows on, and in the last 4 years, never looked back.. best overall OS still for me ( I still do look around) ( Actually the latest MAnjaro looked quite good too)
mxlinux , what can we contribute about this.
I've been running mxlinux on the same computers for about 4 years, 1 with dual screens and 1 with 4 screens on ssd hard drives, and for a distro with all the bells and whistles, it runs very fast, windows open sooner than you would click with the mouse manner of speaking of course.
mxlinux is a system where you can say with certainty that it will never let you down, it is very stable, and rock solid.
with updates you will never run into problems, not even with updates kernels or grup, or taking a snapshot and restoring backups from another hard drive, the system will never let you down.
even if the distro itself updates the system from 21 to 21.1 and 02 and now 21.3 mxlinux always works perfectly, I can't say anything wrong about the makers and the many contributions from experts, in my opinion it is the best system available it's in linux.
also the software of bullseye's repos is perfect, I don't see why someone should switch from debian to an archlinux, where the aur will give you more conflicts and an unstable system.
I'm running mxlinux xfce 21.3 on 2 computers right now and we're never going to trade it for any linux, because none can match mxlinux.
Version: 21.3 Rating: 1 Date: 2023-02-28 Votes: 0
MX Linux is all that I don't like to see in a linux distro. I can't stand all these MX things and the way they modify the desktop environments, it's heavily cluttered with applications and resource intensive. Maybe it works for others but it won't be my distro and the one I will advise to others. I don't buy into this view of things and philosophy. The result is a really over bloated, ancient software, and heavy ergonomy and it will be difficult for beginners to modify this into their own way of thinking. I can see the goal of such a distro but the way they do it is so clumsy... And they are not the only ones in the linux world but there are many better distros.
Version: 21.3 Rating: 9 Date: 2023-02-25 Votes: 7
MX21. Good one. I've been using it on several laptops for 18months.
It's fairly easy to install where there's multiple OSs and multiple partitions.
SPECIAL Kudos for The Live USB creation. It's a miracle tool and has any other "backup" tool I've tried totally beat.Installing the present system with all it's tweaks to an entirely different laptop is kind of fantastic,IMO
The app page and special layout for installation of packages they have is good and better than synaptic ,if you want what they have there. ie: Steam, wine etc...I always check it first....
I'll try working myself up to a complaint here-no doubt there's peeves-but it's been awhile since I started with it and the only thing that comes to me is: It's a bit odd with its subset of special MX menus and repetitions throughout but if the tunneling through the menu is a bit discombobulating, it's also true that their MX tools can be helpfult.
I've been using MX Linux since version 17. The full re-install required to move to version 21 had me nervous, but it was so worth it.
Why Linux MX? I wanted a platform that would run on modest hardware, that I could load Jack Audio and Guitarix on, and use audio processors from Behringer and Scarlett.
I'd beed using Zorin, Ubuntu, Mint and others, but Linux MX has just Rock Solid for me! Wildflower has been such a worthwhile upgrade, I've been recommending it to everyone I know. Navigating my Windows Server from MX is surprisingly comfortable. Like a great may others, I need to keep a foot in the Windows world, and Linux MX doesn't fight me, and doesn't get in the way... it just works, it's stable, it's reliable and easy to get used to and use!
Playing and recording guitar on the Linux MX platform is a dream! Audio interfaces that were nearly useless in Windows (even IF you could find the proper drivers) just work out of the box on MX. Best distro I've ever used!!
My elderly father in law asked to web surf, so I outfitted a laptop with MX Linux. With very minimal training, he has been using it for six months with no OS problems. He loves that fact that it is not slow like windows, and even though he improperly shut down many times the operating system did not buckle. Windows never took kindly to being shutdown improperly, so he didn't care for it. He just loves linux, the freedom, the security, the robustness, and so a big thanks to the devs for creating some good in the world for people to enjoy.
I've been messing around with different distros for a years, I had been using Linux Mint forever (of coruse dual booted along side windows), but decided I'd give this distro a shot because I've been hearing nothing but good things about it. I have to say... never before have I tried such a STABLE distro. Right out of installation with no installing of any drivers, no updating, this disrto was still able to run WebGL Aquarium with 500 fish easily at a good 45+ fps. Doing this the other day with linux mint 21.1 (Vera) even after all the updates and drivers I installed ALWAYS resulted in a system crash.
Running other programs, doing installations, and even connecting different devices via bluetooth.. MX has amazingly smooth preformance with no lags, hiccups, or crashes. The only thing that I can say that is a minus is that the windowing system of MX can't be used like Windows 10 or Mint (dragging windows to the side, top or corner of the screen and auto merge adjusts the window) yet. This distro also doesn't look so pretty though design wise it's not bad at all (I'm using xfce 4).
I can't stop thinking of the word "stable" when using this distro, and this is definitely going to be my distro of choice from now on. If you're a fan of Mint I recommend givning this a try. Truely an amazing distro
After running MX 18.3 for years without the smallest hiccup I decided to upgrade. Installed Manjaro's flagship KDE version, looks beautiful out of the box, bleeding edge everything and bragging right sfor (sort of) running Arch BTW. From a clean install nothing but misery: screen freezes, conflicting dependencies, and more system freezes requiring a hard reboots. So I went back to MX, version 21.3 this time. Everything just works like charm. Stable >>>>>>>>>> bleeding edge for me (with a couple of flatpaks for apps I use regularly). Granted, it doesn't look very nice out of the box, and requires a couple of hours of ricing and tweaking. But once your done, it just works for years without a problem. Thanks to the MX team. I highly recommend MX to anyone looking for a highly customizable distro with a very rich collection of very useful MX packages and tools, and stability for years.
So far, Mx linux (Fluxbox) has worked best for my laptops (from around 2008). It works just great with 2 Gb of RAM and dual core CPU. I have opted for the Fluxbox edition for presumably being more lightweight than the xfce desktop environment. It is a 10 out of 10 distro. Everything works, just fine. I only need to figure out how to define my own key bindings. But I presume that must be somewhere in the manual. I have only quickly looked throught the "keys" config file. I need to check out how to modify the "applicatoin finder" to be launched from a key combination, and not from mouse clicking.
Version: 21.3 Rating: 1 Date: 2023-02-11 Votes: 0
Nope, nope and nope...
This distribution is sooo cluttered with applications out of the box it's crazy.
Opted for the KDE rendition which is 5.20 sadly. The kernel may be somewhat relevant but the interface or desktop environment certainly is not.
Perhaps I expected too much with the amount of hits it gets here for some reason.
For me, it's just way too cluttered in too many places. Just seems to take something easy and makes it difficult by adding in a ton of things from the get go.
Hard pass thanks!
Version: 21.3 Rating: 9 Date: 2023-02-11 Votes: 5
I first used years ago Zorin which became slow then I was using Sparky for a long while but I couldn't get both desktops to work, it finally became unstable and I was forced to find something else many people in different forums suggested, so I installed MX Linux. Wow! This is the best distro I've ever used, since switching to Linux more that 20 years ago! The distro is nearly perfect, more perfect that anything else I've found, in fact. Even the project website, like the distro itself, is very well thought out and executed. I've been able to do things with MX Linux that I've always wanted to do but couldn't, because of one technical limitation or another with each distro I've used over the years. It's very obvious that those behind MX Linux are dedicated to their users and not to corporate paying customers, who have very different needs and wants from average users. This distro is special in that I can run sysV or systemd for compatibility. I was able to just figure it out without very much help at all, that is testament to how well thought out this distro is.
I have used many distros, mainly based on Debian, but also Arch, Red Hat, Fedora. I have been using Mint for 2 years. I recently switched to MXLinux. With its stability and speed, it beats everything I've used so far. So far nothing has been a problem. It lacks consistency in the templates, but that's just a matter of aesthetics. This is my main work system at the moment. If you are looking for a system that will allow you to get started quickly and easily, or if you are switching from Windows, then only MXLinux. I give it 9/10 because the interface needs to be refined to make it consistent.
Version: 21.3 Rating: 7 Date: 2023-02-07 Votes: 0
I installed the XFCE version on an old Acer Aspire One laptop. Runs faster than Manjaro XFCE. You can see that the system is doing well with older computers. However... Turns out the Thunderbird version is 78! Whereas now it's 102. Hence I couldn't synchronize Thunderbird with my desktop computer.
Final try. So I tried installing Thunderbird in the latest version using snap. Attempting to install snap also failed!
Secondly, an attempt to install OnlyOffice failed: I found out that there is not enough RAM. This was no problem with Manjaro.
Distro looks nice however, it didn't meet my expectations.
After years as a distro-hopper, I have concluded that as far as quality, fit and finish, there are tiers when it comes to linux distros. Mint and MX would be the two frontrunners for stability and dependability(although to protect data, backup is a good idea, Fedora, Opensuse,Sparky, Pop OS are pretty much "there" in terms of stability and dependability, and just a matter of personal preference. Then comes the Arch based distros which have the newest packages, and plenty of software available from the AUR(which may also be the Achilles heel)these Arch distros are fun to play with, but breakage is a problem so backups are a must. Arch will break, just a matter of when so be prepared.
Version: 21.3 Rating: 9 Date: 2023-02-05 Votes: 0
Linux Mint is a very popular open-source operating system based on Ubuntu. Known for its ease of use and user-friendly interface, it makes it a great choice for both novice and experienced users. I like the way Linux mint offers a large selection of software packages and supports a wide range of hardware and its strong community support and regular updates to ensure a stable and secure system. Linux Mint is a solid option for those seeking a reliable and user-friendly Linux-based operating system.
I have been using it for my docker Ubuntu projects and so far I cannot complain, it stable efficient and very good for cloud computing requirements.
