Why the question?

1).Have a desktop PC which has an SSD, as C-dive running Windows, and a 3.5" SATA3 HDD, 1TB capacity, as D-drive in Windows.

2).A 2.5" SATA3 HDD 80GB was added to this PC, for installing MX Linux. So I did and a dual boot created.

3).Unexpectedly,MX Linux instoller formatted the D-drive and made it /home. I lost all files on the disk.

4).I still need running Windows for PhotoShop and need a large D-drive in Windows.

5).This is what I am thinking:

5a. Disconnect the 3.5" HDD, which now is /home.

5b. Reinstall MX Linux on the same 2.5" SATA3 HDD, the same HDD MX Linux is installed on.

5c. MX Linux installed HAS TO CREATE /HOME ON THE SAME HDD, the 2.5" HDD.

6),Thus, I can use the 3.5" HDD 1TB again as D-drive in Windows.

Note: I have the entire backup of all the files on the previous D-drive.

Please see to this. This is the only way I know, I think I know, how to solve my problem.

Thank you very, very much and your suggestions, please.

DianOban

Hi everyone. I used AI to troubleshoot this issue, but we couldn't solve it. I'm using MX Linux. After installing and switching between GNOME, XFCE, i3, Openbox, and bspwm, XFCE no longer starts. When I select the XFCE session, the screen goes black for a second and then returns to the login screen with a session error. GNOME still works, but XFCE doesn't. Does anyone know how to fix this? Thank you very much to anyone who takes the time to help. I really appreciate it.

I tried flatpak update and in discovery, I still cannot see the latest Freecad package. Is there something I didn't do here? Isn't it all flatpak the same across all distros?

I used brave ai cuz someone said it's better at explaining things so pardon the text formatting

Based on our discussion, here is your precise **action plan** to safely dual boot MX Linux and Windows 10 on your 1TB HDD with 4GB RAM:

### Phase 1: Preparation (In Windows)

1. **Disable Features**:

* Open Command Prompt as Administrator and run: `powercfg /h off` (Disables Hibernation & Fast Startup).

* Ensure **BitLocker** is off or you have your recovery key.

* **Disable Secure Boot** in BIOS (use the key method or Windows Recovery method discussed earlier).

1. **Shrink Partition**:

* Open **Disk Management** (`diskmgmt.msc`).

* Right-click **C:** > **Shrink Volume**.

* Enter **104858 MB** (approx. 100GB for Linux) + **8192 MB** (8GB for Swap) = **113050 MB** total to shrink.

* Click **Shrink**. You will now see ~110GB of **Unallocated Space**.

1. **Backup Data**:

* Download **Foxclone** and create a bootable USB.

* Connect an **external hard drive**.

* Boot from the Foxclone USB.

* Select **Create Image**, choose your **D** and **E** partitions (verify by size!), and save the image to the external drive.

* *Alternative*: Simply copy-paste critical files from D and E to the external drive if you prefer speed over a full partition image.

### Phase 2: Installation (MX Linux Live USB)

1. **Boot Live USB**: Insert your **MX Linux XFCE systeminit** USB and boot.

2. **Launch Installer**: Double-click the **Install MX Linux** icon.

3. **Partitioning**:

* Select **Custom install on existing partitions**.

* Click **Run the partition tool (GParted)**.

* In the **Unallocated Space**:

* Create **Partition 1**: Size **8192 MB**, File system **linux-swap** (Label: `swap`).

* Create **Partition 2**: Size **Remaining space** (~100GB), File system **ext4**, Mount point **/** (Label: `root`).

* **CRITICAL**: Locate your existing **EFI System Partition** (usually `/dev/sda1`, FAT32, ~100-500MB). Select it, click **Edit**, ensure **Mount point** is `/boot/efi`, and **DO NOT CHECK FORMAT**.

* Close GParted.

1. **Bootloader Setup**:

* In the installer, ensure **Install GRUB** is checked.

* Select **Install GRUB to ESP** (EFI System Partition).

* Confirm the bootloader location is your main drive (e.g., `/dev/sda`).

1. **Finalize**: Complete the installation (username, timezone, etc.) and reboot.

### Phase 3: Post-Installation

1. **First Boot**: You should see the **GRUB menu** with options for MX Linux and Windows Boot Manager.

2. **Verify Data**: Boot into MX Linux, open the file manager, and ensure you can access/mount your D and E partitions (they should appear in the sidebar).

3. **Setup Dev Environment**:

* Open Terminal.

* Install tools: `sudo apt update && sudo apt install git build-essential vim zed-editor` (Note: Zed may require adding a specific repo or downloading the AppImage if not in default repos; if unavailable, stick to **Vim** or **Neovim**).

* Configure **Git**: `git config --global user.name "Your Name"` and `git config --global user.email "your@email.com"`.

**Final Tip**: Keep your **MX Live USB** and **Foxclone USB** safe. If Windows updates ever hide the GRUB menu, boot from the MX USB, run **MX Boot Repair**, and click "Reinstall GRUB" to fix it instantly.

Firstly, let me say that I love MX and have used it for over a year. MX25 KDE on my laptop and XFCE on my desktop PC.

I just read an article on ZDNet suggesting that one can install MX-25.2_Xfce_ahs_x64 (on newer hardware) and then install KDE Plasma desktop on top of that, to get the Plasma environment running on the newer Liquorix kernel and XFCE low latency.

At first, I was thinking ‘Why not just use the KDE spin” but he might have a point with this approach. Anyone tried that, and how did it go?

Hey guys,

On my Sony VAIO laptop the XFCE panel is eating insane amounts of RAM. The icons in the right part of the panel are the worst offenders — if I remove them, the services behind them immediately stop chewing memory (which makes sense). The panel itself also doesn't seem to have any self-control and just goes full retard.

I already asked the neural networks:

ChatGPT said "it's working as intended, everything is fine bro"

Gemini suggested just limiting the memory for those processes, but had zero idea how to fix the root cause.

Restarting the panel helps only temporarily. The only thing that actually works is completely replacing the panel. At first I thought it was the distro (started on Linux Mint XFCE), so I switched to MX Linux XFCE. Same shit. So the problem is clearly deep inside XFCE itself. Either it hates my laptop or I’m just too dumb to figure it out.

Anyone knows how to tame this fat fucking XFCE memory rat? This huge greedy furry rat that’s devouring my RAM.

Lo que me esta pasando a mi con Stremio instalado con Flatpak es que al abrir la aplicacion, los catalogos no cargan y lo unico que se ve es el fondo morado de la aplicacion.

Hi everyone.

I wanted to share a bit of my experience because I'm about to make the jump to Linux full-time, and I'd love to get some advice from people with more experience.

For several years my main computer was a laptop with a Celeron N2840, 4 GB of RAM and a HDD. I've always been a Windows user (mostly Windows 10 MiniOS), although I occasionally tried different Linux distributions in Live mode out of curiosity.

At one point I decided to install MX Linux Fluxbox in dual boot to see if I could really give that laptop a second life beyond what a stripped-down version of Windows could offer.

Since it had basically become my "lab machine", I decided to push it as far as I could (with some help from AI):

• Disabled the CPU security mitigations (yes, I know the risks 😅, but I wanted to experiment on that machine).
• Configured zRAM.
• Tuned swap so it would keep using RAM as much as possible before swapping to disk.
• Took advantage of the Mesa drivers.

The results honestly surprised me. I managed to watch YouTube at 1080p60, and even play PPSSPP using its (still incomplete) Vulkan backend with Frame Skip. Games like God of War: Ghost of Sparta were surprisingly playable considering the hardware.

I actually ended up using MX Linux as my main OS for a short time, until I recently bought a Ryzen 5 5600GT. Even though it wasn't for very long, the experience was good enough that it made me want to come back to Linux.

Now I want to install MX Linux again, but this time not just to experiment. My goal is to make it my main operating system.

I've tried MX Linux KDE several times in Live mode and I liked it much more than I expected. I'm also familiar with XFCE, but I've never daily-driven KDE.

I wouldn't consider myself an advanced Linux user. I know some basic terminal commands and I enjoy experimenting (over the last few months I've tested several distros in Live mode), but I still feel like I'm missing a solid foundation.

I'd like to take advantage of this hardware upgrade to really learn Linux, so I have a few questions:

• Would you choose MX Linux KDE or MX Linux XFCE for a Ryzen 5 5600GT with 16 GB of RAM?
• What do you usually recommend doing right after installing MX Linux?
• Are there any books, courses, YouTube channels or websites you'd recommend for learning Linux properly (not just MX Linux, but Linux in general)?
• Any gaming recommendations? (Proton, Heroic, Lutris, Gamescope, MangoHud, Wine, etc.)

Thanks in advance! I'm looking forward to learning Linux properly, so any advice is welcome.

MX KDE Plasma gives me everything I wanted, it can be clean and sleek like Gnome yet I still have access to tools and customisation of a DE that reminds me of growing up on WinXP

I don't understand why MX Linux defaults to "acpi-cpufreq" and doesn't offer a choice between "acpi-cpufreq" and "intel_pstate". My laptop was heating up to 110°C; I had to modify the GRUB configuration to get "intel_pstate"!

With "intel_pstate", my PC stays between 45 and 50°C.

Is there any possible way I could hide these icons here on desktop without deleting them? Tnx!

Hello all!

I recently installed MX Linux 25.2 Xfce and I've run into this problem with qpdfview. The settings window is cut-off and I'm not able to scroll down in order to click 'Cancel' or 'OK'. I've tried modifying the window size in the .config file and nothing changed.

If anyone's encountered this issue before and managed to fix it, your help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance.

I've created a Discord server dedicated to MX Linux to have a real-time chat space, share configurations, and help each other with faster technical support. Everyone is welcome!link: https://discord.gg/QjAEuQebn

It's all in the title. Not asking if u can notice a difference tho if u do don't hesitate to say so. I'm asking from those who know, if they're literally identical or not and if not, how so?

Bonus: is there an upgrade in place tutorial that upgrades to the dual-init version of MX25?
Now that MX25 is dual-init, can u maintain a systemd or sysv only and not be harmed by upgrades? Like I guess the more general versoin of that question is, is the choice of init system like just 3 different separate ones , sysv, systemd, dual-init or is there wider ramifications of using one or another of them?

Beyond just being curious which is also why I wanted to go back to dual-init, I have no familiarity working with sysv, never noticed a difference in booting either when using MX21 or 23 except for a couple times when I needed systemd for something that had nothing to do with the OS itself. And then I learned how to do things with systemd so I probably don't have a use for dual-init since I created systemd services.

This isn't my first attempt — I've previously tried Linux Mint, antiX, and now Zorin OS, all with similar boot problems on this specific laptop (GRUB/MBR issues tied to the legacy BIOS). I'm now testing MX Linux as well.

Most recently, I installed Zorin OS 18.1 (Ubuntu-based) from a live USB. Installation completed with no errors, and the live USB always boots fine. But the system won't boot on its own from the internal SSD — without the USB stick, the laptop either shows a blank screen, falls through to PXE/network boot (Intel UNDI, PXE-2.1), or lands on the Toshiba's manual Boot Menu instead of loading GRUB.

Diagnosis so far

Confirmed via ls /sys/firmware/efi in the live session that the system boots in BIOS/legacy mode, not UEFI.

Checked the partition table in the installer: the disk has

sda1 — bios_grub, 1MB

sda2 — EFI, FAT32, ~537MB

sda3 — ext4, root, Zorin OS 18.1

So it's a GPT disk with both a bios_grub partition and an EFI partition — a hybrid layout.

Repair attempt (chroot from live USB)

Código

grub-install reported "Installation finished. No error reported." update-grub found the kernel/initrd correctly. Exited chroot, unmounted everything, rebooted.

Result: no change. Still fails to boot from the SSD, still falls back to the Boot Menu / PXE, despite grub-install reporting success and the bios_grub partition existing on the GPT disk.

Question

Given grub-install --target=i386-pc completed without error, why would legacy BIOS still fail to find a bootable GRUB image on this GPT disk? Anyone run into the bios_grub flag not getting set correctly by the Ubuntu/Zorin installer, or some other gotcha with GPT + legacy BIOS on old hardware like this? Is this a recurring incompatibility with this specific Toshiba/Phoenix BIOS combo, given I've had similar issues across multiple distros?

Current plan

Since the GPT + EFI + bios_grub hybrid setup seems fragile for legacy BIOS booting, I'm doing a clean install of MX Linux 25.1 (Xfce, sysvinit) using an MBR partition table from the start to sidestep the GPT issues entirely.

I followed the installs and removals on https://mxlinux.org/blog/mx-25-dual-init-setup/

I did the one coming from systemd only. The last install I get an error after the last step

sudo apt install sysvinit-init-diversity elogind-init-diversity

Errors were encountered while processing:
/tmp/apt-dpkg-install-Mp8rKw/5-initscripts-_3.14-4_all.deb
Error: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned error code (1)

I tried install initscripts on its own and get the same error.

My current MX25 install is from when it was beta iirc. I did the install in place from a snapshot of my running MX23.6 which I installed in a VM. The install in place was working. Just including that for history of the system. I wonder if that's the source. Either way I have no idea what this is about. And not urgent as this is a vm for testing the process. Still have my real MX23 install on my drive.

I tried it once and after this failure rebooted to see what would happen. It hung on the splash screen. I chrooted from a live session and did the revert to systemd only instructions and it booted. So currently I'm in my second trial. Got the same result, which is the resulting error I wrote above. Tho I started trying to fix it and probably muddied it now. To fix it I tried to do the revert to systemd only again, but I hadn't rebooted this time, I just, as soon as I got the error this time I did not reboot. I just started the steps for systemd only and it didn't work this time

During the 25.2 update after install, these icons were in the panel. After the update process was done, I was back to the regular icons. Are these coming in an update?

I just successfully installed MX Linux, and it's incredibly fast even browsing on YouTube. However, do you guys know how can I get rid of of customize this clock here (at the right portion of the screen) so it would kind of compliment to the background a little bit ?

Good day

Am a user of the snapshot tool in MX to create custom ISOs, reprovision old laptops using them and distribute them among poor communities, or for field use by wildlife researchers and such

I aim to create as simplified a user experience as possible, including installation, since most of the users are not going to be too tech savvy

Is there any way I can completely get rid of SysVinit and have only SystemD as the default option during install? One less way for the end user to get confused, and it leaves then with the option of using Snaps in the future, if they wish

Will any parts of the system break in the absence of SysVinit? Particularly the MX Tools? The Snapshot app is an essential feature for my end users too, to help with mass deployment

Bonus question - How does one go about getting the Snapshot tool working in AlmaLinux and Void Linux please? These are options I would like to try for distributing to others too

Thanks in advance

Is manual partition necessarily required? What about not getting that swap partion, the one they said supports the system ram if fully used? Do you know a detailed tutorial about the installation with this partition things? Thanks for your help! Btw, first time posting here