Looks like Rufus is windows only. Still surprised it can't use SDC. I managed to get it to write using https://www.balena.io/etcher/. Will have a play on a very old netbook.
I've been using MX since version 16. In fact, I'm using it now. It is rock solid, stable, fast and easy to use and configure. It's never failed me. Not even once. I have it on 3 desktops and 2 laptops. I'm glad to see it finally get some recognition.
Technical reviews can be misleading. No one doubts the knowledge required to analyze different distros but quite often the ‘faults’ identified will have no impact on average users with the possible exception of smartphone support. If they can send emails, do online banking, surf YouTube and connect to social media then most everything else is immaterial. 95% of all available distros will accomplish this without falling over so it basically boils down to what appeals visually (to average users). Users with more specialized needs will obviously base their choice on other criteria. Having spent most of the Christmas holiday setting up Windows 10 systems for a bunch of folks I can’t for the life of me understand why Windows is still referred to as the easy option. It is in fact an insecure, frustrating, time consuming malware magnet. Never before have so many customers paid for a product that gives such poor service. If Windows were a car it would be swamped with class action lawsuits and recalled every six months. In terms of Linux development the biggest negative is the proliferation of desktop environments and ego driven forks that no one wants or needs. After a rocky transition from KDE4, Plasma5 now has the ‘best of’ DE nailed in my opinion and Deepin probably takes the top award for aesthetic innovation. Users missing the good ‘ol days can still find the odd supported KDE4 distro including the excellent ROSA Fresh R10. Q4OS is also worth a mention with Trinity offering more than enough customization options to create a unique desktop. Elementary is a disgrace and should be buried along with Budgie and a few others. Otherwise have to agree with Kubuntu 18.04 which I use daily and MX fully deserves the recognition it is now getting although anyone looking for a ‘different’ Xfce distro might like to check out Makulu Flash and Modicia.
While that's very largely true, some distros do come up with innovations. The welcome screen, boutique, and now MX Tools. I think there were some other features MX Linux has that aren't in others including customizing the Live USB.
Windows 10 works flawlessly for me and I find it to be incredibly hard to get infected. On systems that I install and uninstall large amounts of software on, I encounter issues, and sometimes can not install new builds of Windows 10, which certainly is an issue. But, on systems I don't mess with too much, everything just works, even Windows Updates never cause any problems. Because of this, I have no need to use anything else. I've got nothing against Linux and use it very occasionally, but I would find it very hard to ditch Windows.
We'll never know of course how many thousands lost data with the 1809 fiasco and historically I had to reinstall two of my own Windows 7 systems due to broken updates I could never fix so user experiences will be variable. Also, folks have a natural tendency to 'mess' with things. When something breaks or grinds to a halt a quick internet search advises the installation of a registry cleaner to 'fit it' because that's what the vendor's website promises to do. Result? Bam! no more Windows. When RegHunter was first released with a Portuguese translation we had queues outside the shop at weekends all with broken systems and the same people on more than one occasion! For us it was easy money. Worse still folks encounter one of the zillions of fake sites promoting the rogueware SpyHunter and end up in an even worse mess. Linux systems of course are not immune to similar events but I can reinstall Kubuntu in less than 10 minutes, download whatever additional software I need in the same time and take only another half hour to apply my personal customizations. Try achieving this with a new install of 1803 complete with updates, security software and all the other stuff you lost with the breakage.
@Gringo95 I'm sure that for many people who don't need to run any Windows specific software, Linux may well be a better choice. As an experienced Windows user, who is not click happy, for me Windows is a better choice. That's what backups are for. But if I was to do a clean install of either Linux or Windows, I would need to take the time to install and configure the software I need. While I would need to install and configure security software on Windows, I can do that in a few minutes. Sure, it will take longer to install and update Windows, but that's not a big concern for me. I guess one big advantage Linux has, is that unlike with Windows, there's no need to worry about finding drivers, whereas depending on the computer I install Windows on, there may be some devices which Windows couldn't find drivers for, which I will need to find and install the drivers for myself.
In late 2014 I needed a new laptop. I had a choice of buying one installed with Linux, Win 7/Linux dual boot, Win 8 or Mac. For a long time I seriously contemplated a MacBook. Win 7 was on the way out and there were updating issues. I'm pretty convinced the problematical Win 7 updates were a deliberate sabotage policy by MS to make the 'train wreck' that was Win 8 more palatable to potential customers. Furthermore, Windows is a major security headache notwithstanding overenthusiastic AV's accidentally eviscerating hard drives with false positives. Not only that, I just resent Microsoft's attitude about many things. A hegemony or dictatorship is never good. Eventually I went with a Lenovo G500 running Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. It now runs 16.04 LTS. I've never regretted the decision. As far as I'm concerned it's curtains for Windows.
I agree with mostly everything you say about Windows 10, but the problem with it is the privacy-invasive telemetry nonsense. You don't get that problem with Linux, at least not to anywhere near the extent as with Windows 10. The telemetry can be tamed quite a bit with some O/S tweaks and hardening, as well as firewall block rules, but a lot slips through the inevitable cracks. That said, I dual-boot Linux and Windows 10, because I can't let go of Windows for various reasons. In MX-18 I've found a distro that works extremely well out of the box, so it's a keeper for me.
