Review MX14 by LinuxHelpGuy

[BitJam]

So looks like it's Mint Mate. That's fine by me, so long as it gets her away from her XP installation, which is in a mess and really bogged down.

Excellent point! It is good to keep this in perspective. Which Linux distro they choose is fine tuning.

[Richard]

Give the newbies LinuxMint-Xfce-17-LTS.
After they've used that for a couple of years,
let them try Mx-14.

2 Years? How about 3 months maximum?

:) Maybe I was just a slow learner.

[NGIB]

At one point in my life I was a programmer fluent in a number of languages, including C and x86 assembler, and I knew my way around the nooks and crannies of computer hardware. Now I am just a user that wants my computer to do the things I want to do with as little manual intervention as possible - as I suspect many folks are. Is it criminal or am I a bad person for wanting things to work out of the box? Many distros require a lot of fiddling to get even basic things working - I will never bother with Slackware or Arch simply because I am a user not a developer anymore.

In reality, MX-14 does a very good job at being what it is and it works as well OOTB as any distro I've used. Is it a polished and pretty as Mint, nope, but it can be made pretty without a lot of effort. It is powering my wife's computer and has been for several months which is a testament to how well it works. While I don't post here much, I read the forum daily and I have recommended MX-14 to many noobs on other Linux sites - it is a good product.

My 2 cents is don't try to please everyone because you can't. At some point I'd like to see a 64 bit version and maybe even a version which exceeds the CD size limit as this is 2014 and the CD size limitation really is a huge factor in terms of software selection for the base install. Anyway, my input...

[malspa]

My 2 cents is don't try to please everyone because you can't. At some point I'd like to see a 64 bit version and maybe even a version which exceeds the CD size limit as this is 2014 and the CD size limitation really is a huge factor in terms of software selection for the base install.

I agree, 100%.

[Richard]

Well, actually, on the boxes that I have to maintain,
I install MX-14. My wife has MX-14 and she's happy with it.
The last time I asked her which distro she had, she just said Linux.
It looks pretty much the same as when I installed Manjaro,
LinuxMint, SalineOS, Peppermint, sidux & WindowsXP for her.
So long as it works for what she wants, she really
doesn't care what's underneath. Only when it doesn't work. :)

I pretty much agree with malspa, NGIB, asqwerth, and others.
So long as someone else maintains it,
there is really not a problem for most users.

I like 32 bit distros.
I used 8 bit, then 16 bit software until it was untenable.
Nothing I use requires 64 bit.
Probably just me and resistance to change.

[jerry525]

Just to let everyone know LinuxHelpGuy will be doing a youtube series on MX14. Here is the intro video:
http://youtu.be/-RnhfbISpPA