After a lengthy consolidation phase, the developers of MX Linux, first published in 2014, have now officially released version 21 with the code name »Wildflower«. The new version of the popular distribution is based on Debian 11 »Bullseye«, but is delivered without a systemd. Further ingredients are Kernel 5.10 LTS, Xfce 4.16, KDE Plasma 5.20 and for the first time outside of the Raspberry Pi Edition also Fluxbox 1.3.7, provided with the mx-fluxbox configuration.
Best of both worlds
MX Linux attaches great importance to the support of older computers and so the images for Xfce and Fluxbox are also available in 32-bit versions. So even old treasures can be operated without Systemd. SysVinit is used as standard, but Systemd is available as a boot option on installed systems.
The installer has been expanded and now supports LVM for the first time. Currently, however, the LVM volumes have to be created manually in advance. The UEFI live system boot menu has also been revised and allows you to select the live boot options such as persistence from the boot menu and the submenus instead of selecting them from the console menu as before. With MX Linux 21, Sudo becomes the standard for administrative tasks, but this behavior can be switched off via mx-tweak . The snapshot function now also allows rolling back via the boot menu.
Devuan 4 ‘Chimaera’ makes the jump to Debian 11 (but without systemd)
Over 40 MX apps
In addition to the usual selection of packages from Firefox and Thunderbird to LibreOffice and Gimp, MX Linux offers considerable added value with its MX Apps. More than 40 of these small and large applications created or curated by the developers are now being delivered. A new addition to the collection is MX Tour , which gives newcomers an overview of the available desktop environments. With MX Comfort , the developers also offer a standard theme that is available for all desktops.
AHS with kernel 5.14
The Xfce edition, which continues to be the standard desktop of MX Linux, introduces the Thunar Shares plug-in for the file manager in order to be able to access Samba shares via the context menu of a folder. Users for whom Linux 5.10 is too old due to the very latest hardware can access an AHS image (Advanced Hardware Support) with the Xfce, Linux 5.14 and the current graphics stack in the next few days.
The images of MX Linux 21 »Wildflower« are available in the project’s download portal .
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