 So every time I use MX Linux, I come away from it more and more impressed because honestly it's such a it's a Distribution that doesn't get a lot of credit It gets a lot of flak because it's ranked number one on Distro watch it gets a lot of flak because it's just another debbie in distribution When you think about it, it doesn't get enough credit for what it actually is and like I said every time I use it I like it more and more and honestly if I wasn't such a AUR guy, I would probably use MX Linux as my daily driver. It's that good So what I thought I'd do today is instead of going through the normal Distro review Which I've already done a Review of this current version of MX Linux I haven't done the AHS version, but there's nothing much there other than like more hardware support What I thought I'd do today is go through five or six of the MX Linux specific tools That I think would be fantastic on other distros because there are some really cool custom tools that come along with MX Linux That would just be So good if they were like Linux wide like every single Linux distribution should have these or a version of them And I don't know why they don't because it's obvious to me every time I use MX Linux that that just the devs behind this distro take a lot of care and They also have a very good focus on not only Creating tools that help new users, but also creating tools that are really good for power users So that's what we're gonna take a look today six tools that I think would be great everywhere So the first one is I'm gonna start out with is gonna be the only tool as far as I know That's gonna look different depending on what desktop environment you install So MX comes with XFC KDE and flux box and depending on which one of those desktop environment slash window managers that you install MX tweak is going to look different. So this is what MX tweak looks like on plasma and there's not a lot here So it's not as impressive here as it would be elsewhere And I'll show you that in just a second But here in plasma you can control where the placement of the panel is you can enable single click right from here You can reset to the defaults and then you can also enable mounting of internal drives from non users That's pretty much it here But if you were to install say the XFC version It would look something like this and it gives you a lot more options You can control the theme from this panel. You can control the compositor the configuration options where the panel is Several different things right? It's really good if you're on XFC It's one of my favorite tools because it allows you especially with XFC in Traditional XFC E land if you want to customize all this stuff, they're kind of all over the place now There is a central settings manager in XFC, but still it just opens up another panel So all those separate panels appear in your menu and they're like said They're kind of all scattered all over the place with MX tweak you can go through and take care of all that stuff from one place it's really cool and It's not something you really get on other distros like if you want like a tweak tool for anything based on GNOME or GTK you have to install it separately and it's hacky and it's not great This is nothing like that Honestly, they may want to call it something other than tweak because it kind of gives that For me it has the connotation of GNOME tweak tool and we all know that GNOME tweak tools not officially sanctioned And it's kind of hacky. This is nothing like that But anyways the MX tweak is the first tool on the list Personally, I think every single distro should have something like this where everything is is in one place now Things that run on plasma kind of have that with the with the plasma settings But the plasma settings is so Overwhelming like for new users if you're going to use plasma and you get into the settings app You're getting lost really fast. I mean, it's not a bad thing necessarily because it gives you License to go through and explore things and mess things up and Customize things to your heart's content and it has a lot of options stuff, but it can be very overwhelming for normal people Who are just getting into Linux? So I like I said, I think every Linux distro should have something like this. This is really cool Anyways, that is MX tweak tool. Okay, so this right here is my favorite tool of all the ones I'm about to show you now most people don't change their Linux distro a lot they usually they used it until it breaks and is not fixable and then they knew can pave and either go to a different distro or reinstall what they had before and That's what most people do They maybe do it once every couple of years if they're doing it for maintenance or they just do it when it breaks, right? for me I do it five or six or seven times a year and It's less Lately like the last couple years. I've found myself distro hopping less But when I first started using Linux, I hopped all the time Right and I was reinstalling I was breaking stuff all the time a tool like this would have been really helpful So what this is called is MX snapshot and what this will do is it will take everything in your root and home direct home directories and Compress them all into an ISO so it basically creates you a bootable ISO of your current working system and that means you can put that on to a USB drive using something like DD or etcher or something like that and You can go through and reinstall your Linux distribution using that ISO From a you know a known working position now It's kind of like a backup But also if you say if you let's say you have your computer right here in front You've gone through and you've customized it to your heart's content. It's exactly the way you want it it's perfect and You have a computer behind you like me and you want to Recreate your perfect system that you have here on your system back there Now you could go through and do it the normal way or you could use this tool create your stuff an ISO hop on over to the standing desk behind you and Install the exact same system on this that computer back there and you'd have two identical systems That's really cool. And as far as I know, this is the only tool That is comes with a distribution that does this in that way. It's Fantastic and I want it everywhere like I want this in every single distro I that's out there. I would love to be able to install this on Arco and just use it It'd be so good. I would use it all the time So good. Okay, so that is MX snapshot. The next one is called MX boot options Now a lot of distributions come with grub Customizers like Arco has a Arco Linux tweak tool that will allow you to customize grub and it will all you do a lot of stuff So if this here isn't as unique as the other ones But I still feel that this is one of those tools that every distro should have something