Mabox Linux

Reader supplied reviews for Mabox Linux Average rating 9.0 from 74 review(s) Please selecting a rating in the range of 1-10. Please write at least a few sentences about the distribution while limiting your review to 4080 characters. What are your thoughts on Mabox Linux? Please include a few pros and a few cons, along with your overall impression of the operating system. Our FAQ page has tips on writing a good mini-review. Version: -- 25.0124.1223.1222.1221.1220.10 Rating:    -- 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 out of 10 Your review (minimum 250 words): Past reviews - sort by: DateVotes Version: 24.03 Rating: 9 Date: 2024-07-05 Votes: 16 I've been playing around with Mabox for a few years, but now I've found that I like it so much I'm making it a part of my regular distro line up. It's much more fun than Manjaro. I've always been a fan of the lightening fast Openbox desktop environment, even though it's not as efficient to use as XFCE, KDE, Mate, or Cinnamon. The Mabox desktop may be a bit busy, or confusing for beginners, however I like it because it is anything but boring. It's functional and makes me feel like a geek instead of an office worker. I'm hoping this version of Arch will be more stable than others I've tried. So far, Mabox is one of my favorite flavors of Linux, right behind Neptune, Mint, and Pop OS. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 24.03 Rating: 10 Date: 2024-05-16 Votes: 13 This is my second time around, so to speak, with Mabox. I first tried it a couple of years back and had a few issues which seem to have since been ironed out. I installed it on one of my secondary low spec laptops and so far, so good. I'm a big Arch user and my daily driver is pure Arch. Generally I like to build my system from the ground up, which is what Arch offers but for this older laptop I could not see the point. Mabox is a nice compromise, it offers an Arch derivative based on Manjaro and it runs Openbox window manager, which keeps the on idle ram utilisation, under 500mb. I'd characterise Mabox quirky, eccentric and retro, in a really good way. It has lots of fun tools you can tinker with to customise the look, feel and utility, of the operating system, so it suits your specific needs. I had as much fun playing with its features, as I did using it for various things. Well, in truth, I think I enjoyed the tinkering more, if I'm being honest. Theme-ing in this distro is a stand out feature that needs to be mentioned. You can not only choose from a array of themes, you can tint and apply refined colours to different aspects of the desktop, to suit your very specified taste. Manjaro's Pamac is on offer too, for those who don't want to use the command line. Now one word of warning, Pamac does not play well with the AUR in all instances, so unless absolutely necessary, I'd steer clear of enabling it. Stick to Pamacs curated packages instead. Is there a downside? Well I would have liked a slider for volume control. I find the option they have in place a little fiddly if you are not using a mouse. It would be good to see a slider on offer, its just easier with a touch-pad. Beyond that minor gripe this mostly an amazing distro from Poland and I do recommend it to those who like a more minimalist but stylish vibe or perhaps want something for an older system. Great effort guys. Thumbs up. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 24.03 Rating: 9 Date: 2024-05-05 Votes: 6 I've always liked the lighter desktops, mostly because my early Linux experiments (over 20 years ago) were on old low spec hardware that needed all the help they could get and I like something different from the more mainstream ones which try too hard to be Windows like to try and encourage new people to Linux. That failed anyway as the majority of home users are too brainwashed by Windows and unwilling to accept change, but that's a whole different story Now I use far more modern hardware and don't really need the extra boost from a lighter OS, but I just like the look and true Linux feel of them. A lot of work has obviously gone into Mabox and it's definitely my favourite Arch derivative. Well Manjaro for the pedantic, but essentially Arch at heart, but not restricted to geeks! I'm usually not a fan of top taskbars, but this is so well laid out with right and left menus and conky screens I wasn't frantically searching to change it like I usually am. And i love the way you can easily arrange the conky items to your own taste. It includes btop instead of htop or just plain top and it's one of many enhancements that I like. The screen shotting (by pressing Print) utility is far more advanced than the plain vanilla one in most distros too. I usually go straight to Antix when trying to make old hardware useful again, but this is definitely a good alternative and while i've been using MX Linux as my daily driver on my main PC for many years, it might be time for a change as a few niggly bugs have started to creep into that. I would give it 10 but the propriety driver option didn't work for my Nvidia 1050ti graphics card when booting it live. Hopefully that is an easy fix when installing it for real though. Was this review helpful? 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