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Linux

Mabox Linux Called 'Throwback to Old-School Linux' (zdnet.com) 62

Posted by EditorDavid from the fast-and-functional dept.
"If you've been itching to try an Arch Linux distribution and want something outside of the usual GNOME/KDE/Xfce desktop environments, Mabox Linux is an outstanding option...." writes ZDNet's Jack Wallen.

"It reminded me of my early days using Linux, only with a bit of a modern, user-centric twist...." Linux was hard in its infancy. So, when I see a Linux distribution that reminds me of those days but manages to make it easy on users without years of experience under their belts, it reminds me how far the open-source operating system has come. Such is the case with Mabox Linux.... It's not that Mabox doesn't make Arch Linux easy...it does. But when you first log into the desktop, you are greeted with something most hard-core Linux users love to see but can be a real put-off to new users. I'm talking about information...and lots of it.Â

You see, Mabox Linux places four information-centric widgets front and center on the desktop, so you can get an at-a-glance look at how the OS is using your system resources and even two widgets that give you keyboard shortcuts for things like opening various apps, menus, and even window management controls. Also on the OpenBox Window Manager desktop, you'll find a single top panel that gives you quick access to all your installed apps, the Mabox Colorizer... and a system tray with plenty of controls....

Once you have the distribution installed, the big surprise comes by way of performance. Mabox Linux is amazingly fast...like faster than most distributions I've used. A big part of that is due to the OpenBox Window Manager, which is very lightweight. Compared to my regular GNOME-based Linux desktop, Mabox is like driving a Lamborgini instead of a Prius. The difference is that obvious.ÂÂ
The installation process lets you choose between open-source or proprietary video drivers, the article points out. And "you can easily customize the color of your Mabox desktop, including the theme, side panels, Conky (which creates the desktop widgets), wallpaper, Tint2 Panel, and even the terminal theme."
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Mabox Linux Called 'Throwback to Old-School Linux' More

Mabox Linux Called 'Throwback to Old-School Linux'

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  • How Old? (Score:3)

    by Thelasko ( 1196535 ) on Saturday January 14, 2023 @12:40PM (#63208424) Journal
    If we're talking about the year 2000, then no. My experience back than was frustrating. None of the drivers worked, and I spent hundreds of hours troubleshooting.

    If you are talking ~2012, that was the prime Linux experience!

    • My notes suggest I was pretty happy in 2007, I had Compiz and Emerald and they actually worked without continually asploding. Every so often someone picks up emerald for a while and makes a half-hearted attempt at fixing it, but it never seems to be very reliable. Compiz is also extra explodey, especially if you use the interesting plugins (just functional ones too, not even the super eye candy stuff.)

      • Yeah, I think I'm likely off by a few years. Feisty Fawn was the first Linux desktop that I found to be usable. Hardy Heron was great. After that, they started messing with the UI.
    • I've had good bad times with Linux, both earlier than 2000 and later than 2012. Good times were always easy to have with compatible hardware, by chance (donation ware and such) or design (preparation of hardware assembly, or buying a laptop with known hardware and Linux drivers). Unsupported hardware is still a guarantee for bad times. However, Android devices have changed things regarding printers and such, because in the worst case, you can just print to PDF and print that from your phone or tablet. Most

  • Wireless (Score:3)

    by ThurstonMoore ( 605470 ) on Saturday January 14, 2023 @12:48PM (#63208434)

    Does wireless work?

    • JFC, this is key. I wanted to put one of my Orange Pis to work as a WiFi bridge: the WiFi would connect to the house network so I wouldn't have to run a cable, and the lan would connect a BeagleBone and Jetson that were connected to a router. WiFi under Armbian on the OPi has been a clusterfuck. I can sometimes get it to connect, but a reboot wipes its abilities to reconnect, which isn't useful. Back in the early '00s, I'd expect this. This is 2023, and it's still a fkn PITA. In contrast, all of the M

  • Instead of fixing thumbnails in gtk (Score:3)

    by xack ( 5304745 ) on Saturday January 14, 2023 @12:53PM (#63208440)
    Let's make distro number 3679. I wonder if there are more Linux distros or cryptocurrencies right now? This is why Windows 11 still gets to abuse users.

