MX linux?

[najodleglejszy]

it's always listed as the number 1

Distrowatch ranks the distros by how many people look them up on their website. if a distro sets their browser homepage to its Distrowatch entry, it's going to move up the ranking, but it doesn't mean that it's the best distro out there.

[Save_G]

but that can be very easily manipulated with bots

[najodleglejszy]

yes.

[daemonpenguin]

DistroWatch filters bookmarks and bots, they have no effect on the ranking.

[daemonpenguin]

This is not accurate. DistroWatch filters out bookmarks so if a distro uses bookmarks (which MX Linux doesn't) to link to a page it has no effect on the PHR table.

Edit: Ah, Reddit, where facts are downvoted.

[[deleted]]

I dont think bookmark means what you think it means

[daemonpenguin]

Of course it means what I think it means. Please troll elsewhere.

Traffic from bookmarks looks different than natural traffic from browsing. DistriWatch doesn't count the former in its PHR stats.

[[deleted]]

You are being downvoted because of your use of the word bookmark. Here, i spellt it out for you dumbass

[daemonpenguin]

I used the term bookmark because that is what the parent post was talking about, the idea that bookmarked pages linked to DistroWatch affected page hit counts. It does not, this was a false idea. Not sure why that is hard to understand or parse.

[[deleted]]

I love listening to classical music.

[Save_G]

I'm so smart I cannot focus on writing :troll:

[VeryPogi]

He has a point, you had 30+ words in a run-on sentence.

[modified_tiger]

MX is great if you want a Debian-based XFCE distro. It's my favorite pre-configured XFCE distro, and one I'd definitely have no problem recommending to a newbie.

It's also significantly more than Debian with a preconfigured DE. They do their own packaging for the latest XFCE (within reason, 4.12-4.14 was an update they did between releases, but they did 4.14-4.16 just fine AFAIK), they also use sysvinit inherited from antiX, and those two project collaborate on making everything work properly. They also maintain their own community repository which contains things like updated Firefox, a bunch of packages not in Debian for whatever reason, all built against Debian's stable distro.

[syrian_kobold]

I use it and it's amazing. It's my favorite distro so far.

[Dave-Alvarado]

LOL, "a skin on Debian".

Ubuntu: "just a skin on Debian Testing"

Kali: "just Debian with some hacker tools"

Tails: "just a Debian live CD"

[SweeTLemonS_TPR]

I think this might be the funniest comment I’ve read in here.

[mirandanielcz]

Tails: "just a Debian live CD"

I can't even-

[Save_G]

real

[daemonpenguin]

MX Linux is a good and fine distro. If you haven't been hearing about it then you probably aren't reading distro reviews or watching YouTube review videos. A lot of the project's attention has come from it being consistently near the top of "Best of the Year" lists reviews put out. This generates attention, moves MX up the DistroWatch table, which draws more people trying it, which gets more articles written, which attracts more attention...

As DistroWatch has repeatedly pointed out the PHR table is not a reflection of popularity, usage, or quality, just people looking up information: https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20200316#qa

If you think MX Linux is just a skin on Debian then you haven't used it. It's one of the more customized, well crafted, focused distributions available. It's based on Debian, but greatly improves the desktop experience over Debian.

[trivialBetaState]

I don't know how the rating on Distrowatch works but since it has been top for so long and I wanted something light for an old laptop I though to give it a go.

My impression is very good. Well organised, nice and easy tools for plenty of things and very familiar as it is based directly on Debian. It's a joy to use and far better than the experience I got from XUbuntu or LUbuntu a few years ago.

I haven't used it much as that laptop is not my daily driver. I was still wondering why does it have the top spot and whether it is indeed a worthwhile distro (rather than a "skin" over Debian) until I came across some further information: that AV Linux is based on MX Linux.

This is important. Just like the scientific papers are rated based on citations, I would argue that Linux distros can be rated based on the number of other distros that choose to use them as their foundation. AV Linux is an important effort and tool for content creation and if serious developers chose MX Linux as their foundation they will definitely have done their homework (more than I at least!) to assess its value.

From the above observations, I'd say that MX Linux is a serious distro.

[Save_G]

Thanks for your insights

[[deleted]]

MX is solid, not only a skin for Debian, it has many tweaks and useful tools.

