♞ Coming up on 9TO5Linux ♞
The MX Linux team proudly announced today the release and general availability of MX
Linux 21, a major release of their Debian-based, systemd-free and lightweight GNU/Linux distribution.
Dubbed “Wildflower”, MX Linux 21 has been in development for the past six months and
comes as an upgrade to the MX Linux 19.x series, based on the latest and greatest Debian GNU/Linux
11 “Bullseye” operating system series, and shipping with the Xfce 4.16 and KDE Plasma
5.20 desktop environments, as well as, for the first time, an official edition featuring
the Fluxbox 1.3.7 window manager with mx-fluxbox 3.0 configs.
The Xfce edition, which remains the flagship edition of MX Linux, introduces the Thunar
Shares plugin for the Thunar file manager to access Samba shares, which you can access
from a folder’s properties dialog, updated dock-like plugin, as well as various other
updated Xfce packages.
The Fluxbox edition comes with a Fluxbox settings manager similar to Xfce’s settings manager,
Tint2 as default panel with a collection of pre-built configurations and an expanded set
of tools for panel management, tiling options using Ctrl + 1-9 or arrow keys, mxfb-quickshot
and mxfb-timer, and revised Help docs with ten translations.
Highlights of MX Linux 21 include a new installer partition selection area with LVM support,
new UEFI live system boot menus with “rollback” option and the ability to select boot options
directly from the boot menu and submenus instead of using the previous console menus, and user
password (sudo) for administration tasks by default.
This new MX Linux release also introduces a new app called MX Tour, which provides newcomers
with a brief overview of each desktop environment. On top of that, users will find a new default
theme for all three flavors called MX Comfort, a bunch of custom scripts in the Fluxbox edition,
as well as numerous other small configuration changes, especially on the panel with new
default panel plugins.
Hardware support has been improved as well, and MX Linux 21 is powered by the Linux 5.10
LTS kernel series from Debian GNU/Linux 11, but a AHS (Advanced Hardware Support) ISO
image featuring the Xfce desktop environment will be readied as well with the more recent
Linux 5.14 kernel series.
These new kernel version bring better Realtek Wi-Fi support from Dynamic Kernel Module Support
(DKMS) modules, which are installed by default, and better support for modern hardware. In
addition, the Mesa Vulkan graphics drivers are installed by default in this release for
a better gaming experience.
MX Linux 21 remains a systemd-free GNU/Linux distribution featuring SysVinit as default
init system. However, systemd is available as well in this release as a boot option,
but only on installed systems, not on the live ISO.
You can download MX Linux 21 right now using the direct download links below. Live ISO
images are provided for 64-bit systems for the KDE Plasma flavor, as well as for both
64-bit and 32-bit systems for the Xfce and Fluxbox editions. Please note that the live
ISOs won’t boot on systems with Secure Boot enabled.
:: More ::
MX Linux 21 “Wildflower” is Here with UEFI Live Boot Menus
The distro switched to sudo for admin tasks by default.
The brand new release of MX Linux 21 codenamed “Wildflower“ has hit the download mirrors.
Let’s check out what’s new!
MX Linux has gained a lot of traction in the last few years. It is a distro based on Debian’s
stable branch. And that is one of the cool things about MX Linux, because it’s not
just another Ubuntu-based distro. They completely skip that step and go straight basing on Debian.
Now MX Linux 21 finally becomes available, and it is based on Debian 11 “Bullseye”.
The Linux kernel was updated to version 5.10.
One thing you may have notices if you follow MX Linux at all, is there was no version 20.
If you asking yourself why is that, the simple answer is because they use their major release
versions based off of the year that it’s released. For example, this is MX Linux 21,
and year is 2021. The last major MX Linux version was 19 that was year 2019.
And being that they are going off of these major Debian releases, if Debian doesn’t
have a major release neither is MX Linux. So that is why we have that missed version.
What’s New in MX Linux 21 Now other than some basic application additions
and updates, a major focus is actually on the new UEFI Live boot menu. Now you can select
all your live boot options from the boot menu instead of having to use the system console
menus.
Additionally, MX Linux 21 has added LVM support in the partition selection area. At the moment
this really only works if a LVM partition already exist. Probably the MX Linux devs
are going to later on add full LVM support so you can make LVM partitions through this.
Furthermore, another change in the system is the super user password is going to be
required whenever you do any administrative tasks. MX Linux 21 added an option within
the MX Tweak tool to go ahead and enable or disable this if you see fit.
There is also a lot of general configuration changes and you are gonna primarily notice
this within the actual panels of Xfce as well as the default panel plugins.
On top of that, now Mesa vulkan drivers are installed by default and there is added a
better support for Realtek-based WiFi devices. On the desktop environments front, you get
the latest Xfce 4.16 and KDE Plasma 5.20. The fluxbox edition of MX Linux 21 features
Fluxbox version 1.3.7 with mx-fluxbox 3.0 configurations.
For users new to MX Linux, there is a utility in MX-21 that is intended to help you understand
the basics of your desktop. It is called MX Tour, and is available from the main menu,
and the Welcome screen.
Last but not least, MX Linux 21 introduces a new theme called MX-Comfort, which is now
the default theme, including dark variants and “thick border” Xfwm variants.
For detailed information about all changes in MX Linux 21, you can refer to the official
announcement.
Download You can download the latest .ISO from the
project’s download page. The MX Linux developers are offering both 32-bit and 64-bit versions
too. Only the KDE Plasma variant doesn’t have a 32-bit option.
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