Version: 21.3 Rating: 1 Date: 2023-02-05 Votes: 0
MX Linux is probably the worst Linux distro I ever tried. The only good thing that I can say it has, is a good installer, but after that, it is worthless. It's slow. over bloated, and totally over rated. I tried all three versions of it, and the Fluxbox version of it was the best one, but using the Fluxbox version of antiX was far more superior. I see it always ranks as number one on DistroWatch, but somehow that just doesn't seem right. I know many people that use Linux, and not one of them recommend MX Linux to new users. Sure it has tons pf programs installed and many more in their package installer, but in reality, probably no one ever installs any of them, total waist. There are many more distros out there, that are so many better. Do yourselves a favor a try a different distro that is no doubt better and more user friendly than this piece of junk.
I have been running MX-Linux for five years now, and with KDE there is no better distro. It is fast and incredibly stable. As a former distro-hopper I find it impressively stable. Frequent updates, and the system has never broken on me. If I did manage to break something through my own carelessness there is always Timeshift to fall back on.
I read some complaints about it being "outdated". I would much rather have stability than cutting edge, and that is why MX-Linux is so stable and just works. It works well with all my old laptops as well as my new blazing fast desktop computer.
I know it has problems with secure boot, but windows is getting to be more of a pain than it is worth, especially Windows 11. I hardly use Windows 7(offline) for gaming ever since I started using Linux. I have total confidence in my MX Linux as far as security and the safety of my data, every day it gets easier to not use windows.
Having run MX now for the last 4 years (XFCE AHS for me) I find complaints of others about it breaking doesn't fit with my experiences at all, in fact, it runs so well I don't even think about it anymore and just used my computer without any concerns. I run Timeshift once a day scheduled in case... but I've never had to recover once in the last 4 years of use.. unlike others I have tried (Ubuntu based ones I've tested etc) I run a i5 10 series system with a 2.5Gbit onboard lan that needed to have the 5.10 kernel (therefore AHS) and a 3060ti that uses nvidia's driver just fine. for me, there isn't another system I would trust to not break, and I do test them out, usually each new release to see how things are progressing, so, I am not uninformed :) Thanks for reading :)
Version: 21.3 Rating: 1 Date: 2023-01-31 Votes: 0
I love the idea behind Debian-based distro's, stable and reliable and every package is available. The big downside is that MX breaks too easily and frequently, although this may be the fault of its corrupt package. I just cannot depend on this distro to manage my important work because I will not risk losing it. It is a shame because it seems very nice. It is just too delicate for my needs and I may as well go back to using Windows(jk). I currently use Mint which has never, I repeat never broken on me.
MX is the best distro in the Linux arena, along with Mint. Mint is more beginner oriented, whereas MX is geared toward people with some experience with Linux. MX is intuitive smooth and is equipped with all the tools necessary to keep the computer running as it should. MX is flexible in its ability to run SysVinit or Systemd, and has the most customization of the desktop in the Linux world(or any other). If I could wish for one feature, I would wish for a minimal option(ability to leave out some KDE apps without breaking the system).
Version: 21.3 Rating: 2 Date: 2023-01-23 Votes: 0
Nope. Not for me in the long term. Used it on and off for a few years, revisiting the latest release to see if... but no.
Easy install, but it's Debian - always many versions behind on many (actually, most) packages. Several packages I know should exist in the Debian 'world' could not be located. Support for more desktops would be welcome, along with the matching file managers and image viewers. Xfce has a pet spot on my dislikes list and is the default.
Overall - Ok for light tasks where I'm not in front of this all day long and get selective with software demands.
Version: 21.3 Rating: 8 Date: 2023-01-21 Votes: 4
Using MX Linux for ~10 years now, no major problem except jumping from v18.x to v20 forced me to reinstall... mainly 'coz I didn't pay attention to RSS feed & stopped reading the forums so... apt dist-upgrade had become clearly useless at that time. My bad, probably - still, I was really pissed off atm xD
Friendly, active and helpful community, for sure, a warm blessing for Linux beginners and casual users. No trolling, no arrogant Linux RTFMguru (you'd still have to RTFM tho xD but they'd help you to decypher it) experimented users quietly guiding people - and a few talented designers (damn, antech!).
I do appreciate the efforts to remove systemd's clusterfuxbloat while keeping the OS stable. The 3 main reasons I'd switch MX for another distro for my daily workflow are:
· I want to taste a true nosystemd Linux flavor (antiX, MX's uncle, could provide it, tho)
· I very rarely use MX custom tools - instead using GNU/Linux or xfce ones
· quitting Debian ecosystem - Arch's one could have been an alternative but systemd blah... - maybe Void, Obarun, some Slack? I don't know yet.
MX Linux KDE version upgraded using the back-port to Plasma 5.26.5, Framework 5.101.0, QT 5.15.7 wow speed usability configuration unmatched by any other distro while still able to use MX Linux tools this makes MX Linux the best of the best diffidently my main Debian daily driver.
There is nothing wrong with the original straight from the box version but it is using out dated KDE plasma etc. I have not as yet tried the XFCE version because I am much to happy using what I have just created. I was a 5 year Arch Linux user and had always been very happy with my choice still is my choice as far as an operating system until now.
Absolutely love this OS and the whole MX family! I use the xfce desktop with cairo dock installed too. This distro is packed with applications and runs very, very smoothly! I run the MX OS's on all my machines and have never had to re-install or fix anything. Talk about a "just works distro"! Mx has tons of features like the live USB maker tool for those of you that like to carry around a LIve Copy in you pocket. Yoy can add different types of persistence on your MX live USB's to save all your files and settings. You can create a snapshot ISO of your personally modified MX OS and share it with your friends with all the goodies already installed, files, applications and everything, how cool is that. Use timeshift to manually or automatically creat snapshots to save copies of your currently running system in case you mess something up so you can revert back to a time you select. I like the conky too which has a bunch of different options and is easy to add more configurations from downloadable sources. Mx has a great repository which actually includes multiple sources including testing repos and flatpacks. The MX help is outstanding! I use the forums all the time. There are always a ton of pros online with multiple thorough replies and the response time is fairly fast. I could go on and on but I would say just try it for yourself!
I use AHA; it is clean, responsive .. run out of the box if you guess the main graphic card (I use a laptop). Fast install, fast boot, stable in time .. it need more? For me it is enough! I am highly recommend it even to Windows users. No longer advanced knowledges required to operate it. You set an wifi password if you are not on cable LAN and that's it. Browser, e-mail client, office suite, usual tools for clipboard, screenshoot, calculator available in a blink of eye. What i see diferent? no longer terminal shortcut on taskbar .. but it could be added with a click of mouse.
Version: 21.3 Rating: 2 Date: 2023-01-16 Votes: 0
MX 19 and below were very stable, I was experimenting a lot and never had any serious issue. Now, it's very temperamental. Easy to screw up with the simplest of things.
It's pretty unresponsive slow with performance, save dialogs etc. No hibernate, often loses wifi and audio sometimes vanishes mysteriously. Firefox isn't GPU accelerated, had to install flatpak Chrome for this.
Oh and you can't even ask on their forum without getting banned but they really love when you say it's the best distro around.
Finally switched to Lubuntu, it has all! It uses only 144 megabytes ram after fast hdd boot vs 900 mb MX linux.
Version: 21.3 Rating: 9 Date: 2023-01-16 Votes: 0
MX Linux makes things easy for Linux newbies like me. Their online support is very good, usually there is somebody answering my questions within a few minutes. My only complaint is that it does not come with the latest edition of Thunderbird, thus I must install the latest version manually.
MX Linux is a perfect choice for beginners in Linux who are looking for simplicity and a user-friendly desktop experience. It’s not hard to adapt especially for users who are familiar with Ubuntu and Debian. With MX Linux, users get a wide range of software applications that work out of the box and are required on a day-to-day basis.
MX boots straight into the desktop, there's no Ubuntu-style choice of try-or-install. That's a good move because booting into a full desktop environment makes it easy for the user to connect to a wireless network or set the screen resolution. There's a desktop icon for the installer if or when you're ready to install it.
The installer is quite plain. First, it asks for the essential info it needs to know in order to install the language and keyboard layout to use, and the destination disk. Then the installation begins, and the progress bar moves along while the installer asks about account names, system services, and so on.
Some tasks you must do in order to install an OS, such as partitioning the disks, can inherently be quite complicated. MX doesn't try to hide this. If you ask for a custom install, it presents you with a big table that lists all the partitions on all the disks, with boxes to fill out, or check off, to choose or specify mount points, whether to format the partition, and so on.
This is one of the best ways of handling partitioning we've seen. It also demonstrates that MX doesn't bend over backwards to be as simple as possible. This is a distro for someone who has a bit of a clue what they're doing, and isn't afraid to learn. That's refreshing: there are lots of distros that are trying to be the Easiest Linux Ever, with Ubuntu, SUSE, and Red Hat all having or sponsoring efforts in that direction, and offshoots such as Linux Mint that make the experience even more polished.
There are a lot of Cons to MX21:
- Updates take a loooong time, in MX19 they felt like quick and smooth, now in MX21 the CPU and the
fan are under heavy load, sometimes for 40 minutes or longer.
- MX KDE froze the whole machine many times after inserting various USB devices, no reisuo possible
then.
- Repositories are by default only set to http instead of https, unsecure.
- You HAVE to either login with a password or you HAVE to enter the admin password every time you
want to connect to the internet, this sucks.
- XFCE consumes now 1 GB RAM in idle mode, the previous MX versions weren't that RAM hungry.
- Fiddling for hours with Seahorse to save passwords for Chrome based browsers, this drives one mad.
- MX snapshot tool is a joke. It works for 2 hours and then it realizes: Not enough space on disk -
why doesn't it check the space at first?
