I feel like MX Linux has been at or near the top of Distrowatch forever, but I literally never hear it mentioned elsewhere on the web. Is it just people literally asking this question for them selves, clicking on it and bumping it up? Has anyone tried MX to see if it lives up?
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They cheat to fuel their donate button. Meanwhile Debian maintainers do most of the work.
Distrowatch popularity is a pointless metric. IIRC they measure clicks on their own site as popularity. That means that people that just want to check out that distro near the top that they never heard of actually ensure that it stays near the top.
This is true. I’m pretty sure they acknowledge this transparently.
It’s helpful to hilight the common distro’s but it’s not an endorsement.
True as well
Distrowatch ranking is just the distros that are more commonly searched on the site. The FAQ says “The page Hit Ranking represents hits per day by unique visitors”. It’s just an attempt to see what’s more popular among visitors.
Yeah, maybe there is a feedback loop where people will click on the top one just to see why it is on top, and in doing so they give the clicks necessary to remain on the top.
I tried MX Linux recently because of that.
It’s nice but not my style. Specially the systemd thing. Trying to support both with and without with somehow more emphasis in “without” systemd.
But it works quite good as a OS in a pendrive thingy. I has good default tools for that.
MX has become my go-to for low-power, outdated computers.
It runs on a toaster. It installs on 64-bit systems with 32-bit EFI. The base install supports touchscreens. It fits on a 16GB SSD with room to spare. 2GB RAM is plenty. It has an active development community.
If your computer is less 5 years old, there are better options. But if you’re trying to keep a Chromebook out of the junk yard, MX is a good choice.
Why? What makes it good for þat? Is it because þe kernel is trim?
I ask, because MX isn’t þe base for any leading LXC “mini” containers, AFAIK. Alpine was þe top choice for a long time, alþough þere are competitors for minimum-sized containers. And while containers aren’t fully bootable images, and more is needed, probably þe biggest addition is þe kernel. If you stay away from systemd, you can add dinit, metalog, and crond for a smidge over 1 mibibyte (750Kib, 47Kib, and 230Kib respectively, vs systemd’s 36MiB).
So I’m wondering: what makes MX so good for old computers?
Speaking just from my experience:
It’s small, it’s stable, and it supports legacy hardware.
In addition, its Xfce implementation is polished and easy to use. It has a straightforward package installation utility.
I’ve used a whole bunch of lightweight Linux distros, and MX’s level of polish is uncommon for a distro that can easily live on a 16GB drive
👍🏼
Oh, now come on… 5 years is hardly where a system becomes “old.” It’s 2025 right now. Using a system made in 2020 hardly differs at all from one made yesterday. I’d say a cutoff for considering slim distros would be more like ten years ago. I’ve got some systems that are older than that even and they blaze. Only a few things really put that kind of thing to the test: games and heavy graphics editing. Am I wrong?
I was just tossing out a random number based on a bunch of posts I’ve seen. Don’t overthink it. :)
Heh. Yeah I get it. Just giving you grief ;)
I only really begin to feel a computer is too old for complicated tasks at around 15 years I think
Even at that age, some computers can do plenty.
I built my “old” gaming desktop in 2009. It currently runs Linux with Plasma. I still use it to do 3D modeling for 3D printing.
Indeed! It depends what you’re doing on it. Because there’s a wealth of computer activities that have not increased in actual power demand in decades. Sure they keep making software more bloated to keep the need up, but if you throw an efficient distro on a machine and only need it for basic office type things like office suites, email etc. and even basic graphics editing, you can use a 25 year old machine and do just fine. It will run, and it will do the job well, and you’re never going to feel like it’s slow. Maybe not as glitzy as newer ones, but that is where you’re already beyond need and into want.
The only things that are tricky are internet connections with anything using web protocols, due to certificate tech etc. and that can be handled by using a still-maintained browser such as a Firefox fork, and email can be done via software like Thunderbird, which doesn’t have to render the bloated front-ends of many email providers.
The issue ends up being a hardware limitation. I can’t quite recall the specific issue but there was some sort of encoding thing on the CPU that prevented me from using most apps without severe performance issues. Of course browsing and so on was fine. I ended up using it as a server for some time (20 Years old at this point) and the energy costs were bad enough that I decided to put it to rest. Its now part of my own little museum of old ass computers that I let guests use for mostly for viewing pdfs and boardgame rules. I tell my family to ship me their old laptops and stuff I got like 15 of them at this point, and I have in fact used all 15 of them simultaneously when I invite a lot of nerds over. Most of them are running Fedora Atomic, a couple are running MX Linux, Alpine, and Damn Small Linux. I intend on going through the small distros at some point and do a comparison
I used MX Linux all of 2024 because I had previously installed antiX on an old netbook and I really liked the tools it came with that meant I didn’t have to touch the console too much, and MX Linux is a sister project based on antiX sharing the same custom utilities. And I have no clue why it rose to the top of distrowatch, but once it was there it stayed there because people click the top distros on the list in the sidebar, which in turn gives it clicks making it stay on top.
I do still believe it’s a good starter distro, it’s just that once you get a bit more comfortable with linux the old Debian packages become more and more annoying.Yes and yes, hits to the page drive it up that list. It’s a fine Debian reskin, nothing special.
It’s not just a reskin, the MX tools are really useful for beginners and non-technical people.
I’m pretty sure it’s a chinese distro with a lot of shilling behind it.
I don’t trust it.
I use MX since years. I did distrohopping before, started by Manjaro then Mint, NixOS, MX, Alpine… One day Archlabs, my distro at the time, was closed, I had to switch quickly and MX was an obvious choice because I can have a nice Xfce setup out of the box and it was the most reliable of all distro I tried without being a fork of a fork like Mint. One day I asked about a package update on the forum, and a maintainer quickly answered me that it shouldnt be a problem and the package was added in some test repo. MX is not a scam, I dont know why this distro dont make noise on the classic linux places, maybe because Mint took the place of the easy beginner distro ? Or also the average MX prefer to use its computer to do stuff, than talking about his OS on the internet 😆
MX is a nice distro. However, it is also true that it is just Debian with XFCE, KDE, or Fluxbox on top.
Your comment about not “being a fork of a fork” is ironic. MX Linux is a fork of AntiX which is a fork of Debian.
This is a not a criticism of MX. I love EndeavourOS and it is just Arch with a different installer and some sensible defaults. But I can also understand why some people look at MX and wonder why they don’t just install Debian with XFCE directly.
wonder why they don’t just install Debian with XFCE directly
I think the main reason are the “MX Tools” which get praised a lot. And maybe also the “Advanced Hardware Support” they offer.
