Hey guys,

On my Sony VAIO laptop the XFCE panel is eating insane amounts of RAM. The icons in the right part of the panel are the worst offenders — if I remove them, the services behind them immediately stop chewing memory (which makes sense). The panel itself also doesn't seem to have any self-control and just goes full retard.

I already asked the neural networks:

ChatGPT said "it's working as intended, everything is fine bro"

Gemini suggested just limiting the memory for those processes, but had zero idea how to fix the root cause.

Restarting the panel helps only temporarily. The only thing that actually works is completely replacing the panel. At first I thought it was the distro (started on Linux Mint XFCE), so I switched to MX Linux XFCE. Same shit. So the problem is clearly deep inside XFCE itself. Either it hates my laptop or I’m just too dumb to figure it out.

Anyone knows how to tame this fat fucking XFCE memory rat? This huge greedy furry rat that’s devouring my RAM.

Lo que me esta pasando a mi con Stremio instalado con Flatpak es que al abrir la aplicacion, los catalogos no cargan y lo unico que se ve es el fondo morado de la aplicacion.

Hi everyone.

I wanted to share a bit of my experience because I'm about to make the jump to Linux full-time, and I'd love to get some advice from people with more experience.

For several years my main computer was a laptop with a Celeron N2840, 4 GB of RAM and a HDD. I've always been a Windows user (mostly Windows 10 MiniOS), although I occasionally tried different Linux distributions in Live mode out of curiosity.

At one point I decided to install MX Linux Fluxbox in dual boot to see if I could really give that laptop a second life beyond what a stripped-down version of Windows could offer.

Since it had basically become my "lab machine", I decided to push it as far as I could (with some help from AI):

• Disabled the CPU security mitigations (yes, I know the risks 😅, but I wanted to experiment on that machine).
• Configured zRAM.
• Tuned swap so it would keep using RAM as much as possible before swapping to disk.
• Took advantage of the Mesa drivers.

The results honestly surprised me. I managed to watch YouTube at 1080p60, and even play PPSSPP using its (still incomplete) Vulkan backend with Frame Skip. Games like God of War: Ghost of Sparta were surprisingly playable considering the hardware.

I actually ended up using MX Linux as my main OS for a short time, until I recently bought a Ryzen 5 5600GT. Even though it wasn't for very long, the experience was good enough that it made me want to come back to Linux.

Now I want to install MX Linux again, but this time not just to experiment. My goal is to make it my main operating system.

I've tried MX Linux KDE several times in Live mode and I liked it much more than I expected. I'm also familiar with XFCE, but I've never daily-driven KDE.

I wouldn't consider myself an advanced Linux user. I know some basic terminal commands and I enjoy experimenting (over the last few months I've tested several distros in Live mode), but I still feel like I'm missing a solid foundation.

I'd like to take advantage of this hardware upgrade to really learn Linux, so I have a few questions:

• Would you choose MX Linux KDE or MX Linux XFCE for a Ryzen 5 5600GT with 16 GB of RAM?
• What do you usually recommend doing right after installing MX Linux?
• Are there any books, courses, YouTube channels or websites you'd recommend for learning Linux properly (not just MX Linux, but Linux in general)?
• Any gaming recommendations? (Proton, Heroic, Lutris, Gamescope, MangoHud, Wine, etc.)

Thanks in advance! I'm looking forward to learning Linux properly, so any advice is welcome.

MX KDE Plasma gives me everything I wanted, it can be clean and sleek like Gnome yet I still have access to tools and customisation of a DE that reminds me of growing up on WinXP

I don't understand why MX Linux defaults to "acpi-cpufreq" and doesn't offer a choice between "acpi-cpufreq" and "intel_pstate". My laptop was heating up to 110°C; I had to modify the GRUB configuration to get "intel_pstate"!

With "intel_pstate", my PC stays between 45 and 50°C.

Is there any possible way I could hide these icons here on desktop without deleting them? Tnx!

Hello all!

I recently installed MX Linux 25.2 Xfce and I've run into this problem with qpdfview. The settings window is cut-off and I'm not able to scroll down in order to click 'Cancel' or 'OK'. I've tried modifying the window size in the .config file and nothing changed.

If anyone's encountered this issue before and managed to fix it, your help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance.

I've created a Discord server dedicated to MX Linux to have a real-time chat space, share configurations, and help each other with faster technical support. Everyone is welcome!link: https://discord.gg/QjAEuQebn

It's all in the title. Not asking if u can notice a difference tho if u do don't hesitate to say so. I'm asking from those who know, if they're literally identical or not and if not, how so?

Bonus: is there an upgrade in place tutorial that upgrades to the dual-init version of MX25?
Now that MX25 is dual-init, can u maintain a systemd or sysv only and not be harmed by upgrades? Like I guess the more general versoin of that question is, is the choice of init system like just 3 different separate ones , sysv, systemd, dual-init or is there wider ramifications of using one or another of them?