- MX Tools don't make this distro special, there are better alternatives:
Gnome-disks as replacement for MX USB Formatter, Etcher/ventoy as replacement for MX live USB Maker.
- ProtonVPN GUI doesn't work under MX21.
- Various .deb files don't install because of lacking dependencies.
- The look of MX on first boot isn't attractive.
Few Pros:
+ Live Persistance is noteworthy.
+ MX XFCE runs very solid.
Resume:
MX is only a derivate, the true Debian or other distros aren't much more difficult to install and use.
The only distro that has installed without a problem on hundreds of computers for the computer re-purposing program that I am involved with. I can choose Sys-V or systemd, and have access to the best tools and a vast array of apps. This distro is solid, and many newbies run it without trouble after some brief training. Some of these newbies are residents of elderly care homes who surf the net and check e-mail, and have never had a computer go down due to the operating system(there were some hardware failures). Mint is great for this purpose as well, but is not quite as rugged as MX, but far better than Arch derivatives which tend to self destruct too easily.
I have installed this twice today, to discover that it is not possible to have a bootable encrypted installation. This immediately makes it useless to me as a primary fully installed operating system.
As a live system it's no better, as it cannot mount a LUKS encrypted drive:
"udevil: denied 73: fstype 'crypto_LUKS' is not an allowed type" will come up even when using the "cryptsetup" command.
No encryption = no security.
At best, it's a live system that can be remastered & snapshotted on the fly, which is something that can be done on quite a few other distros all of which are much faster. MX Linux is like treacle.
And although MX Linux is based upon antiX which is based upon Debian, it's not giving anything back to Debian.
The remastering tools work only on antiX derivatives, which is not very community spirited.
There's nothing that can be done on MX Linux that cannot be done on Slax, the difference being that MX Linux starts as an ISO of 1.5 to 2.4 GiB that is quite likely to break as bloat is removed, whereas Slax starts as an ISO of less than 300 MiB that is not likely to break as modules are added or subtracted.
Again to compare, both MX Linux & its website look dated, & the documentation is all over the place, whereas Slax & it's website are up to date & concise & collected.
I really don't see why people rave about MX Linux, I really don't see the 'wow' factor, & I have no compelling reason to use it.
Rock solid! Simply the best portable distro, that performs like an installed distro.
You can run it live or installed and it is the same!! Has many options for how to set up the boot so you can fine tune it to what work for you the best, very flexible. Total freedom....
I was looking for a stable portable distribution for a long time, for more than 15 years, my main disto was knoppix, but the last almost 2 years first have tried the Mint and Mint failed to deliver, and finally i used(tested) in 2022 as my main disto the MX Linux.
For me the MX Linux is the clear winner.
Don't see what is so great about this distro? The initial updates took forever, the user interface looks like a old throwback to the 90's.
The install was rather old school, the updates run in a terminal this isn't even close to the overall feel of a native Debian install.
Granted I guess if your looking for a lower impact distro for older hardware or have some attraction to old school interfaces maybe MX fills that need. Otherwise, I don't understand the attraction except that maybe popularity on Distrowatch creates more interest.
Be interested in knowing how many stick with MX after using for awhile? I know I will move on rather quickly myself.
MX is the best linux distribution. I'm running the fluxbox versionon my 15 year old dual core intel with 4GB of ram and it is extremly quick with only about 650MB idle and around 800MB whilve viewing videos from popular video sites. opening additional programs only adds minimal ram. I'm also running MX on my i7 PC and it is blazing quick. I've had no issues whatsoever and all of my hardware is fully recognized by MX. The screen brightness adjustment works flawlessly. this distro includes all of the tools needed to get working from the start including the full suite of libreoffice and a powerful live usb maker tool. adding programs is very easy as it includes a number of software installers which do all of the work for you. the opera and firefox browsers run very fast. an automatic updater is also inlcuded plus tons of tools. it is very customizable where it allows you to tailor the destop to your liking. full disk encryption is included. this has got to be the most resource and hardware efficient distrubution. My hat goes off to the antix and MX teams thank you, you rock!
I have been running MX-Linux for five years now, and with KDE ever since they released the KDE version. It is fast and incredible stable. As a former distro-hopper I find it boringly stable ;) Frequent updates that never brakes anything for me. If I manage to break something my self there is always Timeshift that fixes it.
I read here some who complains about it being "outdated". I dont know exactly what they mean by that, but if it is, I guess thats why MX-Linux is so stable and just works. It works well with my 13 years old laptop as well as my state of the art desktop computer.
The only drawback is that it doesnt have secure boot so I easily can use Windows 11. But that is not a biggie since I only use Windows (10) for gaming ever since I started using MX-Linux. I have read somewhere that it can be tweaked to use secure boot so you can dual boot, but it is not worth the hassle (until Windows 10 cant be used for gaming anymore at least)
It is so intuitive
It has all tools with GUI interface
It even has Grub prober build in the GUI
I have never seen a Distro whihc is so feature packed but doesn't feel like bloated.
if you want a no nonsense distro without the hassle of updating the system every day then MX Linux is great.
The XFCE version looks a little dated but thats not a distro issue. I previously install MX linux an then left it for some reason. I recently came back to it because I had to partition my disk and Arch won't let me do it. So I install the USB and used the installer to launch Gparted and then partitioned the disk.
I have used Mx linux a few years ago and I liked it, but I had a few issues with it, probably some bugs or some issues that would cause the system not to end up as my distro of choice. Now, in 2022 (and the beginning of 2023) I have downloaded the latest version (21.2.1) and I opted for the Fluxbox flavour, since the xfce desktop environment is not as lightweight as I need it for my laptops with 2 Gb of RAM and dual core CPU. I was rather pleased with the new look and features that Fluxbox had to offer. I was expecting a rather minimal (more like Antix style) window manager, but I have to say, Fluxbox seem to be at least as good as xfce when it comes to usability.
Mx Linux fluxbox has so far ticked all the boxes when it comes to what I need from a Linux distribution: It can be used as a live environment, it also have version for 32 bit computers, you can easily search and locate packages and execute programs, you can easily install whatever packages you need using either the terminal (apt) or the GUI package/software manager. It also offers a neat selection of backgrounds and it comes with the great Mx tools packaged as well.
Overall is one of the best distros I have ever tested, and it will become my daily driver on my laptops and not only. Linux Mint, for example is great, but for older computers not so much. What Linux Mint cannot do, then Mx fluxbox can do for older hardware (And also can be used on new hardware, with proprietary nvidia drivers and so on).
Congratulations to the Mx team. You guys are awesome!
Holy cow this is this bad. This is not for beginners. There is just way too much manual work with this one.
Not exactly certain what or who this is for. As a daily driver, no way.
With so many choices out there, this one is not even on my radar.
Straight away, had quite a few hardware issues which honestly was quite surprising.
Performance was also lacking. I suppose due to the hardware issues.
Tried the Xfce edition which out of the box was missing a lot of applications and missing functionality. There is no Software Center either.
Reminds me of Garuda which is equally terrible.
Sorry not for me.
This distro never fails to boot and run well on hundreds of friends and family computers. This distro has the best disk tools bar-none in the linux world, and this a very well thought out intuitive user oriented distro. There are other distros that I like and use as well(Mint and Spiral Linux), but MX linux is so good everyone just needs to try it and it will sell itself. Designed and polished for the user, and yet has a flexibility that you cannot find in other distros(you have the freedom to choose SysVinit or SystemD). Rock solid with a debian base, and plenty of software to choose from.
I’ve tried MX on and off for a few years, it seems interesting at first, but then the problems arise, which is why I haven’t used it as a daily driver.
Positives:
-nice wallpapers (but I can get those easily elsewhere)
cons:
-ancient software
-bloated
-sluggish
-buggy
-crashes often
MX seems to always have one deal-breaking bug or another. I think personally Xfce is a bad choice for a desktop, I’d rather have KDE as the default desktop environment (which has been pretty light lately, in comparison to Xfce)
I was thinking it could be an Xfce thing for the sluggish desktop and crashes, but Xfce has worked better on other desktops like Linux Mint, Endeavor OS, Devuan and a few more I tried it on.
I’m moving on from this bloated mess, it’s a shame, because I thought things would’ve gotten better a couple years later.
I rethink this distro is alright, but In my case, this distro has a problem with the fonts, these are rectangular and intelligible; as a workstation its pretty smooth and feels great, not like fedora that after 37, which stops working well on my pc, I am not a server user but I was interested in a fedora alternative with dnf package manager.
I think the developers need to stop rushing out new versions without having much quality control it seems. I haven’t gotten any help when I asked in the forums with full details of what happened when this distro crashed. I think I’m going to just give up here with this distro, and try another server-centric distro.
I have tried a lot of Linux distros over the years and I decided to try this one to see if it lived up to the hype. I had it setup just like I wanted it. I moved all of my files over to it and then the problems began. I noticed it drained my laptop battery like crazy. It appeared to be using Nvidia drivers when I wanted it to just use Intel (I have an Optimus based laptop). Normally, this is not a problem on other distos. No matter what I tried, it appeared to always use the Nvidia drivers, even after I removed all trace of Nvidia from the system and the battery continued to drain. Next, a system update took out the Bluetooth. No matter what I tried, I could not get Bluetooth to work. I decided to go to their official forum and it was down for weeks! Their website constantly goes down along with their repositories. For some reason, updates will not install randomly as well.
Mx seems half baked to me. The fact they can't keep their website or repositories up is a very bad sign. When the forums came back up I found out Bluetooth stopped working for everyone and there was no fix in sight. People loudly complained about the forum being down for weeks. This is amateur hour. I'm pretty sure this OS is not secure at all either.
