Dolphin Oracle has announced the release candidate of MX Linux 23 for testing.

MX-23 “Libretto” Release Candidate 2 (RC2) now available

MX-23 RC2 iso images
–direct downloads:

The main change with RC2 from RC1 is an updated installer, to fix an issue with forced formatting of ESP paritions.

**Please update installer before doing an installation. The installer is being updated post RC2 release***

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get mx-installer

Xfce:
32 bit Xfce with debian standard 6.1 kernel  sha256_checksum  md5_checksum  signature
64 bit Xfce with debian standard 6.1 kernel  sha256_checksum  md5_checksum  signature
AHS 64 bit Xfce with 6.3 kernel  sha256_checksum  md5_checksum  signature

KDE/plasma
64 bit KDE/plasma with debian standard 6.1 kernel  sha256_checksum  md5_checksum  signature

Fluxbox:
32 bit Fluxbox with debian standard 6.1 kernel  sha256_checksum  md5_checksum  signature
64 bit Fluxbox with debian standard 6.1 kernel  sha256_checksum  md5_checksum  signature

MX-23 RC2 is now available for testing. MX-23 is built from debian 12 “bookworm” and MX repositories. As in past releases, the MX will default to sysVinit but systemd remains an option for installed systems. Updates from RC to final are fully supported.

This release builds upon beta 2, and includes all bug fixes and changes to date, including default wallpapers and theming as well as updated translations and applications.

In this release we are very interested in installer testing. Many bugs related to btrfs installations have been addressed. The installer has received many updates since beta2. The Installer now supports swapfiles as well as swap partitions. The “regular” auto installation will default to swapfiles. There are many other installer changes, including gui adjustments (layout builder in the custom install partitions area), setting of some debconf value to make legacy grub-pc updates more seamless, various fixes for grub install functions and cleanup of “dump” entries that might be clogging up a user’s nvram. There is also additional help guidance right in the installer gui.

The live boot menus now have a more obvious “check media” function in the top level menu. The media will be checked and boot will continue if things look good.

Major Desktop versions
Xfce 4.18
Fluxbox 1.3.7
KDE/plasma 5.27

Accessibility: All release now include orca screen reader and a screen magnifier tool. Fluxbox and Xfce have magnus screen magnifier, and KDE/plasma uses kmag. At this time due to debian’s orca packaging, orca does not appear in the menus but can be launched manually. In particular orca is configurable in KDE’s integrated accessibility settings.

Xfce is using xfce4-screensaver for screen locking chores instead of light-locker. This is proving to be more stable for some users.

MX Tools: Many mx apps have been updated with bug fixes and enhancements. All tools now launch with individual policy kit configurations rather than using the blanket mx-pkexec from past releases. mx-pkexec is not preinstalled.

The very popular MX Snapshot has received a lot of attention to help users customize their snapshot boot options while automatically filtering out option that might prevent the created live system from starting up on different machines.

MX-Updater is back to using apt for a default backend, as nala turned out to have unforeseen issues.

All releases use pipewire & wireplumber instead of pulseaudio.

UFW firewall is enabled by default.

There are many new configuration options for the fluxbox release, as well as special “appfinder” configurations for rofi (replacing xfce4-appfinder). the fluxbox release relies much less on Xfce applications, but retains thunar for the file manager. mx-tweak’s theme module now has support for theming on fluxbox.

The KDE/Plasma received several tweaks to the settings to deal with new configuration options available in plasma 5.27. Root actions remain in dolphin, including root dolphin instances via the root service menu actions.

With this RC2 we are particularly interested in testing the installer, including traditional ext4 and btrfs installations, encrypted installs, as well as bug hunting the mx-tools, especially mx-packageinstaller->popular apps entries.

Known issues:

• Timeshift will not recognize a btrfs partition for snapshots if on an encrypted partition.

Feedback for testing should be via forum post according to desktop version downloaded:

Xfce
KDE/plasma
Fluxbox

Be sure to include proper system data, including the output of quick-system-info.
If posting nvidia-installer (ddm-mx) issues, please post the contents of /var/log/ddm.log.
If posting remaster issues, please include the contents of /var/log/live/live-remaster.log
If posting installer issues, please include the contents of /var/log/minstall.log
If posting issues with MX-PackageInstaller “Popular Apps”, please post contents of /var/log/mxpi.log or /var/log/mxpi.log.old (whichever contains the log of your issue).

Thank you!

Dolphin Oracle (on behalf of the MX Dev Team)

MX-23 “Libretto” Release Candidate 2 (RC2) now available – MX Linux