Updated: April 9, 2023
I've not done much distro testing lately. For many reasons. One, I felt there was (and still is) not enough progress in the Linux desktop space for me to bother with frequent testing. Two, the results would often be rather disappointing, with regressions and same-old problems bruising my soul. Three, I don't like doing things that have no meaningful outcome.
A while back, I decided to be quite sparing in my distro choices, and thus, I only test the few systems that either have (reasonably) significant impact on the desktop space, or have made me happy in the past, or both. MX Linux falls into the middle category. Not a big distro, not the market mover. A small project, but one that still manages to deliver decent results, despite its size. Last test, MX-21 Wildflower, KDE edition, some eighteen months back. We shall now examine the latest edition. Follow me.
Xfce edition first
I chose to start with the Xfce version. After all, MX Linux is all about being frugal and light. Now, now, now, this used to be an important distinction re: desktop environment a few years ago, but it isn't anymore. Back in the day, the so-called "heavy" desktops would indeed be heavy, memory usage and performance wise. Nowadays, the underlying distro choice is probably more important when it comes to system toll, i.e., Xfce alone won't do miracles. The gap to some of the heavy desktops has also narrowed a great deal. You want speed and all of the modern conveniences? Plasma. When it comes to lightweight, both Xfce and Plasma will deliver.
Anyway, I booted the AHS version on my triple-boot IdeaPad. And very quickly, I got rather disenchanted. The Xfce desktop hasn't really changed since I last played with it. This wouldn't be bad if we're only talking about cosmetics, because that's not really important. The problem is, the usability is also outdated. How, you ask?
Well, the IdeaPad comes with a 14-inch screen, so its HD resolution is tricky. You need some level of scaling to enjoy the displayed contents. Typically, I go for 125% or 137.5% scaling in Plasma, and this works really well. I mean, it works better than any other desktop environment out there, and even Windows, I must say.
In Xfce, HD scaling feels 2008. Let me explain. First, I tried to increase the height of the panel at the bottom of the screen (after having it moved from the default left orientation). After I crossed a magical threshold of pixels, some icons scaled up, but others didn't. Very soon, I found myself in a ridiculous state with some of the icons fairly large and others tiny, hard-coded to whatever default value they had, 28 px or 32 px or whatnot. This made my OCD klaxon go off.
Exaggerated size, just so you can see - notice the clock, the Wireless icons, for instance.
Then, I said, ok, let's scale the rest of the desktop. Xfce gives you two choices, GTK scaling and xrandr. The first one only works in full-integer increments. Pointless. Also, why GTK, we're using Xfce, no? The second gives you the right granularity, but ... all it does is actually zoom in on the desktop, without any real scaling. There's no information interpolation. You simply get a blurred version of your standard desktop, rendered to some intermediate would-be resolution. Conky vanished from the screen, everything looked washed out and blurry. I realized that in 2023, I have absolutely zero energy to be bothered with something like this. I rebooted the system, downloaded the Plasma version, and started fresh.
And ... we boot the KDE one
The Plasma desktop looks nicer, and it's more configurable. But again, it's not the best. MX Linux ships with version 5.20, which is I guess what's available in the Debian repos. It's not an LTS, and it has a bunch of little problems and bugs, like an odd HD scaling artifact.
The installer did its job, but the partitioning step is awfully ugly. I don't understand how this can be, especially in the most critical part of the installation process. Anyway, I went through the wizard, ticked the box that says "preserve live session", and within three minutes, the system was ready. Not fancy, but fast.
Then, I rebooted and began me adventure ...
Anyway, let's actually start with various problems
There were quite a few actually. During the boot sequence, the screen dims to the lowest brightness level. I've already noted this a bunch of times in the past - and from what I see on my Slimbook Titan, too, any laptop with AMD graphics seems affected: plug the laptop into power, the screen dims. And it looks like this problem will never be solved, and it seems to be casually carried over into newer kernels. The boot sequence is slow, 13 seconds.
The Wireless configuration wasn't preserved - and there's no Wireless auto-connect, another problem I've outlined in the past. Conky was also retained as an autostart service, even though I ticked this off in the live session. So not all of my settings were carried over as they should. If you try to "make" the system allow Wireless auto-connect, you get a hard error:
I guess the UID 1000 thingie is the source of quite a few problems ...
The Fn buttons work without the Fn qualifier. Unless something reset something else in my BIOS, not sure why this would be the case. The desktop is set for single click, which is odd. But unlike stock Plasma, MX Linux does not have the "frequently done actions" main page, so you can't easily fix this. Plasma also makes things more difficult by setting the mouse single/double-click action as a Workspace behavior thing and not a mouse thing. I bet no new user will ever be able to change this unless they know their way around.
Where does a newb go from here mouse wise?
The logout is very slow - about 10 seconds. The login screen, if you switch away from the MX Linux one to the default Breeze one, is broken. You only get an empty white screen with the login field, that's it.
Even on a fully updated desktop, there's always a desktop session crash on login - after suspend, normal login, or after reboot. The desktop shows up, then the screen dims fully for a second, the session restarts, and now it's usable. Remains unfixed. I tried to find some useful info on this. There's not much, older reports about similar occurrences, but mostly tied to Wayland, which is not the case here. But the system log definitely has two instances of KDE starting up, one after another, and lots of associated errors:
Activated service 'org.freedesktop.systemd1' failed: Process org.freedesktop.systemd1 exited with status 1
Samba speed is meh, only about 7 MB/s. There's no box to tick "Remember" Samba credentials in Dolphin, so every time you connect to a Samba share, you must authenticate. The system is configured not to save the Plasma session on exit. No swap was made or used during the installation. And finally, I find the terminal colors a bit too much.
Baloo (system search) is broken, totally and completely:
Activated service 'org.kde.runners.baloo' failed: Process org.kde.runners.baloo exited with status 255
Look and feel, usability
Once you get past the initial hurdles, the experience is solid. Good looks, good functionality. Tons of nice programs. It was quite all right, but then, you cannot ignore the fact there are better Plasma releases out there, which simply offer more of everything. However, I can't really complain. As far as Linux goes, Plasma is still light years ahead of everything else.
Alas, some wee HD scaling problems:
MX Tools, the ace up the distro's sleeve
The one thing MX Linux does really well - it's the MX Tools, eh, toolbox. It's a combo of utilities, scripts and programs that helps you manage your distro. And this combo works great. You get everything you need, and then some. The wizards are friendly and properly useful. For instance, MX Tour will show you how to use your system, and it comes with some neat tricks.
MX Snapshot is another superb program. It lets you create live media from your installed system. You can even make a redistributable distro version of your own, with your personal data removed. This is like the good ole remastersys, and it lets you image/backup your machine in a clever way. You can even check the Exclusion File list for some clever rsync rules, which you can then apply into your own data replication and backup scenarios if you want. We will talk more about this tool separately.
Performance, responsiveness, battery usage
The system is ultra-fast. The actions are all instantaneous. Very neat. Accordingly, the battery usage is pretty solid. With updates, browsing, media playback, and brightness set to 100%, the system still showed roughly two hours and change at 45% charge mark. This means with 50% brightness and lighter usage, the system can probably do 6 hours solid. Noice.
Conclusion
My impression is that MX Linux is struggling. The whole of the Linux desktop space has been stagnant for quite a while, but it's that much harder for smaller distros to maintain their qualitative edge over the rest. In particular, the choice of technologies used in the system severely limits what can and cannot be done. Sadly, the Xfce version feels just ... wrong. It feels antiquated. I like frugality, but it cannot come at the expense of basic, fundamental functionality. I'm super happy with MX Linux on my ancient eeePC netbook, but there, we have a simple, low-res setup, and everything looks fine in its default guise. As soon as you go FHD, and try to change things, the delicate balance breaks, and Xfce can't keep up. I wouldn't say it's the desktop of the past, but it definitely is the desktop of uncomplicated setups at resolutions probably not more than 1366x768px on a typical 14/15-inch laptop.
The KDE version is soooo much better. But it's also not the best it can be. Plasma 5.20 isn't LTS, so it makes little sense. Any existing problems won't be fixed. The issues I've outlined back in my original review remain, and there are some new ones, too. And I don't think MX Linux has enough clout to make major changes here, whether upstream or in their own stack. This is indeed sad, because MX Tools is a great, great bundle of utilities. Therein, you can see the brilliance and ingenuity of the distro team. But to extend those abilities across the entire system, it requires 10x or 50x times more resources than MX Linux has at the moment. This plagues all of the small distros, and quite a few of the larger ones, as well. By and large, there's nothing inherently bad about Wildflower, but for the common user, stock Kubuntu is an easier, more logical choice, especially since it comes with proper LTS features.
All in all, 5/10 I'd say, for the KDE version. Fast, loaded with goodies, highly customizable, but then there were some major problems: scaling, logout and login woes, screen dimming, Samba credentials, Wireless connect, and whatnot. Not something that should be there. My biggest gripe is that most of these problems had been around before. Well, there you go. This is an okayish lightweight distro, with some really cool, unique features, but it needs a lot more work and finesse. Bye bye now.
Cheers.