Just installed XFCE on an ASUS EEE PC with an Intel Atom core. Install was very smooth. Works very well. I have about a decade of experience with Linux OS's. I use my machines for office tasks, music, and web access. Prefer Debian for my larger machines because of it's stability. I use OpenSuse TumbleWeed on two HP laptops because OpenSuse seems to integrate well with HP machines and is recommended as the linux distro by HP itself for their machines. Was trying to find a distro to restore this tiny EEE PC to usefulness. Had previously used Xubuntu. Wanted a 32-bit install, which Xubuntu no longer has. Tried various Porteus installs, which were cool, but not seamless - wifi didn't communicate, disc partitioning was difficult. After reading a FOSS review, I tried MX. It was bigger than I was looking for, but so far it works beautifully.
I have the XFCE desktop, which runs very smoothly on an old netbook. I haven't figured out why Firefox sometimes locked up on me, but I've had no such issue with Opera. The installation was much easier than with Debian, Arch, or bsd based distros that I tried in the past. MX Linux recognized all the drivers; encrypting the HD was also painless. The people in the forum are very nice and helpful to the nth degree. All this has allowed me to stay with MX for the last 3 years and effectively ended my distro hopping adventures.
I tried the KDE Plasma version and it works well with touchscreen laptops. XFCE versions of other Debian-based distros would freeze on the touchscreen laptop which is what caused me to try the KDE Plasma version of MX Linux. It runs like a dream on the KDE Plasma version, so I'm pleased that I switched. (I only gave it a 9 because the installer can be a bit tricky with regard to the whole Grub-EFI-legacy-[encrypted or not][swap or not] boot-loader hornet nest and also because I prefer less preinstalled apps.) So suggestions for improvement would be to create an installer with an option to automatically detect whether the device is EFI or Legacy and then automatically install the boot-loader to a properly configured file system with a minimum of user input.
I think KDE version is great. I got performance, stability with the polished modern KDE interface.
Xfce version is also good. I was using the xfce version on my another old computer for 2 years. And let me say this, it was the best stable linux experiment for me. I couldn't find a reason to remove it for 2 years.
I used other distros.(ubuntu,zorin,mint,manjaro,endeavour,fedora,peppermint,pop..etc) But if you want to the real long term stability and performance, don't stop to try MX Linux.
You absolutely do not need to do anything to break something, it breaks by itself. Then the sound will disappear, then localization, then Bluetooth will stop working, then flash drives and hard drives will stop being mounted. She lives her life! I have never seen such a thing anywhere. Maybe this is of course the problem of mx linux in general, I love debian, but I no longer have any patience to poke around in this distro. It's like buying an old crumbling car - you constantly have to fix something.
basically this distribution offers what you also get in the various other ubuntu or debian spins - nothing is up-to-date, a lot of additional repositories needed if you want to have at least some packages up-to-date ... not sure why this distro is so popular here - it does nothing different compared to other distributions and thus keeps a lot of the disadvantages of other distributions.
Its not even a good base to start of, just another addition of "more of the same" that Linux Mint tried in the past and also failed on the long run ...
I have installed this twice, only to discover that it is not possible to have a bootable encrypted installation. This immediately makes it useless to me as a primary fully installed operating system.
As a live system it's no better, as it cannot mount a LUKS encrypted drive: "udevil: denied 73: fstype 'crypto_LUKS' is not an allowed type" will come up even when using the "cryptsetup" command. No encryption = no security.
At best, it's a live system that can be remastered & snapshotted on the fly, which is something that can be done on quite a few other distros all of which are much faster.
And although MX Linux is based upon antiX which is based upon Debian, it's not giving anything back to Debian.
The remastering tools work only on antiX derivatives, which is not very community spirited.
There's nothing that can be done on MX Linux that cannot be done on Slax, the difference being that MX Linux starts as an ISO of 1.5 to 2.4 GiB that is quite likely to break as bloat is removed, whereas Slax starts as an ISO of less than 300 MiB that is not likely to break as modules are added or subtracted.
Again to compare, both MX Linux & its website look dated, & the documentation is all over the place, whereas Slax & it's website are up to date & concise & collected.
I really don't see why people rave about MX Linux, I really don't see the 'wow' factor, & I have no compelling reason to use it.
I’ve tried MX on and off for a few years, it seems interesting at first, but then the problems arise, which is why I haven’t used it as a daily driver.
Positives:
-nice wallpapers (but I can get those easily elsewhere)
cons:
-ancient software
-sluggish
-buggy
-crashes often
MX seems to always have one deal-breaking bug or another. I think personally Xfce is a bad choice for a desktop, I’d rather have KDE as the default desktop environment (which has been pretty light lately, in comparison to Xfce)
I was thinking it could be an Xfce thing for the sluggish desktop and crashes, but Xfce has worked better on other desktops like Linux Mint, Endeavor OS, Devuan and a few more I tried it on.
Overall, I wouldn’t recommend MX Linux, I think now I’m going to stop coming to evaluate this distro every few years, it’s a shame, because I had hopes that this would be years later revisiting it.
Rock solid on everything I've run it on. Runs well on old hardware. Simply the best distro for daily use. I have used both the XFCE and KDE editions. Both of them work exceptionally well. Setup is easy, but the process for setting it up as a second OS needs to be automated. Even an old 32 bit Asus netbook with very limited resources runs smoothly and quickly with the XFCE version. I have bounced around Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Ubuntu Studio, Debian, Mint, Fedora (god no), and a host of other smaller ones. At the end of the day this is what's on my system.
Been distro hopping for a while. I think it's safe to say that it is over with this one. I'm using the KDE version. I had no problems with installing it from a live USB. The setup was quite intuitive and any questions you might have, have answers in MX's user manuals. This OS is ready to go out of the box. The only thing that I really didn't like was the 'Conky' thing which you can toggle on/off with a single click. Additionally, I installed Matlab and used it without any problems (quite important for me). I think this distro will be my daily driver in the lab. (PS: I have an ancient workstation which basically starts screaming the moment a new Windows update arrives. Not with MX though.)
Holy cow this is this bad. This is not for beginners. There is just way too much manual work with this one.
Not exactly certain what or who this is for. As a daily driver, no way.
With so many choices out there, this one is not even on my radar.
Straight away, had quite a few hardware issues which honestly was quite surprising.
Performance was also lacking. I suppose due to the hardware issues.
Tried the KDE edition which out of the box was missing Discover. There is no Software Center either.
Reminds me of ubuntu which is equally terrible.
Sorry not for me.
I was using Xubuntu 18.04 LTS until it finally became unstable and I was forced to upgrade to Xubuntu 22.04 LTS. I hadn't realized how far Ubuntu has run off the rails with Snap in four years, so I installed MX Linux. Wow! This is the best distro I've ever used, since switching to Linux more that 20 years ago! The distro is nearly perfect, more perfect that anything else I've found in life in a very long time, in fact. Even the project website, like the distro itself, is very well thought out and executed. I've been able to do things with MX Linux that I've always wanted to do but couldn't, because of one technical limitation or another with each distro I've used over the years. It's very obvious that those behind MX Linux are dedicated to their users and not to corporate paying customers, who have very different needs and wants from average users. There's a very good reason why MX Linux occupies the number one position in the DistroWatch popularity ranking. Those who contribute to the project have earned it!
I like a lot MX Linux, not much to complain. I have encountered one odd problem which has arised few times when trying to update but not so big deal after all as things otherwise works well. I'm using XFCE Desktop Environment which leaves me always slightly unhappy with the features even though I like it more than the other official alternatives (KDE/Fluxbox).
One big reason I hopped on MX Linux was that I could have more software options. I have need of 3 good browsers at least and MX Linux delivers Chromium, Firefox, Opera, and Brave Browser. This makes me happy user.
I started with Linux in 1998, tested SUSE, Redhat, Debian, Ubuntu, L- and X-ubuntu, Mint but this one...WOW !
"MX Linux" works flawlessly on an powerbook from 2013, recognizes the wlan chipset (which was NOT recognized by Lubuntu), runs super smooth and stable, comes with useful tools pre-installed, transparent terminal, works super with flatpaks which makes package-management easy, I am totally happy with this and I think I have a new favourite distro. My son (11) works already and is super happy with it.
MX is near perfect, rock solid dependable smooth and fast distro. The Plasma DE on MX is very intuitive and a joy to use. The MX tools are the best set of apps to help users administrate very intuitively(Backups, images, restore etc). A very well thought out distro, with no glaring weaknesses, and very polished. I came to MX after using Manjaro and Endeavour, which are two very nice Arch distributions, but they both disintegrated after a time during updates which is why I now use Debian based distros exclusively. Debian-based is much harder to break than is Arch-based, debian packes are older, but I would rather have a system that I can depend on than being cutting edge.
I love the idea behind Debian based distros, stable and secure. In fact I've been a Debian user since almost day one and tried all of them, including MX and Ubuntu. The big downside is that packages are old and when dependencies are not up to date breakage occurs, although this may be the fault of the package manager. I just could not depend on these distros anymore to manage my daily work because I will not risk losing it. It is a thing of the past now. I currently use Arch which has never, I repeat never broken on me on all sorts of hardware configurations.
Computing should not be this fun!!! I have the XFCE version, but had i downloaded the KDE version, I would be tweaking even more. The MX tools are so wonderful!!! There is literally nothing i cannot do. I installed Conky Manager and a few other fun addons as well. This OS is beyond stable. MX is also super fast. On a 10 year old laptop with 16 Gigs of ram and a 1 T SSD, this OS flys! Don't even hesitate! Download this OS and use it today!!!
MX is so boring. No glitches, no fixing, no headaches, no ubuntu tampering of debian. I use the XFCE version. It is stable and just works and makes Debian user friendly with the awesome Package Installer. The built in Samba config is a major plus to easily share folders over the network.