    • Obviously, millions of Windows users would love to use something else and have heard about Linux, but what holds them back is too much choice.

      • As a Windows user who has tried Linux several times only to be met with the frustration of having so many distributions. In my experience when something would go wrong I could find instructions on how to fix the issue but for another distro so some little bit of distro specific information that I needed would be missing would usually be missing. Also there is the issue of which one do I choose?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Budenny ( 888916 )

          The long term answer is simple: you pick Debian. You can experiment all you like, but Debian is where you will end up. However, for a new user, I suggest getting there in a two step process. First install the MATE edition of Linux Mint.

          https://www.linuxmint.com/down... [linuxmint.com]

          What is MATE? MATE is the desktop environment, the user interface. There are lots of other desktops laden with all kinds of, frankly, crap, including Gnome, KDE and (a bit less encrusted with it) XFCE. But MATE is simple, fast and gets

          • Re:Instead of fixing thumbnails in gtk (Score:5, Interesting)

            by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Saturday January 14, 2023 @03:23PM (#63208776)

            The long term answer is simple: you pick Debian. You can experiment all you like, but Debian is where you will end up. However, for a new user, I suggest getting there in a two step process. First install the MATE edition of Linux Mint.

            Yup. I've installed Mint/MATE for several people w/o much computer experience and they've had no complaints. And, even though I have a CS degree and 30+ years experience as a (mostly system) software developer and (mostly Unix) system administrator, I may go that route too. I'm currently using Ubuntu 18.04 (w/MATE) and thought about "upgrading" to the latest Ubuntu, but their motions toward snaps, and some bundled software like "Ubuntu Advantage", has put me off -- some packages are now only (readily) available via snap, like Firefox and Emacs... In addition, as far as I know, five-year LTS is only available with their GNOME version, others only get three years. I'm not a fan of (or use to) the GNOME desktop experience.

            While Mint can (obviously) support snaps, they're not required or even installed by default. I recently looked at simply going straight to Debian, and like how generic (for lack of a better word) it is, but I don't need the enhanced stability (also for lack of a better word) of their long(re) release cycle and prefer some of my apps, like Firefox, to be current w/o having to jump through hoops (as I also could w/Ubuntu), use their testing/experimental branch and/or mixed mode installations and issues that may cause. Also, while Ubuntu and Debian offer MATE installs, no one really does MATE better than Mint. In related news, I tried Mint/Debian in a VM and preferred the Ubuntu derivative.

            Anyone have other thoughts about Ubuntu vs. Mint vs Debian?

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by HiThere ( 15173 )

              Well, my preference is Debian, but I'm not a new user. I also put my wife on Debian, but she had me whenever she wanted support.

        • That is both a feature and drawback. When an OS and surrounding tools are open source, well don't like one minor thing about some distro, just make a few modifications and repackage it as a different distro However truthfully there are only a few base distros, Arch, Debian, Ubuntu (sort of its based on debian) , Fedora , OpenSuse (probably missing a few) however all the 1000s are distros are basically based on one of the above infact most are based on Debian/ubuntu/Arch and to make things a bit more confu
    • I am really a Unix / FreeBSD nerd. I cut my Unix teeth in my late 20's on SCO Xenix in the 1980's [Yep, I'm old. ;)] and have touched several different Unixen since then. That said, I began using Linux starting with Caldera Linux back in the late 1990's. I have been through a bunch of different distributions on the .rpm and .deb sides of the aisle. I settled on Devuan Linux when they released their 1.0 distribution and currently have a NUC with Devuan and the MATE desktop. Using that right now to browse /.

  • great if you are focused on a minimalist desktop with high performance, but that file manager does remind me of windows 3.1

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Any distro without systemd, gnome, or kde.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Indeed.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      1) I would love to see some numbers that back up the idea that systemd slows things down.

      2) KDE is surprisingly fast. Ten years ago it was bloated and hogged resources. That's not true anymore.

      3) You're right about Gnome.

