That is the main reason I like to keep a second OS available. It is not often a Linux OS fails to boot. And when it does, it is usually if not always my fault. Something I did wrong. And if the Mint does not boot, I can’t use Timeshift to back out the change.
Having a second OS available is very convenient. I do have to go looking for my live USB to boot the PC.
Ok I just keep a second computer but on holiday struggle till sorted
Well, I don’t know what went wrong. But Good News to report. On my second install of MX 25, I stayed with the PC and watch it during the entire install process. After the MX files were copied the message was displayed something like “Waiting for user input required.”
I hit next and the install process completed asking for timezone, etc. My install of MX 25 was successful. I have 2 items about the install to report. Neither one major problem.
1 - MX install grub which was expected, but it caused LM 22.2 to have a kernel panic. I did notice a box I could have unchecked to stop grub from being install.
2 - There is no terminal to click on in the task bar. Pressing Cntl+Alt+t will bring up the terminal.
I rebooted the PC and selected MX 23, ran grub update and that repaired Grub letting LM 22.2 boot.
Now with MX 25 install, the laptop grub menu shows these options for booting the PC.
MX 25, MX 23, LM 22.2, and Windows. Quad boot.
Paul, you have me interested in LMDE. The reason I tried MX was because it was not part of Ubuntu. So MX eliminated a layer of changes. Now I know LMDE does the same thing.
another conversion, at this rate in a million years everyone will be using it
But not sure if you boot 5 versions different what happens.
Not quite… lmde does not eliminate systemd.
We need Linux Mint Devuan Edition
No no no
Sorry. Imagine the developer of mint trying to support yet another version on top of lmde, xfce, mate and cinammon….
What next a puppy version or slax ….. ubuntu already offer 57 flavour of their product and users love or hate
There are only 2 distros… Mint and Lmde
The DE’s are trivial.
Void supports 5 architectures, with glibc or musl libraries,
That is 10 distros… they are outdoing Mint 5 to 1
There is a demand for all 4 versions, ok 3 are based on ubuntu, but someone needs to ensure a changé made for cinammon works similar on mate and xfce
Although I have never seen a breakdown of user numbers by version or desktop Downloads I imagine mint knows these numbers to keep doing them
Mint is doing DE’s the hard way.
Look at antiX … it comes with 10 WM’s by default and you can add as many DE’s as you want. You can switch between DE’s dynamically, without even logging out, and when you switch it preserves your terminal windows.
If antiX can do that … all with one .iso, why is Mint still releasing separate .isos for every DE?
Mint needs to get up to date with its DE management.
And while we are at it, the coming release of AntiX25 will also support 5 init systems, all with one .iso. That simplifies release management too. Why cant Mint do that?
And, Mint is stuck on fixed release. That magnifies the work of distro maintenance. They should move to rolling release. They are stuck in the past.
End of my rant for today
But they get it right
Ok you prefer one thing I prefer the other.
I cant argue with that. They produce a nice dropin Linux that just works… but it is costing them more effort than it should.
Just a minor correction @nevj, MX is not systemd-free or anti-systemd - it just happens to also offer sysvinit out of respect to some of its users & because most of the antiX-MX live system was built around sysvinit & busybox.
Comparing MX to Mint (or LMDE) is IMHO like comparing chalk to cheese. They are both apt based and user friendly but thats about it.
MX is a much more powerful beast offering customisation & remastering tools, different DE’s & much more exciting development.
For reference check-out how Adrian (one of the MX key developers) uses the antiX-MX build system to build an archlinux variant:
I accept that. It offers a non-systemd alternative, but an old fashioned one (sysvinit). MX is not progressive like antiX… at least not in init systems.
I like that side of it.
I just read something in your link
“Installation works MX style – meaning that you can make changes, install, remove apps in Live environment and those will be carried over to the installed system using our regular installer (Arch and most of other distros install a standard image, not the modified live system)”
I did not know MX installed from the live system. Do any other distros do that?
antiX, MX & I also believe the Refracta tools (available in Devuan repos) can do the same.
Also here is the recipe to build MX (all variants - including ARCH) from source using the antiX build-iso system
You do not mean compile, you mean build an .iso file.
I built one by hand once… it took months.
MX and Mint must be doing something right. For the past 6 years whenever I looked at DistroWatch they have always been in the top 5 Distros.
Ranking of Linux distros for 2025 by Jumpcloud and Mint is in the top 5.
https://jumpcloud.com/blog/the-5-most-popular-linux-distros-2025-guide
Linux distributions ranked by Google Trends in January 2024. Mint is ranked in the top 10.
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/18xo3sg/linux_distributions_ranked_by_google_trends/
Maybe one more. Mint is #2 and MX is #3 by Linuxshout.
Linuxshout -February 2026
Void 35
antiX 38
they are catching up
My default wallpaper was a road to infinity?
I dont like any of these modern art backgrounds… something peaceful please.