like this because this is a power tool This isn't something that new users are ever going to want to tweak, you know, deal with but for power users Especially if you have multiple partitions or multiple distros so you're dual booting or something and that grub menu that comes up That almost disappears almost instantaneously is if always a pain in the ass because you already got to press a button Then you know navigate through things if you if you're not quick enough it can go away With this tool here you can change that you can make the menu time out You know 10 seconds or more if you want to you can also change what the default boot option is So if you have multiple kernels You could go through and do that here you can change the theme you can change the background You can change the messages and stuff like that It's really good if you want to go through and customize your grub menu now. I'm not sure I'm they're using grub I was gonna say I'm not sure if they use grub or not if they use system D But it is grub and if you want to go through and customize grub This is a good way to do it if you're on MX Linux Unfortunately, not every distribution comes with something like that Like it's not that you can't do this stuff in other distributions, right? Like everything that I've shown you so far can be done in other distros But MX comes with the tools to do those things for you that makes it a lot easier For people who don't want to go through and mess around with their grub configuration files So that is MX boot options. The next one is MX clean now This one here is not a unique thing at all There's a ton of tools out there that you can download that do the same thing So things like stacer things like bleach bit, which don't use bleach bit It's you're just gonna break something using bleach bit Especially if you and you use it using root print glitches You're just gonna delete something you need But something like this is good and it's kind of like stacer but for MX and it does a ton of stuff So you can go through and clear your clean folders You can clean your app cache a you can delete many of the logs that Linux constantly is creating you can empty the trash You can also what's really cool is go through and schedule this so that it does this Either daily, weekly or monthly I'm assuming what it does is it creates a crown job in the background and then it will run Whatever script it's this is a front end for in the background and do all the things that you want to be done It also it also has a tool for analyzing disk usage So probably a graphical front-end for du or something like that That will allow you to go through and see where your biggest files are and if you can delete some of them to clear disk space Disk space good Lord. That was a hard word to say You can also do it from other users So if you have other users on your system and you have root privileges, probably you need those You can go through and do it for other users as well. So that's really cool and it comes pre-installed on an MX Okay, so the next one like I said, I'm pretty sure I ended up with six maybe even seven tools here I'm Counting was really not my priority. So this one here is really cool Now all the stuff here that I'm gonna show you can be done in the terminal really easy And that's how I'd usually do it and that's probably how it would still do it in MX If I were to use MX as a daily driver, but if you Want to create new users or add users to groups or do any of that kind of stuff a lot of times There's not a really good gooey option for that to happen now I'm not sure if things like GNOME and KDE have user management things in their settings panels I'm sure they probably do But you can tell how often then I use them like anytime I needed to use it at a user if I needed to add a user to a Group I just did that from the command line with MX They've pulled that stuff out of the settings panel which is always buried in a weird place if it even exists and they've put it all here in one place and Usually the if I remember right the group the user managers management stuff in system settings for GNOME and KDE That's just creating new users if you want to add thing the if you want to add that user to certain groups You have to do that from command line here in this tool, which is called MX user manager You can create new users you can change passwords if I wanted to change the password for my math account I could go through and do that. I can also go through and alter some settings like restoring to default and changing autolog and settings I'm not sure what this copy and sync thing here is I'm pretty sure that what you could do what it's for is to go through and Copy home directories into a file that you can then take to another computer That's kind of cool If that's what that's for It'd be neat because it would allow you to then do something What you do similar to the that iso tool was for but instead of taking your entire root prediction as well It would just take the home directory stuff and move it over This one here is probably the coolest part is you can go through and create new groups. You can delete groups. You can also go through and manage group memberships so For specific users add them to the group. So if we go through and select my name here It'll show me all the groups on the computer And the ones that my username is a member of so if I wanted to say enable ssh I could do so if I wanted to add the printer one Never remember what the printer one is I never print anything But you get the idea you can go through and add things Add your user to certain groups now. This isn't something that you'll need to do all the time I think probably in my entire time of using Linux I've only had to add myself to groups like five or six times and usually it's for setting up something like Plex media servers or something like that where you have to have that user in a certain group in order for things to work So that is really cool. So that is mx user manager Okay, so now the last one is the nerdiest thing I've ever seen in my life. So and it's This here is probably the least probably the tool that is the least useful for pro users because This is going to be for a User who is comfortable with the terminal Right if you're comfortable with the terminal, you're going to alter your bash config In the bash rc file That's just the way you're going to do it because you're comfortable in the terminal. That's the way you Going to find all the tutorials of how to do that kind of stuff if you want to change your prompt You're going to google how to change your bash prompt and it's going to tell you to alter your Bash rc file, right? That's how everybody does it That's how you probably should do it because that's how you're learning how to interact with bash and all this stuff However in typical mx fashion, they've gone