MX-Linux installer tries to put bootloader on live source-installation by default

When installing MX-Linux, pay close attention to the designation for the drive on which the installation is to be placed, so that when you get to the point in the installation-process where you're given a choice of drive on which to install the bootloader, you'll make the right choice. In my experience, the installer tries to put the bootloader on the live installation used for booting the PC, so if you don't change this setting, the installation process will fail, and near the end, after perhaps 70 minutes (on a slow but cool-running drive such as a Kingston USB3 Datatraveler).

I've experimented with the MX Snapshot (an MX Tool) in MX-Linux, by using it to create ISOs from encrypted "full" flash-drive installations, and live installations from the ISOs. Then I used one of the live installations to boot another PC, and to create another encrypted "full" flash drive installation. So, the MX Snapshot tool is extremely useful. Anyone who has spent a long time getting an installation tweaked to their liking can appreciate the ability to quickly and easily create back-up copies and re-create the original installation.

There's a lot to like about MX-Linux XFCE

When I first started using MX-Linux, I was leaning toward the KDE version, until I got fed up with Dolphin, the KDE file manager, due to its lack of access to such things as system directories. I disliked some aspects of MX-Linux XFCE, until I realized that all I needed was to change some settings. For example, it has an optional panel which can be placed anywhere on the screen in a vertical or horizontal orientation (although it works better in horizontal mode), so that I was able to put all of the controls centered at the top of the screen, along with a "LCD" clock which is highly visible regardless of which wallpaper I select, whereas the default desktop-clock's minutes-digits blend in with dark backgrounds and can't be seen very well. There doesn't appear to be any way to change its color scheme.

MX-X is set up by default to mount flash drives and open a file-browser window for each partition, or to open a window for entering the password for encrypted partitions, which I don't like. Fortunately, it turns out that there are file-manager options which allow you to plug in a bunch of flash drives, and then open a file browser window and mount and view each partition at your convenience, without a lot of windows popping up all over the place at inconvenient times.

Another advantage is that it's easy to install APT-offline on MX-21 (all flavors) it without an internet connection, even though the package manager is locked on any new installation, including live installations, until the package index is updated. All it needs is APT-offline and python3-magic, based on the APT-offline page on the Debian Packages site, and on Distrowatch, which lists all packages installed by default on essentially every type of Linux. You would just go to the Debian Packages site, download APT-offline and python3-magic, calculate the checksums of your copies and compare them to the reference values on the Debian Packages site. (Besides checking the ISO's checksum before using it, these are the most important checksums to check, because if APT-offline is corrupted, it might allow malware to be installed on your system. So, I recommend using the SHA256 checksum, or the MD5 sum and the file size.) APT-offline can download the package-index files (75-80MB for the XFCE version, and 120MB for the KDE version) into a folder so that they can be installed on multiple installations (such as to start over from scratch while experimenting with it) without having to download them each time. To install the same software modules/packages on multiple systems over time, you need to install the package index which was originally used for installing the software. But I gather that at some point, the package index will become too outdated to install, so you'd need to download a fresh copy and perhaps some new software-module revisions specified by the new package index.

But the frosting on the cake is MX Snapshot, which allows you to make an ISO out of your full installation, with all of the added software and settings. I used Snapshot to make a few ISOs, and it works very well, and I used the MX Live USB Maker to create a nonpersistent live flash-drive installation which I run on my air-gap PC. It's secure because when it's shut down, it retains no session-data (I save everything on separate flash drives with EXT4 and LUKS partitions). If the full installation from which I made the ISO ever stops working, I can just create a new full installation from the ISO, so that I can tweak the installation and generate a new ISO if I like.

So anyone who's considering getting into Linux, or who's shopping around for a new type of Linux, should give MX-Linux a shot. It's one of the most popular types of Linux for good reason.