MX Linux 18

buster · January 01, 2019, 02:01:08 PM

Budgie seems a work in progress to me. Quick but quirky. Wouldn't hold resolution change. Certainly light.

Jason · January 04, 2019, 03:11:37 PM

Trying out MX now as a VM. I've never cared for the appearance of Xfce in most distros but in MX they've set up a soft elegant look about it. The program menu looks really good and they choose to put it on the left but without the usual over-sized icons.

fox · January 15, 2019, 07:30:50 AM

I went back to my MX installation on my laptop and found that window movement was very difficult. When I get near an edge I want to drag, I get the briefest drag symbol, but it isn't stable and it takes a lot of precision movement to be able to drag the edge. (Much more than Ubuntu on the same laptop.) I can move the window or expand it to full screen without problem; only the resizing is difficult. Is there some fix for this?

Moderator Message: Find replies to this question here.

ssfc72 · January 15, 2019, 01:57:51 PM

Ok, finally did the virtual install of MXLinux, on a Host Mint 18.3, on my HP 12" notebook, 4 G Ram.
Also installed the 2 vmware tools programs, using Synaptic in the virtual MXLinux.

I had to manually set the proper display resolution for the notebook (approx. 1300X700 ) as MXLinux chose to use a default 800X700 (ugh!)

Full screen view works fine, as does drag and drop, of files between the Host and Guest OS.

MXLinux works very nicely!

buster · January 15, 2019, 03:03:38 PM

A long journey!

Usually when you boot MX into a regular window, and wait while it finishes, and then you click full screen in VMWare, it will ignore whatever you set as the resolution, and I believe allow the downloaded tools software to automatically put the screen into the hardware's resolution.

When it is full screen you can see if the resolution is not perfect. Check your screen edges.

buster · January 15, 2019, 07:32:25 PM

And a development that to me is unexpected. If you put the data span for hits per day in Distrowatch to 30 days (the last month), MX Linux has a substantial lead in interest compared to all other distros. I agree, it doesn't mean people are using it, but they certainly are interested in it around the world.

I think it's a reasonable interest. I wonder how many of the people checking it out remember the glory years of Mepis, which was, in fact, the desktop on Marilyn's first computer.

Jason · January 17, 2019, 10:45:05 PM

From the moderator:

I should have done this earlier. I split the discussion about Fox's window resizing issue into a new topic here and it's in support.

It's better if you need help with a specific problem to do that in Support. You could always put a link to this discussion if you think it's related enough. I could have done it with Bill's VMware/MX Linux 18 install woes too but it's breaks the thread up too much if we split over and over.

fox · January 18, 2019, 02:16:21 PM

I apologize if this has already been covered, but I think that all that has been said about running MX Linux in a vm has been based on VMware Player. I just installed it in VirtualBox with Ubuntu as a host on my 2015 5k iMac. Installation was quick and smooth. I gave it 2gb memory and 128mb for the video. It runs well and can resize without problem, but the option to enable usb 2 and 3, or host-guest dragging are not enabled in a default installation. I had to download the Virtualbox Additions within the vm and install them from a terminal to enable these functions. In the vm MX uses about 365mb RAM in xfce with no applications running and about 475mb using Gnome instead of xfce. I think that the relatively low RAM usage in Gnome is due to no compositor running, though one can enable a compositor in MX Gnome.

buster · January 18, 2019, 06:30:57 PM

Mike wrote: " the option to enable usb 2 and 3, ...is not enabled in a default installation "

While this may be true that it's not default, the only thing I would have done was look for the guest modules in the repositories. (I don't do terminals except under duress.) And after I put in the usb stick, it showed up at the top of the menu of /home/harry in MX!!!!!

Ubuntu derivatives usually supply the modules in my experience. But it's not much of a search in Synaptic to find them.

buster · January 18, 2019, 06:59:51 PM

The previous post was completely changed with an edit. I was so wrong it's embarrassing. Sorry if anyone read it when first posted.

fox · January 19, 2019, 07:21:31 AM

Quote from: buster on January 18, 2019, 06:30:57 PM
Mike wrote: " the option to enable usb 2 and 3, ...is not enabled in a default installation "

While this may be true that it's not default, the only thing I would have done was look for the guest modules in the repositories. .... And after I put in the usb stick, it showed up at the top of the menu of /home/harry in MX!!!!!