The driver tool is awesome, as before switching to MX, I would experience screen freeze periodically with the previous OS. With MX there has been zero screen freeze after installing the NVIDIA drivers.
This OS gets out of your way and allow you to accomplish your tasks at hand. All my devices connects without any issues. Printer, scanner, camera all working with my required software. Highly recommend.
When I first started looking into Linux after getting rather disappointed with Windows (and the constant crash on updates) I found Distrowatch,.. I read all I could on how to get the one windows program to run on Linux and gave it a shot.. First with Debian, Ubuntu, and my first success was with Mint kde, but, issues with all of them almost made me give up.. (sound glitchs, screen tearing and confusion on installs )
I kept looking and tried more obscure ( ie. lower on the popular sidebar :) ) but, alas, nothing really fit.. Then, I saw MX, moving up the charts here.. and better still the hits/day scoring (as I considered it a better indication of it working well for others (ei. a better representation overall) So.. I installed it and... well I'm still here :) It has done everything I needed it to do and much more as I've now gone through 4 releases to date and none have given me one hiccup at all.. (others may differ of course, not all distro's work on all setups perfectly).
So, there is some history with MX from me.. Great stable OS, and Dev's that are hot on issues asap, and a great support group that helps those in need.. Thanks :)
The OS keeps out of the way and it has all the things one needs for day-to-day computing.
I use Xfce.
Nothing is missing as in many other distro's. For instance (and so important like always) producing a live-cd via an MX Snapshot ISO and bags of other usefull applications.
It doesn't use too much memory, it is flashy fast and there are never problems with updates.
Very, very stable. I use MX for years now. This after and/or aside nice PCLinuxOS, Mint, even Ubuntu-versions and more.
A blessing it would be in my opinion when MX would be rolling. I hate new installs for the overhead of a lot of work after it.
No complaint until now, so a 10 out of 10.
I've been using MX for 3 months already.
I switched from Mint which I found limiting as I left my novice stage. Now I feel MX is the perfect distro for me. There are a few reasons for that.
Firstly - stability. Based on Debian Stable, which is the trademark of its own, the distro isn't prone to breakages at all. And it's got the huge package base, supplemented by software from MX repos, being often updated (incl. regular releases of Firefox, instead of ESR!).
Secondly - flexibility. It shouldn't matter whether it's older or newer hardware - thanks to AHS repos, MX should work on both. Moreover, it offers a 32-bit ISO.
Thirdly - ease to use. My DE of choice is Xfce, which doesn't get in the user's way and it's kinda intuitive. It's also low on resources and perfectly customisable.
Fourthly - MX Tools. More geared towards advanced users, but designed in a way that a newbie can get along quite well. Especially ISO snapshots are a killer feature - the ability to have an own copy of OS on a USB stick, ready to be booted, is something I wondered how could I live without during my 10 months with Mint.
Two small cons are an installer, which is a bit more technical than usual Calamares or Ubiquity and rather bland default theming, but that's not something you can't get used to.
Overall, the distro ticks all of my boxes for a great Linux experience. You should definitely check it out, if you haven't by any means.
Still the king, and chugging along doing the work that needs to be done. KDE version is best and XFCE not far behind. Solid and faster than average with the best set of tools available in the Linux world. Choose between sysV and systemD, and enjoy whichever. Debian is the backbone and the software selection is great. If there is a shortcoming it could be said that the ISO could be slimmed down to be as fast as possible. I would love to have a bare-bones MX that I could build out. This is a minor issue, if an issue at all really. It can be counted on to be reliable.
I will just add this to the MX tally...
Been using the 21 version since the release, some two years ago, and this is really a top-notch distribution
My desktop PC runs on Debian, really the grandfather of MX, and on the Lenovo laptop I tried to run several distros. Lenovo is not the most Linux-friendly hardware, so I had my troubles with different distros...but MX just worked out of the box.
I only missed my favorite old-skool MATE desktop, so I recently installed it on MX. Now, MX and MATE do not play nice together, but I managed up till now to solve any problem that occurred. As a consequence MX, with MATE desktop, will remain on my Lenovo laptop until its shelf life runs out. So, in conclusion:
Really nice distro, very intuitive desktop environment, no worries-no prob install and operations.
The scope and number of apps and programs is somewhat overwhelming. Most users will not even need half of all the programs that come with MX. Rookie users will have to settle for the default desktop managers, but they all operate perfectly. But remember: MX is Linux, so every feature can be reconfigured and/or replaced.
MX gives me peace, quiet and stability. Sometimes I just lean back in my chair and just stare at the system, and I praise myself lucky that I found such a brilliant OS.
Fantastic Distro! Their tools, the snapshot ISO creator tool! ... the devs have the right mentality, and the support group.. just Fantastic!
Having used Debian, mint and mepis for a long long time, MX hits the spot. XFCE rocks! KDE is damn good too! The configuration seems spot on, the stability is OUTSTANDING, and a great mix of already installed software.
I use MX for my daily desktop machine, my laptops, service computers and more. Using MX since version 17, it has only improved and gotten better and better with each version.
You may have tried other linux... but unless you have tried MX you are missing something!
I used the Xfce version, which I preferred over the other variant (except Fluxbox which I didn't test) on an Dell Latitude E7240.
Easy to install, setting up dual boot with windows was no problem at all on my system. Everything worked out of the box. Some minor things(e.g. brightness changes with Fn in steps of 2 instead of 1) or was very easily resolved with the forum or the documentation.
Easy to install apps as long as they are Debian packages.
Not so easy - 3 different GUI preinstalled apps for installing & updating packages, but only synaptic has a easy accessible archive to resolve problems with updating, installing and removing apps. Orphaned packages not consistent over the package managers.
Flat-package and App-image broke after some base system update and could be revived by manual reinstalling some dependencies. (the same packages worked without problems in Mint).
Easy to adjust appearance and behavior of Xfce to my preferences.
User experience and default parameters are for me a little less consistent as Mint Linux. That it's less polished and pleasing to eye was for me not relevant.
After using it now about 3 month as primary system, it's a close race with mint xfce with open end for me.
Easy to customize, rock solid and all major packages available.
Debian based so no problems getting apps.
The XFCE version is to my opinion the best.
I use it together with polybar and albert and plank as launchers.
I don't use the XFCE panel (bar).
On older hardware still good performance.
Installs as a breeze, continues in the same time it asks you for your information.
Tried Gnome spins, like Fedora and Ubuntu, but keep returning to MX Linux.
No more Arch or desktops with Gnome or Plasma anymore for me.
Great tools!
You can make a snapshot of your installation, put it on an USB stick and install it on another PC.
I tried it, with my laptop, desktop and even on my old Imac.
MX Linux is a remarkable Linux distribution that offers a perfect blend of stability, performance, and user-friendliness. Based on Debian's "Stable" branch, it benefits from Debian's extensive software library while maintaining its own identity. The default Xfce desktop is fast, responsive, and intuitive, with a sleek and modern design that is easy on the eyes. However, for those who prefer alternative desktop environments, separate editions with KDE Plasma and Fluxbox are also available.
One of the standout features of MX Linux is its simplicity and ease of use. The operating system is designed to be accessible to both novice and advanced users, with straightforward configuration and settings that are easy to navigate. Additionally, MX Linux is highly stable, making it an ideal choice for those who prioritize reliability. The medium-sized footprint also means that it runs well on older hardware, providing a great option for users who want to breathe new life into their aging machines. Overall, MX Linux is a fantastic distribution that offers an excellent desktop experience without sacrificing performance or stability.
The installer: it had some odd quirks. First: I couldn't under any circumstances change the layout of the partition order.... for example, let's say partition 1, p1 was boot, p2 was root, and p3 was home.... If it previously had been p1 boot p2 home and p3 root (because the format for the installer, using remaining space, etc. was the worst I've seen since salix. It's unintuitive and outdated.) So even when going to an outside disk/partition manager, creating a new layout, creating the partitions maually, it refused to let me change the order. Even though I had created a new layout, it still saw p2 as root even after a reboot. I eventually decided to leave them and try it anyway using the up arrow to "use the remainder of the disk" (I shouldn't have to do that in 2023.) So, for this reason, the loss of 1 point. (Even if this issue is isolated to the AHS edition, the installer is still outdated).
The Positives: The workaround for not having systemd is pid 1 works great, basically just keeping systemd installed and referencing it like any other library. The flatpack addition is a big plus, it had all the modern mesa / vulkan installed by default. It's already set up for testing and backport repos which all work great. The updater seems like a synaptic frontend with extra features. My steam games (proton), etc. worked flawlessly out of the box even with the stock MX kernel, I eventually installed Liquorix and the system has been running fantasic for months now. The AHS edition, is stable but with the added benefit of the newer firmware and graphic stacks, audio, cpu, etc. pulled in (I had been doing this on other distros (namely Devuan) for a few years now. So the fact that I now have more free time, makes this Distro a huge plus!
Others: Going on almost 3 months now, the laptop has had only one issue, the default kernel would perpetually start the laptop with screen brightness almost off, was having to brighten it on each boot. I installed the Liquorix kernel (which is in the repo) and this issue was immediatly fixed.
Final thoughts: I can easily recommend this distro to anyone for any purpose, I can't belive it took me so long to try it. As a previous reviewer had mentioned, the installer has some quirks, if you're trying to dual-boot, it's always best to back things up first. If you're looking to scrap Windows all together (my recommendation) As a single-o/s computer this distro works great, fixes basically everything wrong with Debian's core policies.
MX is Still the one solid as a rock, dependable and going as strong as ever. I use this distro to rescue others, and my FIL and his friends in retirement home use it and love it. Can handle rough use from newbies, and yet with plasma it is pretty intuitive for them to figure out. Even now after using for years MX still amazes and surprises me. There are doctors offices that I do business with that are happy with MX as well. Not having to worry about the security weakness of MS is a load off their minds.
