MX Linux Forum

My question is about this quote from the MX Linux website: "MX uses Debian Stable as a base, but updates a lot of the userland programs & libraries, and backports newer programs from testing by building them against the Stable base. That gives a better user experience but interferes with Debian's dist-upgrade path. Our current choice is to stick with sysvinit instead of going to full systemd. So it's a trade-off: better desktop user experience at the expense of having to do a quick fresh install (which lets you save /home if desired) when the Debian base changes, typically every 2-3 years."

The newst MX release uses Debian 8.8, but Debian 9 is to be released in just over a week. Accordingly, I am trying to weigh the pros and cons of installing one over the other. I now use Debian testing (9) and experience no problems, but I really like MX because it doesn't use systemd, has newer packages than even testing (especially firefox), and is really polished. Is there any idea about how long it might be before an MX-17 will be ready, and what other factors might lead one to just stay with MX 16.1 until that time?

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one with similar questions. Thanks for any input from you all...

It's hard to decide for somebody else, it's what works best for you, if Debian 9 works fine than you can keep it, if you prefer some of the benefits that you mentioned (no systemd, newer Firefox, to which I would add easier way to create snapshots and custom Live USBs -- at least in my experience) then you could think about installing 16.1, it will be supported long enough. Or you could wait for MX-17 but probably going to come sometime late in the year. In any case installing it should be pretty quick, maybe you could install it on another partition and then decide to use whatever works best for you.

At least we didn't take as long as Devuan to release a Jessie-based version.

About how long: when antiX-17 comes out is when we start.

Yes, of course. You are all right and I will just have to make the decision. Thanks to you all for the information and input.