It's really not necessary for MX to have an LTS as some people were wondering. Isn't that an Ubuntu/Mint thing, or something? They still support 15, 16 & 17. They were supporting 14 (based on Wheezy) in the forums but can't say for certain about that now that Wheezy has wheezed. MX isn't really rolling. It might be called semi-rolling so long as semi-rolling is understood as remaining based on Debian Stable (currently stretch 9.6) with various applications and packages being updated from time to time. I mean, it's not going to sit there all unyielding and stodgy for 2-3 years. I see updates available once in a while when I log in. I don't think twice about updating. MX just doesn't break.
The purpose of lts is guaranteed life - if someone wants to use an operating system, they know it will be there in 5/7/10 years. Mrk
This is why I've stayed with Ubuntu for years. I'm pretty sure it will still exist in the years to come. Seems to me many distros don't last longer than a fortnight.
Unfortunately we can't say that about most distributions. Debian, Red Hat and SUSE will probably be around for a long, long time. And probably Arch, too. But Ubuntu, just as an example, could decide that maintaining a consumer desktop OS should go the route of Mir and Unity, and then concentrate resources on IoT and servers. I doubt they'd stop immediately, though. I imagine, if they went that route, they would have a date certain for EoL sometime off into the future with little development in the interim. I think Mint's experiment with LMDE is insurance for just such a possibility.
Unlikely, Ubuntu's been going for fourteen years so I don't think Shuttleworth and Canonical are going anywhere soon. Shuttleworth has often stated that it is an ambition of his to offer a viable alternative to Mac and Windows. Red Hat Enterprise is only four years older. Ubuntu Kylin is already five years old. In 2013, Canonical reached an agreement with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People's Republic of China to co-create and release an Ubuntu-based OS with features targeted at the Chinese market.[3][4] Ubuntu Kylin is intended for desktop and laptop computers.[5] ~ Wikipedia Ubuntu is still in the top 20 distros. I'll bet money Ubuntu desktop is still going in fourteen years time. By then I may even have a new laptop.
I wonder if Ubuntu's adoption of Gnome as its default desktop environment is going to seriously put Gnome ahead of Plasma for good over the long haul. I'm not altogether certain but I have to think it can only help having Canonical's people contributing to Gnome upstream, too. Plasma is nice, and a number of people like it. But other DE's are nice, too. I mean, I love Xfce and tend to use it wherever I can; it's just one of the many reasons I like MX. But I am grudgingly growing used to Gnome now and plan to check out Ubuntu 18.04 for reasons. At least I'm trying. I can't quite get into Plasma with all those K things. I guess I'm just a GTK kind of guy.
In what ways are MX Linux superior to Linux Mint, if I may ask? Is it faster? Less prone to having issues? Better hardware support? It's just that there are so many distros, yet I fail to see the advantages really. What advantages are there, aside from getting support longer and higher stability? Just curious. I'm also a fan of LTS, I just never understood why
I had a bit of an issue with Kubuntu on my wife's netbook: I deleted the KDE package (brain snap) and couldn't access anything thereafter. Every cloud... I decided to try MX-18 but couldn't get it to load after trying twice. Haven't a clue what happened, have tried different distros and never had that problem. Put Kubuntu back on and within a few hours, care of the two pages of notes I made (how to mount shared drive, etc. - all the noobie stuff), happy wife, happy life. I've since learnt about Timeshift, better late than never. I'll stay with Kubuntu for now, or until Mrk announces a new favourite. I only started looking at Linux because the wife's netbook was a 32GB SSD which could not take the mega windows updates. Even tried attaching a separate USB drive to no avail. Very happy with Kubuntu, faster and smoother than Win10, and no worries about malware. Bit of a learning curve, but searching was fun. I love how a distro arrives with all the programmes installed. I think a Linux distro would get a better look-in if there was a noobie guide, written by an expert, available detailing steps 1,2,3.. and how to do the things we take for granted on Windows.
Neither MX or Mint is superior one to the other, in my view. They're both excellent distros. I prefer MX because it's based on Debian Stretch, it has MX Tools, it's blistering fast, and it's rock solid stable. Oh, and it features Xfce (my fav) but you can add another DE in the package installer with just a click of the mouse. MX Tools is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Install MX, open the tools, and it has pretty much everything you need right there.
Those are the advantages. Well, that and it isn't Windows. I'm not interested in changing my OS every fortnight, or pointless distro hopping just for the sake of it. I don't want to regularly upgrade or reformat the OS. I don't need thrilling or exciting desktop environments. I merely require a stable, practical operating system that I can use as an everyday online computer. Ubuntu LTS releases achieve that.
This almost sounds like Monthy Python's Life of Brian What Have the Romans ever done for us? Apart from stability, support, quality, and fun, what do LTS really offer Mrk
+1 on this Daveski17 and I would add that the security of just using programs that are open source from a repository is a big plus. I would really prefer more rolling release distros.
I believe there have been a few security and stability concerns with some of the snap packages. My VLC snap does what I want it to (I only watch DVD's with it) but the icon sometimes mysteriously disappears whenever it is locked in the launcher. My default media player is SMPlayer. There must be disadvantages to rolling Linux releases.
Well, theoretically they are less stable. However, Manjaro (I'm using the KDE version and I'm extremely happy with it) hasn't caused any trouble for me. Manjaro is an Arch derivative, and while critical security-related updates are offered very fast, all other Arch updates go to Manjaro Unstable, then Testing and finally to Stable. So there is a chance that bugs that might come up in Arch will be fixed until they land in Manjaro Stable. That said, it's important to never perform partial updates. As a matter of fact, every time I boot up my computer I press Ctrl-Alt-F3 and execute "u" - which is simply an alias for "sudo pacman -Syu". Even when installing new packages I use that alias to make sure that all updated dependencies are properly installed as well.