I first installed Mx Linux in late 2018 and have continuously upgraded to all versions up to 21.3 and each time I have appreciated the extensive documentation that both in the live and on the installed version appears directly on the desktop! It is a manual that in Italian is no less than 249 pages, fully translated that guide you through system preparation, installation and maintenance.
Using this distro on a work computer I appreciate so much the stability ( it comes from Debian Stable and not Sid like Ubuntu) because it never crashes: of course the packages are less updated than on Arch, but if you really need it there is the test repository with much more updated packages and it is active flatpack with everything up to date.
During one installation grub got corrupted, but turned the pc back on with the installation stick and looked at the manual I ran MX Boot Repair which recognized both Windows and Linux installation. On reboot everything worked.
This is not an S.O. for gaming, it is for those who need security at work!
Before I begin, I would like to clarify that the purpose of this text is not to gratuitously attack MX Linux, but rather to provide a constructive critical analysis of the operating system, highlighting the negative points that may affect the user experience.
MX Linux is a Debian-based operating system that has gained popularity in recent years, especially among users looking for a low-resource alternative and ease of use. However, despite its advantages, MX Linux still has some negative points that need to be addressed.
One of the main negatives of MX Linux is the lack of an easy-to-understand installation guide for users. Although the installation process itself is not particularly difficult, the steps involved can be confusing for inexperienced users. MX Linux does not have a step-by-step installation wizard, which can be a hurdle for new or less experienced users.
Another negative point of MX Linux is that in some cases, the installation operation can damage other operating systems that are already installed on a dual-boot system. Many users have reported issues when trying to install MX Linux on a system that already has Windows or another operating system installed. This can be a big problem for users who rely on a dual-boot system for work or study.
Additionally, another problem with MX Linux is the lack of detailed documentation for advanced users. Although the operating system is easy to use for most users, some more experienced users may encounter problems when trying to customize the system or make advanced tweaks. The lack of detailed documentation and support can make solving these problems difficult and frustrating.
Another issue that users have with MX Linux is that it is not as up-to-date as other Linux distributions. This can be a problem for users who need more recent features or who depend on specific software that may not be supported in MX Linux.
Furthermore, MX Linux may present hardware compatibility issues on some systems. Although the operating system is generally compatible with most modern devices, some users have reported hardware problems, such as issues with drivers or performance problems on older systems.
In summary, MX Linux has many positive points, such as low resource consumption, ease of use, and stability. However, it also presents some negative points, such as the lack of detailed documentation, hardware compatibility problems, and problems with the installation process on dual-boot systems. If you are thinking of using MX Linux, it is important to be aware of these issues and consider them when making your decision.
Installed Mx-Linux XFCE: Installed WebullDesktop, when add to panel the app don't show right the icon and really I dislike the XFCE desktop, seems to me much more polished Mint Cinnamon. in the middle I see many things to like in MX-Linux and I decide to install the Budgie desktop to give a try. This is it!!! All is working perfectly now, the system is the most lightweight, nice and responsive, easy to use what I see in all my life of distro hoping.
Mx-Linux gives all the necessary tools to made the system easy to use, practical, customizable...
With 4GB Ram, using Firefox, TuxKarts there is not use of swap at disk at all!! I see the swappiness is setted by default to 15!!! Nice touch by the developers and seeing the htop very clean I understand how much love is put in this distro.
I have been using the 21.3 kde plasma version for 1 month. I was very pleased and surprised by the speed of the system. I have an old i5 that is nothing worth saying anything about and it now behaves like a brand new cutting edge laptop.
I did not encounter any problems and everything runs well, wired, wireless, file system, usb keys, nothing jams it.
The system runs well using a fraction of the available resources.
Graphics support is smooth and movies and music play well without lag.
I may load a few games on it later on to get a better feel for the graphics drivers quality.
Overall a very fast, usable and stable system, I really enjoy using it.
If you don't like Systemd, I don't see the point of using this distro when you could just use Devuan. They not only removed Systemd, they also have support for Runit and OpenRC, aside from just SysVinit. Plus, it's not some heavily customized, glossy distro unlike MX Linux. When you enable all these fancy widgets and background processes, it kills the point of using a lightweight DE like Xfce. Those "MX Tools" are so useless that you might as well just stay on Linux Mint (theirs are better). It's not hard to install Package Update Indicator (taskbar notification for new updates, can be worked with Synaptic or GNOME Package Updater) or Timeshift (for system backups), for instance.
I recently tried the fantastic Live USB Maker to create an encrypted thumb drive with persistence to, initially, boot into my MBP with a dead dGPU. Run with the Dolphin's videos on creating a usb with persistence and remastering it certainly helped a lot.
Then I figured why not just boot the Mac to MX Linux on this usb drive instead, since I rarely use the Mac as a daily driver. I was not hopeful as I read about the linux wifi driver issue with this old MBP. However, wifi came up right away, even before I unblocked the b43 driver. It's been a smooth sailing operation ever since. Many thanks to the devs for creating this fantastic distro!
Continues to be dependable, reliable and smooth as butter. Using systemD for software compatibility, and just keeps chugging along. So good its almost boring, stays out of the users way and provides excellent tools to prevent or recover from self made catastrophe. This distro has stood the test of time and remains at the top with other great distros(Debian & Mint). There is one slight bugaboo, if we could have a bare-bones KDE version it would be ultimate.These Devs have thought of just about every contingency a person can face and built a distro to handle it.
I have installed this twice, only to discover that it is not possible to have a bootable encrypted installation. This immediately makes it useless to me as a primary fully installed operating system.
As a live system it's no better, as it cannot mount a LUKS encrypted drive:
"udevil: denied 73: fstype 'crypto_LUKS' is not an allowed type" will come up even when using the "cryptsetup" command.
No encryption = no security.
At best, it's a live system that can be remastered & snapshotted on the fly, which is something that can be done on quite a few other distros all of which are much faster. MX Linux is like treacle.
And although MX Linux is based upon antiX which is based upon Debian, it's not giving anything back to Debian!
The remastering tools work only on antiX derivatives, which is not very community spirited...
There's nothing that can be done on MX Linux that cannot be done on Slax, the difference being that MX Linux starts as an ISO of 1.5 to 2.4 GiB that is quite likely to break as bloat is removed, whereas Slax starts as an ISO of less than 300 MiB that is not likely to break as modules are added or subtracted.
Again to compare, both MX Linux and its website look dated, the documentation is all over the place, whereas Slax and its website are up to date, concise and collected.
I really don't see why people rave about MX Linux, I really don't see the 'wow' factor, and I have no compelling reason to use it.
For me nine only for the documentation and the tools created to ease the use for newbies.
Unfortunately 0 cause:
Release after release they don't solve the issue created by network manager to users which have a D-Link DW-L 131 Rev. E1 (the same which still persists release after release in Fedora) which makes connection tries loop never ending without the ability to connect to the hot spot.
It could be maybe easily solved updating NetworkManager or switching to connman cause with almost all distros with an up to date NetworkManager or connman the connection is established flawlessly.
Connection works flawlessly also with a simple wpa_supplicant config file piped with dhclient (the way I use on my Devuan Minimal personally crafted daily driver) to get the address with the same usb dongle which doesn't work in MX-Linux and Fedora.
They could get rid of systemd.
Only aesthetically but it matters, the splash screen seems to come directly from the seventies.
For who has working usb dongles it worths a lot more.
One of the best, most stable linux distro's ever. I have tried many and this one flat out works.
The dev's put a lot of time into creating great tools and supporting it. I use my computer hard, and MX Linux not only withstands the load, it excels at being my daily work load. And the support groups is awesome, as well as listening and responding to user requests. THE best linux forum I have been on!!!
Their snapshot tool is better than any i have found, and creates a solid backup / snapshot that can move to new hardware, in or out of a VM.. truly in a class by it self! The entire system runs amazing, and using the AHS repos you have VERY near the latest kernels and drivers out there.
It is just one of the most solid well built, distros made(Mint is great too). MX has great tools, and massive software selection. MX has stood the test of time, years of uptime now with nothing major(or minor)as far as problems. I have placed MX on dozens of installs for friends and family, and no disasters at all(I do not use sysV for compatibility sake). I am so happy I have the choice to use SystemD or SysV(Choice is what Linux is all about). If I had one wish though, it would be to have more modularity(easily remove apps not needed) and or less software in initial iso, so MX is as slim as possible. Thank you devs for the OS we can count on.
I don't recommend it for daily use. First I lost windows boot menu after installation. I installed again, then there was a black screen. It worked when I installed 3 times. But then it didn't recognize Windows 10. After hours, I found a way to add it to boot menu. It took more than 4 hours to install Nvdia drivers. After that linux kernel wasn't recognized Grub. Then it frozen, desktop environment wasn't displayed. I searched to fix it. After hours I removed Intel video driver and it worked!
I was happy to use Nvidia till I opened Qt Creator. Qt Creator and other Qt apps controls are too small. It has scaling problem. I tried to use parameters for GTK and Qt for high DPI scaling.. It didn't work. Even if this worked, I'm sure there would be another problem. For the good side, its performance is somewhat better than Ubuntu.
I love the idea behind Debian-based distro's, stable and reliable and every package is available. The big downside is that MX breaks too easily and frequently, although this may be the fault of its corrupt packages. I just cannot depend on this distro to manage my important work because I will not risk losing it. It is a shame because it seems nice. It is just too delicate for my needs and I may as well go back to using Windows(jk). I currently use Mint which has never, I repeat never broken on me.