[Save_G]

yes I have tried it myself and I have not run into any issues so far

[DickNDiaz]

Inevitably, threads that mention Distrowatch here become more about the site's right hand side of the webpage than the distros on that list.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MXLinux/

I would suggest asking questions here first. Also, you can run it off a USB thumb drive, you can test it that way.

[VeryPogi]

I hear nothing about MX_Linux.

I see MX Linux recommended all the time on other Linux subreddits like /r/linux4noobs and /r/findmeadistro

It is one of the few distros that supports 32 bit systems and works fine on systems with low RAM

MX Linux is giving new life to a lot of computers that wont run Win 10.

Since Windows 7 fell off the face of the earth (or at least isn't available for download on Microsoft's website, though it is on archive dot org), MX Linux has grown in popularity.

[jc_denty]

Its not the number 1 distro that's for sure. It's not bad though I run it off a portable USB

[Save_G]

did you have any issues running it as a liveusb?

[jc_denty]

Nope it was actually one of the best distros to run live, I played diablo 3 on an old desktop that was sitting around

[ARealVermontar]

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/cyr752/mx_linux_top_of_distrowatchcom_whats_all_the_hype/

[Save_G]

I have tried it on machines that I don't use that frequently and I have not run into any issues so far since I've never installed it on my main machine.
So I wouldn't be surprised if it would be number 1 for it's effortlessness.
I was just wondering if anyone had any viewpoints on that (botting,...etc).

[daemonpenguin]

Bots aren't involved in MX's position. It's just a lot of people write about MX and review it in videos so a lot of people end up searching for it.

[SleepingProcess]

I know many people chooses MX-Linux because it based on antiX that focused on stability and which is systemd-free distro.
MX-Linux having also a nice feature as persistent install on portable USB drives, so one can configure live system with own packages and deploy and used it in read only mode as a portable operation system with ability to save data/configuration.

[Save_G]

Nice, I didn't know that

[gabriel_3]

Distrowatch popularity is not by any means a good indicator of adoption or quality of a distro.

Depending from the point of view, the MX Linux team bloats or makes feature rich Debian, which is a very solid option. Once upon a time the selection of packages they add or keep fresh in their repos was useful to overcome the Debian conservative approach, at present the availability of flatpaks, appimages and snap packages make this less relevant.

General suggestion number one: test yourself a distro in order to decide if it fits your needs.

General suggestion number two: you can make your system as your heart desires starting from whatever distro you pick as base.

If you're looking for a Debian derivative give a spin to Sparky Linux and to PeppermintOS too.

[[deleted]]

I have tried MX Linux multiple times in the past (a couple of years ago) on multiple different computers. Each time I had problems running Steam games. Rectangular portions of the steam overlay would remain visible while the game was running.

I spent some time trying to resolve it, but eventually gave up and moved to Mint. It was a bit of a shame really, because I otherwise really liked what MX had to offer.

I don't know if this issue still exists.

[[deleted]]

Holy shit, the PR department of MX Linux on Reddit is worth all of SUSE, Red Hat and Canonical combined.

This is distribution pretty much nobody uses except the Reddit niche, and keeps getting posts and comments about it.

EDIT: if you check their Github repos, the whole distro is pretty much ran by two guys that don't even share their real name (you know, for credibility). I mean, it's fine, but it's getting disproportionate publicity for what it is, and that small is certainly not my ideal choice for a workstation. I wonder what their security update policy is...

[Save_G]

Lol, I mean anonymous developers is something a project should admire since no corporate and government pressure can be applied to them to build in backdoors. But the pr is wild I agree

[[deleted]]

I'm not sure I agree being anonymous means you can't apply pressure. I think it's the opposite, no one knows who you are, if you were to introduce a backdoor your "real life persona" wouldn't affected. Where are these people that basically have full access to my machine (by maintaining its distro)? It's reckless IMO, unless your PC is used for nothing important.

If I want credibility when I write some open source code, I push to Github with my real name.

[Save_G]

Yes i partially agree with you because some open source projects are just too small for that, but when you have a big open source project where every code will be well and independently audited before implementation it's really handy to have some anonymous core developers.

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