Re: [PLUG] Suggested distro for a new Dell 2-in-1? Anyone heard of "MX L

Re: [PLUG] Suggested distro for a new Dell 2-in-1? Anyone heard of "MX Linux"?

On Thu, May 12, 2016 at 2:44 PM, Keith C. Perry <kperry@daotechnologies.com> wrote:

For KDE, Kubuntu has been great for me accept for the very recent issues I've had when I added an ATI card for which the kernel video driver (Kubuntu 14.04 LTS is on a 3.13 which definitely isn't the great kernel version old there) appears to have a serious memory leak issue. That brought me over to Arch with KDE which has been pretty good for the most part (there some annoying things in Plasma 5 but the smoothness of the system makes me forget them and more importantly the memory leak is gone). Test release upgrades of 14.04 to 16.04 Kubuntu (also Plasma 5) look equally real good.

That said, Arch and 16.04 Kubuntu are both systemd distros and I get it- I'm not a fan either but for me, other than figuring a bridged network setup and how to enable and start services its not too painful. From what I understand you'll still be able to by-pass the systemd methodology and work with a rc like methodology.

One example is here...

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=148170

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Keith C. Perry, MS E.E.
Owner, DAO Technologies LLC
(O) +1.215.525.4165 x2033
(M) +1.215.432.5167
www.daotechnologies.com

From: "Will" <staticphantom@gmail.com>
To: "Philadelphia Linux User's Group Discussion List" <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>
Sent: Thursday, May 12, 2016 2:09:13 PM
Subject: Re: [PLUG] Suggested distro for a new Dell 2-in-1? Anyone heard of "MX Linux"?

Gentoo is still systemd optional as I have heard many people have flocked from Debian over to avoid the systemd switch.
-Will C

On Thu, May 12, 2016 at 1:49 PM, Rich Mingin (PLUG) <plug@frags.us> wrote:
So if you want supported, Dell only knows Ubuntu. If you need newest, Mint 18 should be out very soon, and is 16.04 based.
If you're OK with unsupported, just working, the answers are endless.

And while I support your right to avoid systemd, I think that's a losing battle. I gave up and am just dealing with it. Unless your arguments against are technical instead of philosophical, it's a losing battle, all the major distros are on systemd, so the number of non-systemd distro releases are dropping and will continue to do so.

On Thu, May 12, 2016 at 1:43 PM, Chris Norton <chris@nortoninc.info> wrote:
Here's a vote for arch with xfce. The touch works pretty damn well on it, and you have the control over how much gets installed, so it's not going to be huge or RAM intensive.

On Thu, May 12, 2016 at 1:41 PM, Greg Helledy <gregsonh@gra-inc.com> wrote:
I use Linux Mint 17 on my main desktop at home, and in a VM at work. I've been a KDE user since forever and Mint has put effort into making KDE work well (unlike on Debian, which I used for many years despite KDE being an afterthought there).

I'm quite happy with it but am not sure what to put on a piece of new hardware I've treated myself to. The two reasons Mint isn't the automatic choice are:
1. In order to have any chance of having all the hardware work (like automatic screen rotation), I'm going to need a very recent kernel. Mint 17 has me on a 3.19 kernel, which I know won't be new enough. The kernel installer (I do love the Mint tools) does offer 4.2 and 4.4 releases I could try.
2. To a lesser extent, I'm concerned about the spread of systemd, which Mint includes, from Ubuntu and Debian.

Poking around, I came across a distro called MX Linux, which is kind of a joint venture between AntiX and Mepis. It's on a list of non-systemd distros:
http://www.gabordemooij.com/index.php?p=/escape_from_systemd

I've been playing around with it in a VM and it seems ok, but I'm hesitant to consider a small distro I've never heard of before. Has anyone ever used MX Linux?
http://www.mepiscommunity.org/mx/
It installs a backported Debian 4.4 kernel.

I spent time playing around with PC-BSD in a VM, and it seemed fine although I never got to the point of understanding how the linux compatibility worked. Unfortunately, my fun came to an end when a new version was released (I had downloaded 10.1, the updater suggested I upgrade to 10.2). I said ok, the system deleted 800+ packages (I assumed to replace them with newer versions) and stopped. I now have no GUI and no idea what to do. I think I'd better stick with linux as I don't have the time to learn a new OS to the point of being able to repair stuff like this.

--
Greg Helledy
GRA, Incorporated
P: +1 215-884-7500
F: +1 215-884-1385
www.gra.aero
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