(MX KDE, ran from customized USB 3.0 and/or frugal install, for 3 years)
Pros:
- MX RemasterCC tools (snapshot to live ISO; live persistence operations while running live; remastering to a fresh OS while running live) are INCREDIBLY convenient. There's a LOT of talent behind this, because these operations shouldn't feel as trivial and automagic as they do in MX!
- AntiX project. That's a pro in itself.
- Frequently updated, including visually.
- Never broke.
- Never faced any problems I didn't create myself.
- Great repos! The Debian repos, plus flatpak support, guarantee excellent software access.
Cons:
- Not many desktop environment choices. This is barely a con - what they do have works wonderfully.
- If you intend to use it in a regular install, I'm sure it'll work even better than it does on live - however if you don't intend to use the RemasterCC (or other MX tools, which are a FANTASTIC suite of applications) then MX loses a lot of its main purpose. I could still see it being super useful for having a mirror of your main system in a live USB, but if you don't want to use the live features at all, there are more polished options.
General review:
Just incredible.
Having a system be this stable, this fast, and this convenient, with such incredible tools as snapshot creation, persistence, frugal installing, remastering while running the live system, it's just amazing - I feel like I'm using an internally installed system even though I'm running live.
Good for tinkerers. Will work wonderfully out of the box too, but the DEs aren't super customized.
Whichever problems I did have were not related to MX, but to KDE.
STRONGLY recommend. Basically a midweight ultra-polished AntiX with better repos and better DEs.
There is a quirk in 'MX suspend' with some monitors.
After suspend and power off: monitor shows short flashes of what's happening but no more than that. I have here a HP 1955 which gives that trouble.
HP 1702 which I happen to have too, does fine then.
After some switching on and off HP 1955 it does sometimes fine again. But I don't know what it is. It is ugly. :lol:
Great OS by the way, I use it for six years now after PCLinuxOS, Mint, Lite and more testing,
and MX works so smooth. Hope it stays this way after opdate suspend of course.
The most attracing feature for me is the ease of customising by creating own snapshots and isos with provided mx-tools.
Start MX, customise, cleanup, remaster and have your own iso bootable from USBstick runnig even from ram with usb removed after boot.
Use cases:
- customised for onlinebanking, remote access to work, recovery system, ...
- Portable in my pocket and I can ask anyone to use his PC for my personalised desktop while abroad
- get rid of cookies, cache and browsing history while running in ram
- test new software while running in ram without garbling existing running config or system
Until recently I was using rolling release KDE distros. Sadly, they both had stability issues that rendered them unusable. I toyed with the idea of installing the MX version of KDE, but that desktop is at its best with the newest versions of the Plasma Desktop. There is no way I would put a Debian based KDE desktop on my machine simply because the updates take forever to come to the user. XFCE is a different story. Yes, Debian is still slow to update but XFCE isn't impacted as much as the always updated KDE desktop. I've used a MX XFCE distro in the past and it was ok, better than average. When XFCE 4.18 came out I was intrigued with the changes they made, and when MX XFCE added it to its Wildflower version I just had to give it a try. Wow!!! What a fine release it is. I have it loaded full of applications including 30 flatpaks. Many are large KDE apps yet everything runs fast and stable. I am so impressed with MX-21.3 AHS XFCE. While I can't tweak it to the extent I can with a KDE desktop I still can get it looking pretty nice. It's going to be fun relearning the XFCE desktop. Kudos to the MX developers for making such a wonderful release. I highly recommend this one.
I've tried this OS version 21.3 KDE. It's friendly and simple on a first look.
But after the first update my wifi network dissapeared completely! I've been able to revert the changes using Timeshift, but still it looks weird. My wifi adapter is Intel Corporation Wi-Fi 6 AX201 160MHz. Haven't find any solution to fix that so far, so I'll stay on Kubuntu.
My main point was to move from Ubuntu derivatives to Debian or elsewhere, but I was unsuccessful to install Debian alongside my existing Kubuntu/Windows.
Looking forward to have this bug fixed by MX guys
It's been more than a month since I have fully switched to Mx Linux Fluxbox, from dual booting with Windows 7. I have removed Windows 7, since I hardly need Windows. Mx fluxbox is the best for my old laptop, which is from 2008, dual core, 2 Gb RAM. Since Fluxbox requires less RAM to run than Xfce, I can save about 300 Mb. And it is customizable. Stable, lightweight and it works just fine. It is not as "user-friendly" when it comes to configuring certain things, but it is easy enough for me, with the little experience that I have in Linux. Editing config files is simple once you read the proper instructions and pay attention to relevant details.
I am using linux as a secondary OS besides windows [AMD Ryzen laptop] or chromebook.
Feel comfortable with a minimal stable debian based distro.
I have been testing several distros like debian, tuxedo, zorin os and lubuntu.
Finally stick to MX Linux KDE with the newest kernel. I like the look and feel and snappiness.
Also tools like boot options, live usb maker and snapshot are handy.
There is no distro which is perfect, So here some cons:
- does not support secure boot
- installer does not allow installing GRUB on a separate boot partition. Have to be shared with Windows
- there is no minimal install iso
- there are a few bugs like missing variables in .profile or background apps that suddenly stopped
- snap apps like authy will not run, as snapd log complains that kernel is missing dbus and network
I have MacBook Pro late 2008 (8 GB RAM with Core 2 Duo CPU) from which I have pulled the optibay drive and replaced it with 480 GB SSD with intention to install MX Linux, KDE version. Installation went smoothly, GRUB placed it’s files into EFI partition of disk where El Capitan resides. So I’ve got a proper dualboot machine. All - keyboard backlit, speakers volume, Wi-Fi, bluetooth, webcam, are working properly. I was not able so far to reproduce touchpad functionality close to MacOS X, but it’s expectable. Overall system performs quite well and included software runs way faster than it's analogs of El Capitan, residing on another SSD. So, definitely the MX Linux deserves it's rating I find here, considering that I have tested other distros that I am not going to mention.
Now about some CONS:
1. Nvidia driver installer from MX tolls did not actually install the driver, but it advised what command should I run and then I have installed the driver. After the installation the keys that adjust the screen brightness ceased to work and, even though, they show the level of brightness, the actual brightness of screen does not change.
2. A mix of MX tools and KDE settings is quite confusing (like Discover and MX Package
Installer) resulting in messy system.
3. Sometime under moderate load machine hangs and have to reboot it.
4. Sleep and Suspend do not work properly. After opening up the display, the machine cannot wake up properly and display stays off, even though the machine is working.
Conclusion: It's good but not perfect. My most complain is the mess of KDE's stuff not sitting well with MX tools.
First and foremost, this operating system is incredibly user-friendly. The interface is intuitive and easy to navigate, making it accessible for even the most technologically challenged individuals. Additionally, the system runs smoothly and efficiently, with speedy startup times and minimal lag or crashes.
One of the standout features of this operating system is its versatility. It is compatible with a wide range of software and hardware, allowing users to customize their experience to suit their specific needs. Whether you are a creative professional in need of powerful design software or a gamer looking to optimize performance, this operating system has you covered.
In terms of security, this operating system is top-notch. It comes equipped with a variety of security features, including firewalls, antivirus software, and frequent updates to protect against the latest threats. This gives users peace of mind knowing that their personal information and data are safe from prying eyes.
Overall, I highly recommend this operating system to anyone in need of a reliable, user-friendly, and secure computing experience. It is a fantastic choice for both personal and professional use, and I am confident that it will exceed your expectations.
I've been using MX Linux for two years, and I can't say anything other than unbeatable, fantastic! For me, the best by far that I've installed in years. It comes with the complete basics, and then you can add packages. I have installed it on iMacs; intel, i3 and older too, all perfect. The first installations, having no experience, did not fit well, they were my fault. I recommend it, you have to try it. Goodbye to Windows 11, especially since I don't have TMP. To navigate, for office, for daily use, MX Linux. Greetings
Keeps getting worse... go with the original Debian distro instead. MX linux is probably one of the worst derivatives, slow, over bloated, and totally over rated. It loads forever and shuts down even longer! Why shutdown at all?! No hibernate, and if it works, it should take 1:30 min just like Windows or faster to return! It can't view webp animated pics and is pretty unresponsive slow with performance, save dialogs etc. Why even the need for it when there is AntiX, which needs half the processes to load! What are all these processes good for except only to haul precious cpu/ram for nothing! Also I often lose wifi and audio sometimes vanishes mysteriously. Firefox isn't GPU HW accelerated, had to install flatpak Chrome for this.
I know many people that use Linux, and not one of them recommends MX linux to new users. Sure it has tons of programs installed and many more are available in their package installer, but in reality probably no one ever installs any of them, total waist. Do yourselves a favor a try a different distro that is no doubt better and more user friendly than this one.
MX Linux XFCE is the top of the list of distros, that I’ve tried over several years as functions worked “out-of-the-box” and the repo is extensive and includes my most useful apps, including Veracrypt. However I have had a problem to install v21.3 onto a Macbook Air, early 2014 as it failed to recognize its internal SSD. I just found the older version v19.2 seems to work ok. Currently my work-around is a Live-USB v21.3 and of all the distros the Live USB option with persistence is a great tool seems the best. However not sure how to have a login password on the Live USB to protect my email or messenger services. The old Macbooks are great bits of hardware and relatively cheap. MXLinux runs very well on a 2010 Macbook Air as the sole OS.
I would give MX Linux a 10.0 if persistence was achievable when creating live USB drives. I have tried the internal USB maker, which is amazingly not intuitive for Linux noobs, as well as UUI, Rufus, and Ventoy. I still (after several years of trying) am not able to add persistence to MX Linux. Linux Mint and Ubuntu derivatives have this option as easy as adding an app. I do not understand why this is so, but in any case, it's a big deal for those of us who use live USB drives often -- and across base operating systems, eg, Windows and Linux distros.
