You're probably the first person ever to daily drive MX Linux, the most popular distro according to distrowatch
this post was submitted on 14 May 2026
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Man I forgot how slick XFCE looked
Is this real? I'm convinced MX is trash due to distrowatch fuckery
I thought it is highly possible they may had gamed the system at some point, but doubting it less and less by the day... they would have been very consistent for hundreds and hundreds of days! Once you actually installed it, you will realize it is among the most polished yet stable Linux distros there is and has had a very consistent competent team.
Now, I don' think it has a high popularity at all among newcomers, let alone people on forums (look at the popular KDE variant download per week... 112 vs the 'rare' Xfce with 3444). Their base are people that probably are more avid visitors to the legendary Distrowatch than active to these forums, therefore the low visibility to us.
By the way, tried MX KDE and it is really good, I recommend its team stop selling it just as ideal for "old machines", it is perfect for any one that does not want a rolling release. It is for people that would like Debian but want it more polish without getting into Ubuntu or Cinnamon territory. I would go even further... they should even offer a KDE-advanced version with updated Kernel and KDE (like TUXEDO OS does) and i think they will become a hit! But I understand they may lacking resources for that... offering SystemD and SysVinit must be highly intensive on itself already. I have grown to trust them.
Wym?
MX got popular because it was #1 on DistroWatch because they just refreshed the page over-and-over, which is how ranking works (by page load count) on DistroWatch
Their default browser resets the home page to their site so they get artificial visits from every installed instance.
Is that clock conky? Wow I haven't seen a conky file in over a decade
Yeah I just left it default.
It looks great!
Used MX Linux one time then it promptly shit the bed for reasons unknown. Fedora Kinoite and have been trouble free since. I could break an anvil tho...
MX and AntiX are just that right balance between functionality and lightweight. Loving it.
LxQt my beloved
I used to love the minimalism of lxqt over xfce until I learned that QT is proprietary and GTK is open source, therefore I'm with now xfce for life.
Qt is not proprietary if you use it for an open source project, they have an open source license if you are an individual who doesn't use it for profit.
This is XFCE.
MX is great. The MX tools are very useful and Sysvinit isn't as difficult to use as I had assumed. It runs great on an old thinkpad of mine. Seems like a very viable option for people looking to self-host on older gear.
Debian > MEPIS > MX and Debian > MEPIS > AntiX > MX right?
With focus on elegance, stability and efficiency, using XFCE, KDE and Fluxbox.
While MEPIS wanted to be an alternative to SUSE, Redhat and Mandriva.
Grub and Systemd for boot. Has some of their own maintenance tooling.
Also, fuck that clickbaity title.
Is this distro somewhat beginner friendly? I've used Zorin and a little bit of Mint before.
To be fair, at this point any distro is beginner friendly.
Just stay away from Gentoo, and from arch if you don't want the maintenance burden.
I'd say it's beginner-friendly. This is only my fourth distro, so I'm still relatively new, but it wasn't that hard. If you can manage to get past the installer, it's actually very straightforward. Most stuff is already configured; it's pretty cool.
I have MX Linux on a 14 year old Dell Laptop.
Works great because it's got a lightweight desktop, and it has a tool (a GUI tool even!) that seamlessly merges the last available Nvidia 340 drivers for my GPU into the latest kernel. Parked at the desktop with no desktop apps running, it uses about 800MB of ram, leaving 15 GB left for whatever I need to run. Which I have found is plenty for my use case, I've never seen swap in use.
The MX tools are good, like everyone else has been saying here. They take away a lot of the fiddly business associated with the average "sysadmin" things that an end user needs to do.
what do you like about it?
MX Linux is great for resource management on my Dell E5470. While the switch to Thunar from Fedora/Debian had a slight learning curve (especially the Shift+drag mechanic), the customizability via GTK themes is excellent. The biggest win for me is the hardware compatibility—it handles my mobile hotspot flawlessly where other distros like Fedora and LMDE struggled. It’s stable, light, and just works I personally use it as my Daily Driver at the moment because I've yet to find a better distro that doesn't eat my resources and disconnect my mobile hotspot but I've been messing around with NixOS in a VM it might be my next one this is like my fourth or fifth distro.
biggest win for me is the hardware compatibility
how do you mean? Doesn't it use the same Linux kernel as everyone else? Why would some hardware be more compatible?
