Reader supplied reviews for MX Linux
Average rating
8.2 from 550 review(s)
Version: 23.2
Rating: 10
Date: 2024-02-03
Votes: 8
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Distros are generally subjective due to the end user needs and the hardware which is the beautiful thing about linux, its almost individual. I have messed around with plenty of distros but was looking for something with my requirements as I could not find a distro that completely met them.
Good redundancy.
KDE
Stable
No annoying updates that required reboots.
Secure.
Intuitive tools.
Lightweight
Not centralised to larger organisations.
I tried open suse tumble weed but updates would kill the display and would not boot, fedora was the same but was much heavier, kde neo just fires out updates at the change of the direction of the wind asking for reboots and then has to go through a dragged out update process on boot. Redhat is just boring, kubuntu is just outdated and high resource and the list is endless. Im not saying they are bad distros, they just dont suit my needs.
It is actually very difficult to get a distro that suits the above. Then I tried mx libretto and what a massive difference from the crowd. I did hear swear by mx but I just dont know why I did not try it. So here is a working example of what im talking about.
When I first installed it, I created the partition incorrectly for btrfs and forgot to put in the sub volumes. I had already configured it the way I liked so doing a fresh install was going to be a pain. Not with mx, there is a tool in there called mx snapshots which I was able to create an iso of the exiting system to reinstall but with all my settings, apps and profile info. The whole process took 20 minutes to correct my mistake. How cool is that. Now that is what I call redundancy coupled with timeshift.
The fact is that mx comes with a large amount of tools to customize the system settings and built in redundancy so you always have a working system when things go wrong, not that it would happen anyway with a stable debian distro.
It also comes with apps like conky as default and all the apps you would expect normally. Its really an exceptionally well thought out os. Systemd does not come as default but it is there and can be set as default with another great mx boot manager app. They really have thought of everythiing with this distro. I did find the mx usb creation tool rubbish but I could have been using it wrong but I just used belena etcher to burn my custom iso ad their tool did not actually copy the iso to usb.
Another thing I found was the resources, when running a rumble vid in the other distros, the memory would jump to 3.6 GB but not with mx, it was 2.6 GB so its memory management is alot better than the other distros, kde neon was lower but was at 3GB. The vids were on rumble and were run in the browser and in pop out window.
This of course means that the system runs cooler and less power running the fans for better battery performance.
I chose the kde version because its my fav and I like eye candy and tweaking. Its by far the best kde distro out there.
I did also try immutable desktops but they are far from finished in terms of jkde functionality as well, microos for example wont allow you to install kde connect and fedora is just heaavy in comparison to even kde neon. Kde neon also has an issue with the tpm chips where it reports errors on boot relating to the hash which is irritating too.
This is my favourite distro and I will be sticking with it because of the tools, resources and everything in my list above is just perfect. Well done to the team for building a great distro.
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Version: 23.2
Rating: 7
Date: 2024-02-02
Votes: 0
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8 is a fair rating for MX. Coming from the perspective as a user and admin familiar with both this and the parent operating system.
There's not many issues, admittedly, but it's Debian with some bells and whistles. It has some spiffy themes (if you are not using XFCE imo) and some tools that aren't the most polished but makes administrating a Debian system much easier if you are not overly comfortable with the command line. A lot of the 'advantages' over Debian are really convenience things, which is a legitimate reason but many may not need or want some of the convenience features.
The installer is much easier than Debian's, admittedly, Debian's install process isn't the crappy process it once was. But the graphical installer in non-live systems is very slow, albeit its less cumbersome than Anaconda. I don't know if there's still issues with non-standard keyboard layouts. MX's is much faster. It also comes with non-free software, but since Bookworm this is not an issue. However, a big convenience is the "Advanced Hardware Support" release being very nice if you need a newer kernel for newer hardware.
It's based on debian stable, so it's very hard to break unless you make it your mission to break it, i.e. the average user will not break anything. The XFCE version should be lighter for what this distro is, on a better note, it was very easy to fix screen tearing on the Fluxbox version. There's some MX specific repos and
The developers are active on the forum and maybe other places, and are friendly and patient, which for some can be an actual pro over Debian, as the forums and other communication platforms for that can be rather rude, especially if you are asking for something that can be found easily via web search or a FAQ.
It's kind of a jack of all trades, master of none distro. It's a great place for people to start as you can grab testing packages and a newer kernel with a pretty stable place. Which is normally fine, but here are my two issues with that.
Why not use systemd by default then? It seems weird for an easy-to-use beginner friendly to use sysvinit when a lot of tools and programs use it, I know it has it included and there have been some pains to make things more compatible but it's an odd choice as an init system shouldn't even be a factor for users who don't know what it is (e.g. the target audience of MX)
Second is a fatal flaw and why I stopped using mint, the recommendation to do fresh installs for new major releases. I understand that you CAN do it and it's to not put a significant support strain on a small team but it's just not my style.
Good for most people though.
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Version: 23.2
Rating: 10
Date: 2024-02-02
Votes: 4
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NOW HERE RUNNING 23.2 64 BIT. ON THIS HP PROBOOK 2015, i3 intel . Faster than the win 10 that was on it.
Been using this about 4 days all day online etc. w/ no problems. XFCE boots faster too.
Then decided to try the i386 version on an older HP 100e 32 bit, 2009. 23.2 xfce again, once booted, it runs faster again than the Win 7 that was on it. 15 year old & the latest firefox & libre wolf browsers work fine for lite net use. no problems yet. Better speed for sure on both, compared to windows 10 & 7 before.
I' m still, like many coming from win 10 & 7, prefer panel on bottom, Just open panel preferences, uncheck the lock panel box change to horizontal & use the handle, on the right end to drag your panel to the bottom.
Go back & check the lock panel box & close that. New to linux folks will find these way easier to work with than win 10 & 7 & xfce is stable & fast. I' been using it since Mint13 Maya got me away from Windows.
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