      • Just try it. Install Devuan and Debian, with similarly configured desktops. You'll notice 2 things right away. Speed of all operations will be faster on Devuan and possibly more importantly your battery life will improve by 15% minimum. If you really want to see a contrast compare to Ubuntu. KDE? hmmm.. I've tried recently, but still suffers from featuritis, the Plasma makeover was just an improvement to the looks, all the cruft is still there, vast number of conflicting and confusing options all the way do

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday January 14, 2023 @01:21PM (#63208486)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Yep, back then it booted into a text prompt. You logged in and maybe typed startx.

      If you were super 1337 you also had http://www.linuxcertif.com/man... [linuxcertif.com] for nice shiny high res text modes. I remember running quite a lot with a bunch of virtual consoles and no X. Eventually, chipsets got bad at that so I started booting to X more, but setups were usually a crappy default so more or less everyone had a custom WM config of some sort.

      These days I use a mix of pixel fonts and AA ones. Depends on the screen res. I

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Yeah, startx... which normally all by itself gave you a sense of relief because of all the configuration and failed attempts to startx you did before to get your XF86Config file right... ;-)

          Especially given the dire warnings that it might destroy your card or monitor. I never met anyone where that happened, but I could ill afford either.

          I didn't ever have an Amiga, though I do gather that they were good. How did the multiple desktops thing work?

          I first had exposure in CDE where you had by default 6 buttons

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      ...apparently "Old School Linux" is a regular modern GNU/Linux but with a GUI that uses fixed width pixelated fonts and deprecates the use of windows preferring a more tabletty UI?

      I've been using GNU/Linux since 1995ish, and used Sun Workstations in the early 1990s, and I can tell you it never looked like any of the screenshots. The only fixed width fonts I saw in my crude barebones X11 desktop were in my xterms. The only thing that's a throwback is the lack of antialiasing, and the absence of window compos

  • If it was then you would not have all these GUI apps, background image, etc. You would interact via the command line in an Xterm or at the Linux console. I think that this says more about the reviewer who clearly was not there at the start of things!

  • Want old-school Linux? Use Slackware (Score:5, Informative)

    by sombragris ( 246383 ) on Saturday January 14, 2023 @01:39PM (#63208514) Homepage

    If you want old school Linux, just use Slackware. Right now, the development version (current) has kernel 6.1.5, and you can have state of the art (Plasma 5.26.5) or spartan (fvwm 2.7.0, twm 1.0.12) desktops/window managers. And no systemd. This is the closest thing to a classic Unix setup.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by sremick ( 91371 )

      "This is the closest thing to a classic Unix setup."

      Linux behaves considerably different than actual unix, and carries no unix DNA. What would be an actual example you're talking about would be FreeBSD, which not only derives from actual Unix, but doesn't even install a GUI.

      • TFA said "old-school Linux". Nuff said.

      • "Unix" is nothing more than a set of requirements to fill these days then pay your money and get your official certification. MacOS is certified but its kernel is far more removed from SysV or BSD in structure than linux is. And no , it's not derived from BSD as everyone thinks, it just has BSD library layer.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jlavi ( 84363 )

      I tried linux for the first time in spring 1992 with v0.12, 386sx and 2MB of RAM. I was able to run shell with swapping enabled. Later on with 10MB of memory and Slackware felt luxurious. I still use Fvwm(2).

  • "If you've been itching to try an Arch Linux distribution

    No. Nothing against Arch, it's just that I'm used to Debian-based distros.

    and want something outside of the usual GNOME/KDE/Xfce desktop environments

    NO!

    So, like, no.

