MX Linux Forum

I frequent both the Manjaro & the MX forum one after the other (usually multiple times per day). Always do, always have.

I'm noticing that sometimes the Manjaro forum has more posts, & other times the MX forum does (there is some variation re. time zone participation rates for some reason). Over all, MX has at least as many posts as the Manjaro forum (likely more, but I am staying on the conservative side here).

I personally think that from what I have been seeing over the past 6 months or so, that MX is going to keep on creeping up on the Manjaro numbers as time goes by.

I've been holding back on saying anything about this for some time, but hey, I just couldn't hold it in forever...

Anyway, as usual, time will tell.

I will say, that I'm not saying the above with any kind of competitive motivation. I'd be quite happy if MX was sitting back at #300 in the Distrowatch charts, so long as it was still the same high quality distro. I consider the fame of being a top running distro to bring more negatives than positives with it.

A phenomenon not unknown to the Mint team who have discovered that being a very popular distro means that a lot of their newbies are converts from Windoze, who don't really understand the differences between 'Doze and Linux. They may have been Windoze power users but only realise their lack of expertise when moved away from 'Doze.

I know what you mean about "fame".

I've noticed that Manjaro have been attracting a fair number of rather demanding and unpleasant new posters who seem to want the answer NOW, but don't really want to learn, or learn how to help themselves when some guides and tips are given. Nor do they seem to want to at least read up about the rolling distro they are moving to (often from Ubuntu-based distros) and how it differs from Ubuntu.

People are people so statistically I'm sure we will get a few of those here as we get more users, but I'm hoping that it will just be a small number. So far, so good. Hope I'm not jinxing us!

turtlebay777 wrote: ↑Sat Jan 12, 2019 8:17 am A phenomenon not unknown to the Mint team who have discovered that being a very popular distro means that a lot of their newbies are converts from Windoze, who don't really understand the differences between 'Doze and Linux. They may have been Windoze power users but only realise their lack of expertise when moved away from 'Doze.

yeah - that's about it, too.
but - lot's of those 'Windoze power users ' - do need to have their hand held, at least for a short while, anyway.

the - they seem to 'take off' on their own.

Pierre wrote: ↑Sat Jan 12, 2019 9:47 am

turtlebay777 wrote: ↑Sat Jan 12, 2019 8:17 am A phenomenon not unknown to the Mint team who have discovered that being a very popular distro means that a lot of their newbies are converts from Windoze, who don't really understand the differences between 'Doze and Linux. They may have been Windoze power users but only realise their lack of expertise when moved away from 'Doze.

yeah - that's about it, too.
but - lot's of those 'Windoze power users ' - do need to have their hand held, at least for a short while, anyway.

the - they seem to 'take off' on their own.

Windows "Power Users" are the worst. Give me an Aunt Mabel type any time.

I fancied myself a Windows power user in the Jurassic period. I remember arguing on the Xandros Forum that Windows software was easier to find and install then Linux software. Needless to say I was dead wrong.

NOTE that you said WAS.


Way back when Linux was command line mostly I wager it sure was.

I wouldn't know.. I never experienced it.. but then again.. I went from Atari 1040ST to Windows, so the transition wasn't hard.

Eadwine Rose wrote: ↑Sat Jan 12, 2019 12:17 pm NOTE that you said WAS.


Way back when Linux was command line mostly I wager it sure was.

I wouldn't know.. I never experienced it.. but then again.. I went from Atari 1040ST to Windows, so the transition wasn't hard.

No there were repositories. but to give you an idea of the time frame, I installed KDE 2.x into Xandros. Now that was a pain and took several hours.
Well I was wrong then and would still be if I now held that to be true.

richb wrote: ↑Sat Jan 12, 2019 12:29 pm

Eadwine Rose wrote: ↑Sat Jan 12, 2019 12:17 pm NOTE that you said WAS.

Way back when Linux was command line mostly I wager it sure was.

I wouldn't know.. I never experienced it.. but then again.. I went from Atari 1040ST to Windows, so the transition wasn't hard.

No there were repositories. but to give you an idea of the time frame, I installed KDE 2.x into Xandros. Now that was a pain and took several hours.
Well I was wrong then and would still be if I now held that to be true.

To be fair to Windows you can install Chocolatey package manager and get a Synaptic-like GUI or use choco from the command line. It gives you access to more than 3000 popular applications. You can host your own repos if you don't trust the community repo and so on. Cmder is a good terminal for Windows.

If we want to compare Windows and Linux, we have to compare feature by feature. Since apt and deb packages are one of Linux best features it's hard for Windows to shine here, but that doesn't mean Windows hasn't a decent alternative. It's what I use these days on Windows. It's nice, but still pretty young.

I like this kind of middle-ground between Windows and Linux. Chocolatey is definitely package management, but since packages are self-contained dependency hell should be rare. It would be like a Linux system where base system is built by debs and applications come as AppImages packaged as debs. That would be my favorite system and would ensure painless updates of applications and also universal Linux application compatibility which is necessary for Linux to become a mainstream player. For this reason the big guys promote their Flatpak and Snap solutions.

My Windows experience is 15 years old. So any "new" developments were certainly not available. One either stuck with what was part of the OS or searched the World Wide Web, that is what it was called, for applications.