I normally would not complain and instead simply find a video or youtube video that clear explains how to do it on various operating systems, specifically with Ventoy using Windows. Why? Because Ventoy is going to be my go-to program for creating live USB's, Remarkably, I have not found a single clear English explanation on each of the steps. That being said, MX Linux installed works like a charm, is reliable, stable, intuitive, flexible, and contemporary. I love it! I have all but stopped distro hopping, but lack of persistence for MX Linux is driving me crazy!
Excellent distro. I like XFCE, which is highly configurable.
I first started with Mepis, which worked out of the box.
Then, I tried many other distros (probably over 30).
I worked for quite some time with OpenSuse, ubuntu, xubuntu, mint, etc.
I have been using MX for about 3 years and I just love it and will stick to it.
I personnalise my desktop and add various packages that
come from other desktops (Gwenview, dolphin, konqueror, etc.).
Then all changes are put on a usb stick, which can be used to
reinstall quickly (10 mn) the system or used as live on other computers.
So easy. I just love it.
mxlinux , what can we contribute about this.
I've been running mxlinux on the same computers for about 4 years, 1 with dual screens and 1 with 4 screens on ssd hard drives, and for a distro with all the bells and whistles, it runs very fast, windows open sooner than you would click with the mouse manner of speaking of course.
mxlinux is a system where you can say with certainty that it will never let you down, it is very stable, and rock solid.
with updates you will never run into problems, not even with updates kernels or grup, or taking a snapshot and restoring backups from another hard drive, the system will never let you down.
even if the distro itself updates the system from 21 to 21.1 and 02 and now 21.3 mxlinux always works perfectly, I can't say anything wrong about the makers and the many contributions from experts, in my opinion it is the best system available it's in linux.
also the software of bullseye's repos is perfect, I don't see why someone should switch from debian to an archlinux, where the aur will give you more conflicts and an unstable system.
I'm running mxlinux xfce 21.3 on 2 computers right now and we're never going to trade it for any linux, because none can match mxlinux.
I stumbles onto MX in an offbeat way, and I love it. Windows 10 was the tipping point (even a MS dev I met recently said as much) I started looking for some other OS, and, as I had experimented with LInux in it's early days (with all that fun) I decided to see if I could figure it out a few years back.. tried mint, kubuntu, Manjaro (all the top of the "chart" distro's) working my way down the list.. (I still have about 10 CD with my early experiments.) I liked the Mint KDE version, got things all working (still dual booting at the time) but, then, Mint decided to drop support for KDE and so, I swapped to Kubuntu, was happy.... til it broke on me after an update... (glad I was dual booting still) so I dl'd MX & burned a thumb drive... and there it was.. it did everything I needed.. never broke and about 6 months later I just disconnected the drive I had windows on, and in the last 4 years, never looked back.. best overall OS still for me ( I still do look around) ( Actually the latest MAnjaro looked quite good too)
After trying all the "popular" distro's out there, and checking latest releases, I am always back to MX, it does the things you want it to do and gets out of the way. Stable is a given. Never had a breakage.. for those that believe there is too much pre-loaded, welll, 2 things :P #1- you can uninstall packages easily using the package manager, install what you want from multiple repo's and #2- you are free in this Linux world we have to choose another distro that you feel meets your needs and hope it doesn't break :) BTW, the tools MX dev's have included from the start are all beginning to be added to other distro's :) Says something about how other dev's minds align :)
MX Linux is all that I don't like to see in a linux distro. I can't stand all these MX things and the way they modify the desktop environments, it's heavily cluttered with applications and resource intensive. Maybe it works for others but it won't be my distro and the one I will advise to others. I don't buy into this view of things and philosophy. The result is a really over bloated, ancient software, and heavy ergonomy and it will be difficult for beginners to modify this into their own way of thinking. I can see the goal of such a distro but the way they do it is so clumsy... And they are not the only ones in the linux world but there are many better distros.
MX21. Good one. I've been using it on several laptops for 18months.
It's fairly easy to install where there's multiple OSs and multiple partitions.
SPECIAL Kudos for The Live USB creation. It's a miracle tool and has any other "backup" tool I've tried totally beat.Installing the present system with all it's tweaks to an entirely different laptop is kind of fantastic,IMO
The app page and special layout for installation of packages they have is good and better than synaptic ,if you want what they have there. ie: Steam, wine etc...I always check it first....
I'll try working myself up to a complaint here-no doubt there's peeves-but it's been awhile since I started with it and the only thing that comes to me is: It's a bit odd with its subset of special MX menus and repetitions throughout but if the tunneling through the menu is a bit discombobulating, it's also true that their MX tools can be helpfult.
I've been using MX Linux since version 17. The full re-install required to move to version 21 had me nervous, but it was so worth it.
Why Linux MX? I wanted a platform that would run on modest hardware, that I could load Jack Audio and Guitarix on, and use audio processors from Behringer and Scarlett.
I'd beed using Zorin, Ubuntu, Mint and others, but Linux MX has just Rock Solid for me! Wildflower has been such a worthwhile upgrade, I've been recommending it to everyone I know. Navigating my Windows Server from MX is surprisingly comfortable. Like a great may others, I need to keep a foot in the Windows world, and Linux MX doesn't fight me, and doesn't get in the way... it just works, it's stable, it's reliable and easy to get used to and use!
Playing and recording guitar on the Linux MX platform is a dream! Audio interfaces that were nearly useless in Windows (even IF you could find the proper drivers) just work out of the box on MX. Best distro I've ever used!!
After running MX 18.3 for years without the smallest hiccup I decided to upgrade. Installed Manjaro's flagship KDE version, looks beautiful out of the box, bleeding edge everything and bragging right sfor (sort of) running Arch BTW. From a clean install nothing but misery: screen freezes, conflicting dependencies, and more system freezes requiring a hard reboots. So I went back to MX, version 21.3 this time. Everything just works like charm. Stable >>>>>>>>>> bleeding edge for me (with a couple of flatpaks for apps I use regularly). Granted, it doesn't look very nice out of the box, and requires a couple of hours of ricing and tweaking. But once your done, it just works for years without a problem. Thanks to the MX team. I highly recommend MX to anyone looking for a highly customizable distro with a very rich collection of very useful MX packages and tools, and stability for years.
I've been messing around with different distros for a years, I had been using Linux Mint forever (of coruse dual booted along side windows), but decided I'd give this distro a shot because I've been hearing nothing but good things about it. I have to say... never before have I tried such a STABLE distro. Right out of installation with no installing of any drivers, no updating, this disrto was still able to run WebGL Aquarium with 500 fish easily at a good 45+ fps. Doing this the other day with linux mint 21.1 (Vera) even after all the updates and drivers I installed ALWAYS resulted in a system crash.
Running other programs, doing installations, and even connecting different devices via bluetooth.. MX has amazingly smooth preformance with no lags, hiccups, or crashes. The only thing that I can say that is a minus is that the windowing system of MX can't be used like Windows 10 or Mint (dragging windows to the side, top or corner of the screen and auto merge adjusts the window) yet. This distro also doesn't look so pretty though design wise it's not bad at all (I'm using xfce 4).
I can't stop thinking of the word "stable" when using this distro, and this is definitely going to be my distro of choice from now on. If you're a fan of Mint I recommend givning this a try. Truely an amazing distro
My elderly father in law asked to web surf, so I outfitted a laptop with MX Linux. With very minimal training, he has been using it for six months with no OS problems. He loves that fact that it is not slow like windows, and even though he improperly shut down many times the operating system did not buckle. Windows never took kindly to being shutdown improperly, so he didn't care for it. He just loves linux, the freedom, the security, the robustness, and so a big thanks to the devs for creating some good in the world for people to enjoy.
So far, Mx linux (Fluxbox) has worked best for my laptops (from around 2008). It works just great with 2 Gb of RAM and dual core CPU. I have opted for the Fluxbox edition for presumably being more lightweight than the xfce desktop environment. It is a 10 out of 10 distro. Everything works, just fine. I only need to figure out how to define my own key bindings. But I presume that must be somewhere in the manual. I have only quickly looked throught the "keys" config file. I need to check out how to modify the "applicatoin finder" to be launched from a key combination, and not from mouse clicking.
I first used years ago Zorin which became slow then I was using Sparky for a long while but I couldn't get both desktops to work, it finally became unstable and I was forced to find something else many people in different forums suggested, so I installed MX Linux. Wow! This is the best distro I've ever used, since switching to Linux more that 20 years ago! The distro is nearly perfect, more perfect that anything else I've found, in fact. Even the project website, like the distro itself, is very well thought out and executed. I've been able to do things with MX Linux that I've always wanted to do but couldn't, because of one technical limitation or another with each distro I've used over the years. It's very obvious that those behind MX Linux are dedicated to their users and not to corporate paying customers, who have very different needs and wants from average users. This distro is special in that I can run sysV or systemd for compatibility. I was able to just figure it out without very much help at all, that is testament to how well thought out this distro is.
This distribution is sooo cluttered with applications out of the box it's crazy.
Opted for the KDE rendition which is 5.20 sadly. The kernel may be somewhat relevant but the interface or desktop environment certainly is not.
Perhaps I expected too much with the amount of hits it gets here for some reason.
For me, it's just way too cluttered in too many places. Just seems to take something easy and makes it difficult by adding in a ton of things from the get go.
Hard pass thanks!
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View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
Shells.com
Your own personal Linux computer in the cloud, available on any device. Supported operating systems include Android, Debian, Fedora, KDE neon, Kubuntu, Linux Mint, Manjaro and Ubuntu, ready in minutes.
Starting at US$4.95 per month, 7-day money-back guarantee
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