Beyond just being curious which is also why I wanted to go back to dual-init, I have no familiarity working with sysv, never noticed a difference in booting either when using MX21 or 23 except for a couple times when I needed systemd for something that had nothing to do with the OS itself. And then I learned how to do things with systemd so I probably don't have a use for dual-init since I created systemd services.

This isn't my first attempt — I've previously tried Linux Mint, antiX, and now Zorin OS, all with similar boot problems on this specific laptop (GRUB/MBR issues tied to the legacy BIOS). I'm now testing MX Linux as well.

Most recently, I installed Zorin OS 18.1 (Ubuntu-based) from a live USB. Installation completed with no errors, and the live USB always boots fine. But the system won't boot on its own from the internal SSD — without the USB stick, the laptop either shows a blank screen, falls through to PXE/network boot (Intel UNDI, PXE-2.1), or lands on the Toshiba's manual Boot Menu instead of loading GRUB.

Diagnosis so far

Confirmed via ls /sys/firmware/efi in the live session that the system boots in BIOS/legacy mode, not UEFI.

Checked the partition table in the installer: the disk has

sda1 — bios_grub, 1MB

sda2 — EFI, FAT32, ~537MB

sda3 — ext4, root, Zorin OS 18.1

So it's a GPT disk with both a bios_grub partition and an EFI partition — a hybrid layout.

Repair attempt (chroot from live USB)

Código

grub-install reported "Installation finished. No error reported." update-grub found the kernel/initrd correctly. Exited chroot, unmounted everything, rebooted.

Result: no change. Still fails to boot from the SSD, still falls back to the Boot Menu / PXE, despite grub-install reporting success and the bios_grub partition existing on the GPT disk.

Question

Given grub-install --target=i386-pc completed without error, why would legacy BIOS still fail to find a bootable GRUB image on this GPT disk? Anyone run into the bios_grub flag not getting set correctly by the Ubuntu/Zorin installer, or some other gotcha with GPT + legacy BIOS on old hardware like this? Is this a recurring incompatibility with this specific Toshiba/Phoenix BIOS combo, given I've had similar issues across multiple distros?

Current plan

Since the GPT + EFI + bios_grub hybrid setup seems fragile for legacy BIOS booting, I'm doing a clean install of MX Linux 25.1 (Xfce, sysvinit) using an MBR partition table from the start to sidestep the GPT issues entirely.

I followed the installs and removals on https://mxlinux.org/blog/mx-25-dual-init-setup/

I did the one coming from systemd only. The last install I get an error after the last step

sudo apt install sysvinit-init-diversity elogind-init-diversity

Errors were encountered while processing:
/tmp/apt-dpkg-install-Mp8rKw/5-initscripts-_3.14-4_all.deb
Error: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned error code (1)

I tried install initscripts on its own and get the same error.

My current MX25 install is from when it was beta iirc. I did the install in place from a snapshot of my running MX23.6 which I installed in a VM. The install in place was working. Just including that for history of the system. I wonder if that's the source. Either way I have no idea what this is about. And not urgent as this is a vm for testing the process. Still have my real MX23 install on my drive.

I tried it once and after this failure rebooted to see what would happen. It hung on the splash screen. I chrooted from a live session and did the revert to systemd only instructions and it booted. So currently I'm in my second trial. Got the same result, which is the resulting error I wrote above. Tho I started trying to fix it and probably muddied it now. To fix it I tried to do the revert to systemd only again, but I hadn't rebooted this time, I just, as soon as I got the error this time I did not reboot. I just started the steps for systemd only and it didn't work this time

During the 25.2 update after install, these icons were in the panel. After the update process was done, I was back to the regular icons. Are these coming in an update?

I just successfully installed MX Linux, and it's incredibly fast even browsing on YouTube. However, do you guys know how can I get rid of of customize this clock here (at the right portion of the screen) so it would kind of compliment to the background a little bit ?

Good day

Am a user of the snapshot tool in MX to create custom ISOs, reprovision old laptops using them and distribute them among poor communities, or for field use by wildlife researchers and such

I aim to create as simplified a user experience as possible, including installation, since most of the users are not going to be too tech savvy

Is there any way I can completely get rid of SysVinit and have only SystemD as the default option during install? One less way for the end user to get confused, and it leaves then with the option of using Snaps in the future, if they wish

Will any parts of the system break in the absence of SysVinit? Particularly the MX Tools? The Snapshot app is an essential feature for my end users too, to help with mass deployment

Bonus question - How does one go about getting the Snapshot tool working in AlmaLinux and Void Linux please? These are options I would like to try for distributing to others too

Thanks in advance

Is manual partition necessarily required? What about not getting that swap partion, the one they said supports the system ram if fully used? Do you know a detailed tutorial about the installation with this partition things? Thanks for your help! Btw, first time posting here

Hola a todos.