through and created a GUI for you to do that It's called bash config and it will allow you to go through and create aliases For your bash shell It'll allow you to create new prompts The cool thing about this is that you can create multiple prompts, right? You can go through and create several different prompts and it'll remember them And then you can go through and switch between them. So you can get the default Prompt the fancy prompt or a custom prompt and then you can just add one here, right? And it kind of has a like a prompt builder tool. So it's really I mean, it's so good It's kind of like if you've ever used power level 10,000 Which is a plugin for like zsh and oh my zsh and all that stuff They have a wizard that you can go through in the terminal and it will create your prompt for you, right? As you go through the the wizard. I mean, it's like a it's like a windows 98 wizard I mean, we call these things wizards, but that's what is basically what it is And it's kind of like that only this is done on a GUI and it's for bash not zsh And you don't have to have any plugins or anything. It's really really cool So that is that and you can also go through and change the history length and Also add things to your path. So if you have a like a script folder Instead of doing like what I do I always every time I install linux I go through and transfer all of my scripts from the script folder that I need Into an actual path that already exists here You can go through and just add your scripts folder to As a path as one of the system's paths and you can do it right from this GUI. It's amazing Okay, it's also like I said the nerdiest thing ever so That is Those are the tools that I like the most now as you can see if we go here To the mx tools there are a ton of different tools the mx comes with just awake Let me actually change my can here go to the other side You can see there's just a ton of them that I didn't even go through and cover that there's a network manager There's mx data time for managing the data time. There's a conchi manager So you can you know control the conchi that it comes with There's a tour. There's a tweak tool. We already did the tweak tool. There's um, uh, the remaster cc This one here is something that will allow you to It's from what I can tell I'll never use this will allow you to go through and actually run an iso like Through a network install. It's I know it's it's confusing, but it sounds cool. Uh, whatever it does so Like there's things here like I have no clue what they are But and and the thing about mx linux is That every time I use this There's more tools, right? There's I mean there's more here now Then there was the last time I did a review of it and that was like Four weeks ago like maybe maybe a month ago Like these guys are always creating tools and it's Awesome, I like I love it so much I mean it's just I mean half the stuff I have no clue what it does And I'm gonna go through and after this video and go through and find every single one of these things and just explore them because It's like candy. You like it's you know It's like christmas morning because you go out you go install mx linux And you always find a brand new shiny toy to play with And that's one of the reasons why I love mx linux like It's not that it's the most unique distribution ever. It's really not it's just a it's a it's a debbie and stable distro like there's Four dozen of these things out there. There's sparky There's you know just a ton of them that are all really good to varying degrees, right? Or you could just use regular debbie and also good to varying degrees depending on whether or not you can find that I so the thing about mx is that you can feel The passion that the devs have for this because they go through and they they're trying A lot of times when I install a distro and I install I think why does this thing exist like this is just arch with Kd slapped on top of it with a with a calamari's installer. That's all it is like that's I mean create the distro you want to create but A lot of distros really don't have a reason to exist You don't you don't feel that they're putting any effort into it beyond making it installable, you know Once you've installed it You have a they're putting all the responsibility for everything back on you like you There's no good reason for you to ever come back to this distro because you're really just making it your own afterwards And there's nothing wrong with that Right, I mean that's one of the reasons why a lot of people like arch link because they're just building it themselves But one of the reasons why I like arco linux is because arco linux feels like they have a vision And their vision is to have all the window managers and all the desktop environments out there And to have the most support, you know, you could possibly have right mx is kind of like the like that where you can feel that the the devs just have A ton of interest in making their distro As good as possible Not only for new users because a lot of these tools aren't going to be anything new users or even ever going to look at I mean there isn't I mean By the time they get to like the iso tool or the the boot repair tool or something They've been using linux for a while and and they're looking for tools like they're exploring You know, so but not so not only for new users, but also for power users that I mean things like that iso tool Things things like the user manager, uh, you know the job scheduler things like that Are all power user tools. It's fantastic. So it's kind of like a debut distribution for everybody. All right Okay, man, you can stop gushing about it now because it's it's a fantastic distribution I'm sure that there are flaws. I mean, there's no perfect distribution out there I'm sure there's things that would drive me nuts if I daily drove it And I think that after I'm done with fedora I am going to use mx linux on on actual hardware For a while and see if I can't find some flaws with it because there has to be something there that I just can't stand There has to be so they'll be coming up next make sure you subscribe to see that one that eventually drops So that is it make sure you leave a comments in the comment section below If you've used mx linux before if there's mx tool that you particularly particularly like You can leave those in the comment section below make sure you like the video that really does help kind of Hack the algorithm if you will you can follow me on twitter at linuxcast You can support me on patreon at patreon.com slash linuxcast before I go That's taking one thing of my current patrons Devon chris east coast web gen 2 is fun too patricle primus marcus maiglin jackson i've tool steve Isid a mitchell art center merit camp joshley j dogs the bsc's rock and peter a Thanks everybody for watching. I'll see you next time