Can you clarify? What does a usb stick have to do with this? Were the modules in the MX repository and did you download them, or were they in your home folder on the vm without doing anything? Were these individual modules for things like usb, or all of the guest additions? I presume that this was in VMware Player, not VirtualBox. I think that in VirtualBox you don't see individual modules, just the Additions package.

In my case, VirtualBox provides the options to mount the Additions in the virtualized optical drive. I tried that; the Additions iso mounted but wouldn't run. This must have happened to me before because I knew to try doing it from a Terminal without even searching the error message. The Additions folder was mounted in /media. In the folder was a run file with a .sh suffix. I knew to run such files with an "sh" command, so that's what I did. I think that what it did was first unmount the Additions that had been installed by default, and it then installed the more complete Additions package.

buster · January 19, 2019, 10:11:51 AM

Mike wrote: "I knew to try doing it from a Terminal without even searching the error message"

Just to clarify -

The guest modules are software that enable the guest distro to take advantage of the host's hardware features. This allows full screen resolution, drag and drop, copy/paste, and the luxury of using hardware on the host machine like a dvd player or usb slots.

In either vmware or virtualbox,this can be done two ways:
a) use the additions folder and a terminal or
b) download open-vm-tools and open-vm-tools-desktop from the repositories.

So I've done about 50 virtual installs, maybe more, over the last 4 or 5 years. I have never, ever used a terminal to do this. I always use b) above.

When I tested a usb stick yesterday after reading your post I noticed the files didn't show up on the desktop, as they do in Windows, but were on the left top of the home file. And it was perfect.

Recently Jason used your method to get the modules with his MX, and Bill used mine. Same result. Worthwhile adding that some distros add the modules automatically, and some make you go get them. MX is in the latter category.

Hope I have answered your question clearly. Write back if I've misinterpreted your request.

fox · January 19, 2019, 10:33:16 AM

It's the usb stick I don't understand. Did you install the vm on a usb stick, or perhaps download the modules and put them on a usb stick? Or did you just test the usb stick on your vm to see if it could see files installed there?

buster · January 19, 2019, 10:46:23 AM

Mike wrote: "did you just test the usb stick on your vm to see if it could see files installed there?"

I just tested the ability to see the files on a USB stick.

fox · January 21, 2019, 11:39:54 AM

I just went back to the MX vm I created with Virtualbox, shut it down and tried to add USB 2 or 3 capability with the settings. It added either but noted that the setting was invalid, and the vm wouldn't boot with either of those settings. Going back to USB 1.1, which was installed by default, and it booted up OK. So, Harry, do you have USB 2 or 3 capability in your MX vm?

Incidentally, MX Linux boots up very quickly in a Virtualbox vm; 10 sec I would estimate, although it takes another 15-20 sec before Conky loads. Amazing! I had previously reported freezing in Thunderbird on my bare metal installation, so I tried that on the vm. Got the same freezing, at least twice, but I think that this occurred while Thunderbird was downloading messages from my university server. It happened in the vm when I was setting up my Google calendar in Lightning (a Thunderbird extension in case you didn't know). But once Lightning was set up and the messages were downloaded, I haven't seen a Thunderbird freeze in either the bare metal installation or the vm.

The Lightning calendar works well in either MX installation, and it is full featured. The disadvantage, vs either Gnome calendar or a Google calendar app is that the latter display your calendar with one click. Lightning requires starting up Thunderbird and then clicking the calendar icon, although in a vm, one could leave the calendar showing when saving the vm state, and it will show when opened the next time. For Google, one has to start up a browser first and then click on a Google Calendar link you set up. Neither is a big deal, but with Gnome calendars, it's a one-stop-shop. I'm sure that Gnome calendars would work if one is running the Gnome desktop in MX instead of xfce.