MX Linux has received a lot of attention and kudos lately, and I have had it on my desktop for a few months, but honestly haven’t used it that much, because I just don’t tend to use my desktop too often. So after trying Solus, and Zorin on my ultrabook, which were both really slick, modern, and appealing, I wanted something that was easier to tinker with for me, and as MX Linux is based on Debian, there were a lot more repos and packages available. I was also hoping that switching to MX would improve the 3.5-4 minute boot times on my laptop that I got with Solus and Zorin.

So I installed MX Linux, and a little over a week on, I love it on my laptop. Unfortunately, the boot time is about the same as with Zorin and Solus, but I think I can live with that. Once I boot up, I don’t usually have to reboot very often, just close the lid, the laptop sleeps, I open the lid, and the screen is on, and PC humming along well before it is at eye level.

There are some great things in MX. One thing that really floored me was after I added a few repos from MX and Debian. After adding in the Apt address, and updating, I found that the GPG keys were missing. I haven’t done this in a few years, so checked in a few Linux forums for how to add the GPG key files, and had no luck, then when doing something else, in the MX Start menu, under the MX Tools, I found, “MX Fix GPG Keys”, which automatically scanned all my sources and added GPG key files for any that were missing. Wow!

There are a ton of MX Tools, which is awesome, and really highlights the strength and energy of the community.

A little customization with MX Tweak, installed a few themes and icon sets, installed Plank, Guake, Mega, KDE Connect to sync with my phone, and it’s kicking ass!

I’ve had a couple freezes, which sucks, looking at you KDE Connect, haha, just kidding, who knows what it is. It could be Flash on Firefox, which usually works fine, but is finicky even on Windows, or some other process or program. Which actually brings me to another great thing about MX Linux, which is that it is a rolling release, so you don’t have to wait for big releases for updates, they come out as the developers release them. I actually really love KDE Connect. I have been using it to sync up, and get notifications from my phone, explore, copy and paste files from my phone to my laptop, and other super secret spy stuff. Really a great program, that has made the laptop much more functional.

It has been a few years since I’ve installed Linux on a laptop, and there have been a lot of upgrades and improvements under the hood. On my old XPS laptop, and Alienware laptop, even though I loved it, Linux always seemed to run hot and used a lot of RAM and CPU, but now the system is quiet and cool. I also have learned to watch out for background processes that can hijack hardware resources too. I installed Dropbox, which I haven’t used in years, and thought would be nice, but it really seemed to suck up a lot of RAM and CPU, even when idle, so I ditched it for Mega, which is better anyways, and definitely much friendlier to resources.

I also, in the mean time, installed BionicPup, a cool version of Puppy Linux to another SD card, and the boot time was just over a minute, which is great, but that install has it’s own issue , so after an evening playing around with it, I went back to MX. Probably write that up later.

So overall, even with a few hiccups, I’m loving MX Linux on the laptop!