    • I'm about 50/50 between Arch and Debian on my preferences. They're two very different distros but either can do the job on a desktop. For this task, I think I'd pick Artix (Arch without Systemd) and install cdesktopenv from AUR. That's going to be a little lighter weight (and less functional) than GNOME/KDE/Xfce. Although I think Xfce or LXDE are light and simple enough to fix in with what we used to use back in the old days without going straight to OpenBox w/o a proper desktop environment. (or functional

  • You are not tied to the default WMs... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Saturday January 14, 2023 @02:01PM (#63208584)

    Linux has the nice characteristic that the GUI is not tightly integrated with the OS, you know like a good design would do. Hence you are typically not tied to the default window-manager (what the OS GUI is called in X11). For example, I have used Debian and Gentoo with fvwm2 without problems. I did my first fvwm config about 35 years back (on SunOS) and have needed to adjust it exactly once when fvwm2 came out. This config works fine on Debian and Gentoo and probably a lot of other Linux distros. For distros that do not have an fvwm2 package, compiling it yourself should be pretty easy. Now, there is a ton of other window-managers out there, just try things out until you find one you like. And unlike some defective "mainstream OSes", you very likely can keep the WM and config you like basically forever.

    • Linux has the nice characteristic that the GUI is not tightly integrated with the OS, you know like a good design would do.

      While this is true, the default window-manager is typically much better integrated than the other options. For example, you may end up installing a good chunk of the default window-manager libraries to make some basic utility function properly.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        That may happen, yes. It still does not mean you have to use the default WM. Using libraries from other WMs is not an issue.

    • > Linux has the nice characteristic that the GUI is not tightly integrated with the OS

      Now we just need a GUI that's not tied to a programming language, such as a stateful GUI markup language that's HTTP-friendly. Then we can get away from the Goddam DOM/JS/CSS, which was never intended for GUI/CRUD.

      Things like React are convoluted shit with long learning curves and screwy glitches. GUI's don't have to be rocket science! They only become that way under misfit standards and forgetting YAGNI and KISS by cha

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        GUI's don't have to be rocket science! They only become that way under misfit standards and forgetting YAGNI and KISS by chasing buzzwords. Bad Industry!

        Pretty much. In a lot of the "web-app" space, good engineering was not even ever close to the building. On the other hand, the current "frameworks" and the culture of pulling in massive amounts of dependencies over the INternet, often at compile-time (WTF?) are an absolute security nightmare and really have no long-term future whatsoever.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Tablizer ( 95088 )

          > are an absolute security nightmare and really have no long-term future whatsoever.

          A lot of leaky shit survives for some reason

      • I did very little Web front-end/UI for the better part of several decades, but was recently forced to duplicate the layout of an existing Windows (Forms + WPF) app using only HTML/CSS/JS.

        What I ended up finding is that CSS layout mechanisms have matured (particularly Flexbox and Grid), to the point that, with effort, I can perfectly emulate the old system, except that it scales appropriately to any reasonable aspect ratio or screen size.

        My issue with things like Angular and React is not just the learning cu

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Tablizer ( 95088 )

          > But I'm having trouble finding a way to beat the HTML/CSS/JS stack for the general, cross-device, cross-platform use case.

          Don't! A good portion of biz crud does NOT need to run on gajillion device types. Rather than trying to get the Swiss Army Spaghetti that is HTML/CSS/JS working good enough for every UI niche, let's have different standards or sub-standards for large niches.

          Most internal and niche business-ware is not used on phones often enough to pre-bloat every page for phones. That's anti-YAGNI.

  • actual old-school (Score:4, Informative)

    by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Saturday January 14, 2023 @02:06PM (#63208594) Homepage Journal

    Devuan + WindowMaker or fvwm2. Takes only a few commands to set up. You can even leave out the display manager (although lightdm works fine) and get a shell login and run startx just like we did back in the old days.

  • >"OpenBox Window Manager desktop, []Compared to my regular GNOME-based Linux desktop, Mabox is like driving a Lamborgini instead of a Prius"

    Um, comparing just about ANYTHING to Gnome is going to be faster and with a much more positive user experience. KDE, Cinnamon, XFCE, MATE.... ANYTHING is better. That doesn't make for a Linux distro. Any distro can launch any desktop environment with some performance widgets with Conky. Yawn.

    I have pretty much gravitated most people towards Mint for desktop/lapto

  • Installer should include compiling the kernel.

  • I guess this is not using Wayland? I do not see much point in developing new X11 desktop environments at this stage.

  • I was in the middle of trying to do basically this, but not as good.
    Looks awesome. Downloading now.

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