MX Linux Forum

If any KDE users still holding onto Mepis is interested in trying my personal build of MX-14 with the KDE Desktop integrated and a host of other useful tweaks and enhancements, I am making my ISO image available. My purpose for this is for the Mepis users that are still holding onto Mepis for the sake of running a KDE desktop and who are not savvy enough, or have enough spare time to roll their own.

The ISO image is updated through to the 23rd December and it uses the Systemback installer, a video for which is available on my youtube channel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aie2xRR0w1Y

The ISO image is 2.1GB in size, at least 400MB of that is the Systemback live extras added into the ISO, so it's big, but not a true behemoth as the true size without Systemback is 1.65 GB

The system boots into an XFCE4.10 desktop by default, but it's easy to change that to KDE by simply choosing an alternative desktop during login shown only a few minutes into my showcase video available on the same youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1z6J05M0lY

My recommendation is to make it into a bootable USB thumb drive with unetbootin rather than use a DVD, but either will work just fine.

--EDIT--
The ISO image link is 2 posts below

Any questions, please ask.

MD5 sum is bd40ca10a2e931a06e534ba06dda6e71 MX14k_23Dec.iso
Login is owner, password is renow
root password is toor

Way to go Mike. Really glad you put this together. I will PM you for a Google Drive link. BTW, loved your recent video on KDE on MX-14. Great job!
-pc

Found the iso can be downloaded using the link below without the need to have a google account. Never shared anything from google drive before, typical noob mistake

EDIT - Updated version 16th Feb 2015 link below
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7ZZBl ... sp=sharing

Downloading it now. I look forward to trying it out.

arjaybe wrote:Downloading it now. I look forward to trying it out.

Just watch your ATI graphics with the KDE logout. If the ATI graphics are not correctly rendered, on logout from the KDE Desktop, you'll get a black screen after logging-out with a mouse cursor. All the components behind the blackness are still there and you can move your mouse over the centre of the screen where you'd normally type in your password to select the input field, and after entering your password, pressing return will get the KDE Desktop up again.

If this happens to you, it's because I changed the display manager to KDE's instead of the original MX Display Manager. You can press Ctrl + Alt + F1 to get to a virtual terminal, log in as root and use the smxi script to get your ATI graphics updated. I have pre-set the most common parameters in the script so users don't have to go through the whole first run process which can be quite confusing to first timers.

Another simpler option (untested as I don't have ATI graphics) may be to change /etc/X11/default-display-manager from
/usr/bin/kdm
to
/usr/bin/lightdm
save the change and reboot.

Thanks, will be interesting to compare it with my own MX-kde installation.
Henry

Utopia wrote:Thanks, will be interesting to compare it with my own MX-kde installation.
Henry

Looking forward to hearing your review, there will certainly be differences with the default browsers and mail clients, and some of the programs. I have included WPS Office to give greater compatibility with MS Office, but LibreOffice is still my personal choice.
I set up the XFCE Desktop when running live to have the most important tools for a recovery disk, the desktop launchers do not appear on a hard disk install.
Oh, and I forgot to remove the /etc/hosts modification added by the antiX block-advert.sh
I did say this was my personal build

m_pav wrote: I did say this was my personal build

Hope you didn't leave anything important in the files like passwords, web sites etc. I have done this before.

Thanks for sharing, I'll give it a look when I have time, but I'm not into big desktop environments though.

400MB for systemback wow! Any reason why you chose this rather than use tools provided by MX?

As all the abilities to set language and localization at the boot screen are lost when using Systemback, the iso will be difficult to use outside the English speaking world.
It's a little bit different from my install as I tried to imitate M11, but the differences aren't that big. I've got a little bit more kde stuff and less tools for fixing computers.
One thing that's very similar is the number of errors in .xsession-errors. 919 lines in your iso, 735 in my installation compared with about 617 in a default M12. There are very few in the original MX before the installation of kde. That's a lot of cleaning up to do. Luckily most of them are duplicates.
Also noticed there's an Ubuntu repository included for Mozilla, my sources list is still the default.
It's similar enough to my installation to be useful to me, if it wasn't for the loss of the language settings. It takes a lot of tweaking to make it work throughout the system as it does in MX.
Henry

m_pav wrote:

arjaybe wrote:Downloading it now. I look forward to trying it out.

Just watch your ATI graphics with the KDE logout. If the ATI graphics are not correctly rendered, on logout from the KDE Desktop, you'll get a black screen after logging-out with a mouse cursor. All the components behind the blackness are still there and you can move your mouse over the centre of the screen where you'd normally type in your password to select the input field, and after entering your password, pressing return will get the KDE Desktop up again.

If this happens to you, it's because I changed the display manager to KDE's instead of the original MX Display Manager. You can press Ctrl + Alt + F1 to get to a virtual terminal, log in as root and use the smxi script to get your ATI graphics updated. I have pre-set the most common parameters in the script so users don't have to go through the whole first run process which can be quite confusing to first timers.

Another simpler option (untested as I don't have ATI graphics) may be to change /etc/X11/default-display-manager from
/usr/bin/kdm
to
/usr/bin/lightdm
save the change and reboot.

So far I've tried it in Virtualbox, where it's a bit slow. Next will be the USB stick.

The computer I'm on now is the top one with Intel stuff, so I don't have to worry about the ATI gotcha. That's good because smxi/sgfxi never worked for me on the bottom machine with MX. The process would never finish. It did with Mepis on the same machine, but never with MX. That's not a big problem because I get serviceable graphics anyway, except my desktop clock has stair-stepping on the hands. Fortunately, I'm not that persnickety.-)

I just checked and my DM is lightdm.