Ye, but what I mean by 'compatibility' is that it isn’t picky with my drivers like other distros I've tried. Fedora acts a bit strange on my hardware, and half the distros I’ve used have issues dropping my hotspot connection. MX Linux just works, especially on older hardware. While I like Fedora and Debian, MX feels much more resource-efficient for a system with 8 gigs of RAM.
MX Linux is a midweight, desktop-oriented Linux distribution based on Debian Stable 13 "trixie" that emphasizes stability, performance, and ease of use.
Why not Debian directly instead of MX?
MX Tools. The same reason why one daily drives LMDE
The one thing I recently learned that sucks is they stopped support for their media codecs installer thing. Not available on their latest latest repo from what I can find.
Otherwise, yeah, the tools are pretty cool for when you need them.
Why not Debian directly instead of MX?
Debian requires more config out-of-the-box to get a nice desktop/laptop experience. This is ready to go.
I still need to try this.
I downloaded and started seeding it when there was a post about it a few weeks back but haven't had time to try it.
I assume the ISO live boots from a USB so I can poke around without installing? Surely.
I've got an old laptop that I kept windows on for the once every few years I had to use windows but I don't think it's supported anymore and I'd actually use it occasionally if I put Linux on it ;)
You can run Windows in vms on Linux if you don't need screaming performance. I think you can directly install from iso with Incus as well. I haven't find this yet, i used Qemu instead.
I haven't truly needed to use windows in probably 4 years. And those few needs were specific to helping someone who was on windows figure out some windows tomfuckery. I don't think I care anymore... I can just give them a Linux ISO and call it good now.
Good to know though. Just in case.
does it use Systemd or not? wikipedia was unclear :
MX-25 "Infinity" was released on 9 November 2025 and was built on Debian 13 "trixie".[32] Standard kernel is 6.12.43 with Liquorix 6.15 for the Advanced Hardware Support "AHS". New is the deb822 sources format. The installer can "replace" an existing install and offers zram swap. Support for Secure Boot. KDE is version 6.3.6 with both Wayland and X11 sessions available. All releases are available with Systemd. The Xfce, Xfce-AHS, and Fluxbox releases are also available in sysVint variants.[33] MX-25.1 With the release of 25.1, Dual Init is now again possible.[34] This includes both systemd and SysVinit[35] init systems on the same ISO.[1]
During the install of MX Linux, you can choose between systemd and init. The installer actually boots up and lets you select your preference, which is a great feature. I personally went with the systemd option because I don't know much about init, but it really comes down to personal preference.
fantastic, ever since the Dylan debacle I was looking to at least try a non systemd distro, I will try to install it in a few months on my trashtop we use for kids vids
You could spin up a vm with mx and see how it works.
I'm half "my computer sucks and I don't want to risk making a mistake and install it on my actual real HD and kill my projects" and half "I prefer just jamming shit on the trashpad" and half "what's your recommended way of spinning up VMs? I'm on debian btw
I have been playing with Incus recently.
boxes is great, if you just want to try a distro and are already on linux.
This. For taking distros for a quick spin, boxes is the way to go.
what do you like about it?
i ask because i need to switch distros and i'm looking for ideas besides the usual recommendations.
Not OP, but I'm really enjoying it because it's light and stable, and the set of MX tools it comes with are great. Their backup tool is so good that as my old laptop started to die I was easily able to transfer my entire setup to a totally different computer and pick up exactly where I'd left off
... Their backup tool is so good that as my old laptop started to die I was easily able to transfer my entire setup to a totally different computer and pick up exactly where I’d left off
you must have read my mind because this is exactly why i'm on the market for a new distro. lol
i put fedora on my laptop w the intention that it'll be temporary so that i'll have something i can trust right now and knowing full well that fedora iterates quickly. their migration tool has never worked for me and now i have to update again. i'm looking for something that has a longer term iteration like debian has, but shorter than debian.
that's why i ended up with a "rolling release". No more iteration problems :)
Tumbleweed. 😋
i know know of opensuse and redhat/centos's rolling release; do you know of others?
arch
Solus.
It's super light. Unlike Fedora or other distros I've tried, it doesn't play weird with my mobile hotspot.