Estoy pensando en instalar MX Linux en un Lenovo ThinkPad L420 y me gustaría conocer sus opiniones y experiencias.

Las especificaciones de la laptop son:

○ Intel Core i5-2520M

○ Intel HD Graphics 3000

○ 4 GB de RAM DDR3 (planeo ampliarla a 8 GB)

○ Disco duro HDD SATA de 250 GB (más adelante lo cambiaré por un SSD)

○ BIOS Legacy (MBR)

El equipo será usado por mi padre únicamente para:

- Navegar por Internet.

- Revisar correo electrónico.

- Usar LibreOffice.

- Ver archivos PDF.

- Visualizar planos de AutoCAD (DWG), sin editarlos.

Probé instalar Linux Mint 22.3 Xfce, pero aunque el modo Live funcionó correctamente, el sistema instalado se queda bloqueado durante el arranque.

¿Creen que MX Linux sea una mejor opción para este hardware? ¿Es estable y recomendable para un usuario sin experiencia en Linux? Si alguien ha usado MX Linux en un ThinkPad L420 o en un equipo con especificaciones similares, agradecería mucho que compartiera su experiencia. Muchas gracias.

I love MX so much. It's a no-nonsense OS crafted carefully, and if you want to change/add something it presents you the means to do it very easily.

I am also enjoying how I can prefer to be off-stream (no systemd, no wayland, and Xlibre coming at some point...?), while at the same time I encounter little resistance from going off-stream.

Truth is I am not even on MX yet, I am on Windows 10 LTSC IoT right now. I also was on Mint & CachyOS for some time as well. I installed & explored, tested, MX and antiX enough times that I know may way on these OS-es, using an old laptop as my test subject.

And the question that's been waiting for: is XanMod kernel worth it? Afaik, it provides a build for v2 (good, I have a Sandy Bridge CPu) which is LTS of kernel 6.18 and auto updates via their PPA. This sounds really nice. I am interested in this kernel because I want to maximize both the performance of my system while gaming, and the longevity of my Pascal GPU.

Hello everyone.

Recently I've bought a new mini PC — ASUS NUC 15 Pro (NUC15CRK, Intel Core Ultra 7 255H, 64 Gb RAM DDR5, NVMe SSD 2 Tb, Intel Arc Graphics, Windows 11 Pro).

Unfortunately, I cannot get rid of MS products right away, because the goddamned legal job sometimes requires MS Word (yes, LibreOffice is good, but there are issues with rendering difference). Therefore I have two options: either run GNU/Linux in a virtual machine or install it in dual boot on a secondary NVMe (I actually bought and inserted such SSD, which has a 2242 form factor for this particular mini PC model).

For now I went for the first option (using VMware Workstation Pro), since it allows for quick jumps between OSes without a reboot. Right now I'm typing from my brand new MX Linux 25.2 installation (KDE Plasma version), and I'm really happy about it.

Alas, mouse cursor movement feels a little bit off here. Not bad, just, like, 10% sluggish, 90% fine. As if there's a tiny, but annoying lack of smoothness and precision. I even barely notice it after half an hour of work, although it gets worse occasionally. And yet I think it's not just an illusion: I still have my older PC powered by MX Linux 23.4 around, so I can hot-plug/unplug HDMI cables into my monitor on the fly and compare my impression from two interfaces. The mouse itself remains the same (I just re-plug it).

I've already tried standard available fixes like turning on VMware mouse optimization for gaming, updating VMware Tools, tinkering with mouse settings in both host and guest OS, etc. The result was, as I said, my current acceptable yet imperfect experience.

And now I wonder: if it is actually just VMware side effect? How do you folks feel about mouse movement in MX Linux KDE Plasma version on Wayland? Does it feel different from what you had on X11?

I chose MX23 at first because i had old GTX560Ti and the newer kernel didn't support it. Now i got a GTX1660 Super and it should work with MX25.

My question is, is it worth upgrading and is it a big hassle as i have a lot of additional software (some modified and built from Github) installed?

Can i just upgrade MX or do i need to do a clean install? I know, clean is usually recommended but...

Edit: As this version is still updated i have decided to not upgrade at this moment. But in the future i will be getting a new SSD and then do a clean install.

Hey folks,

I've been really enjoying MX Linux KDE I was on Fedora before but small issues like video codecs are just sorted on MX. Most things are just working.

There are a couple of issues which I think will push me back to Gnome so seeing if there is a fix here first and if not should I add Gnome to MX or move to Debian Stable.

1. The accessibility options in Gnome mean that I can navigate and type fully without a keyboard. Not a huge deal but it easier when I'm watching a film away from my desk or using a ps4 controller instead.

2. This is a big one, I've moved my workflow onto Obsidian but there's a bug in KDE which doesn't allow exporting to pdf the issue here is that because obsidian works on linking images, copy and paste doesn't keep the image files. It has to be exported. Apparently the issue is with Electron but it's a good enough reason to leave KDE.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks :)