cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/shit/p/1237384/internal-pride

MX Linux. It's a distro I know solely from the fact mentioned in OP. I've never heard anyone mention they use it, outside of this exact sort of conversation where one or two pop up.

MX Linux

The hipster subculture never left Linux.

Now I need to distro hop so everyone knows how avant-garde I am.

Uhmm no?

But the thing is, while DistroWatch ranking isn't an actual popularity ranking, it might give some indication that the distro has a lot of interest in it. But you almost never hear about it. It's a strange situation.

I think nowadays it's at the top of DistroWatch page hits because people check it out because it is at #1, perpetuating the situation.

Wrong metric

Then I don't know what op is on about

Distrowatch may still rank by number of clicks on a distro on their site. I have been convinced for a number of years that MX Linux has maintained its top position there because people click on it wondering what the heck it is, keeping it at the top in a self-perpetuating loop.

This is neither an endorsement nor a criticism of MX Linux, by the way. Maybe it's awesome. I've just never used it, and probably never will.

I'm using MX Linux AHS for yyyeeeaaaarrrssss as my daily desktop for personal use and work development.

It is based on Debian, systemd optionnal, packages always up to date, no flatpak, I only use .deb

What I like is it simply works. From USB install using LUKS/btrfs without messing anything, to using Xfce with minimal GUI, everything works, no drivers problem, etc.

Yes MX Linux is awesome.

My minimal desktop, no icons, just a bar at the bottom with menu/applications/system tray icons

I installed MX a bit over a year ago when my patience with ubuntu finally ran out. It's great, running with plasma 5 on a pretty old laptop. Up to date repo mostly accounts for the stable-but-slow debian repos.
One of the biggest plus points is the community forums - active, engaged, and helpful, far more so than I've experienced in many other distro communities.
Can recommend.

packages always up to date

What? Last I checked it wasn't a rolling release, so how are packages up to date?

I chose it for one of my systems because I wanted a Debian based distro with KDE Plasma desktop. It just works and is easy to use.

For instance whenever there is a new Firefox, it takes a few hours or max a day to have the new .deb, and you have access to test repo and backport ; if needed flatpaks and snap but I never used them.

It's not a rolling release, I updated from MX18 to 21 23 25, but pretty easily.

It's really one of the most solid distros

yeah it's weird. I know of MX Linux simply because of the distrowatch thing but I never hear of anyone actually use it UNTIL posts like this come up about MX Linux on distrowatch and then the comments will be "I've used MX Linux for years and I love it, it's awesome" annnnnnd then never a peep until the next post about distrowatch and mx linux comes up.

On Mastodon my feed is pretty much tailored to strictly linux stuff from everywhere and again, never ever see a mention of MX Linux until someone posts about distrowatch.it's so odd.

One of these days i'll get around to actually trying it.

I saw it in the wild at a university computer lab once.

Why not kubuntu or... Debian??

OK for a non rolling release such updates are usually only for a few selected packages. AFAIK Ubuntu did something similar years ago. But most likely you are still on older kernels and drivers and 80% of everything else.
It's not necessarily a bad thing, because the idea is to minimize breakage. But I think your claim "up to date packages" is overstating it.

nope

Linux mxMag 7.0.14-1-liquorix-amd64 #1 ZEN SMP PREEMPT liquorix 7.0-17~mx25ahs (2026-07-02) x86_64 GNU/Linux

Maybe it’s so great that the users are content enough to not brag about it unprompted? Which would be very strange for Linux

Weird AI wallpaper flex but ok

Edit: See my comment below. I'm absolutely sure this is AI.

Scoring Fedora and Debian like that tells me everything I need to know about their little dog and pony show

hah that's my point and that's why I find it weird. People are very opinionated about what distros they use but you never hear about MX Linux users until a post about Distrowatch pops up. maybe it is that great that users don't feel the need to brag about it.

No it's made by a human artist

Lol, defeated by the hand test. Look at her knuckles.

I have no hard evidence but I'm seeing a lot of signs that this is at least partially made with generative ai.

Lots and lots of subtly strange/incorrect details that an artist of this skill level who was taking the time to create by hand would have avoided.

It feels like there is a disconnect between the talent/work put into technical side and the lack of ability I'm seeing in the composition/anatomy side.

Possibly a coincidence, but the anatomy and composition problems im seeing are the same types of problems I see a lot in ai art.

Just what I'm seeing here. Not trying to witch hunt. I could be totally wrong. Maybe this was made years before ai? Just struck me as AI off the bat and after looking closer at it, it feels even more like AI.

If I'm provably wrong about this then I apologize for the accusation.

Edit: looking again I'm 1000% sure this is ai slop lol

So many very obvious signs tbh. Pretty much everything about it.

I'm all for human artists, but this AI witch hunt really destroys the conversation which is very far from "flexing AI". Same occurs all over Lemmy, suppressing people from even sharing anything.

I've also seen that very background at least several years ago.

Never really used desktop icons, they never look quite right and pristine desktop is always nicer to look at.

Looking good, and honestly, I barely ever heard bad things about MX.

This is absolutely, undoubtedly, bonified ai slop. I would bet any amount on this.

The fact that you saw it a few years ago checks out. The models are honestly better than this now.

It's really not a witch hunt when it's so obvious. People are just sick of it. I'm sick of seeing it.

My assumption is that the original commenter knew this was AI Slop but I guess they didn't. So no hard feelings but slop is slop.

Edit: it's honestly somewhat alarming to me that people can set this as their wallpaper and still not notice the obvious body horror on display.

Wow ok yeah this looks like AI generated, damn, years ago, maybe AI assisted back in the days? Anyway, it is a cool desktop

I mean, who cares, really, it's your desktop, after all

Absolutely 😁

I'm one of those 4 people on MX it seems.

I couldn't get Mint on an older laptop, and tried MX for some reason. It worked, and I liked it enough that after semi-borking my Mint install on my desktop, I tried it and honestly I've been enjoying it.