MX Linux has gained a lot of traction in the last few years. It is a distro based on Debian’s stable branch. And that is one of the cool things about MX Linux, because it’s not just another Ubuntu-based distro. They completely skip that step and go straight basing on Debian.
Related: MX Linux: A Great Linux Distro Designed with the User in Mind
Now MX Linux 21 finally becomes available, and it is based on Debian 11 “Bullseye”. The Linux kernel was updated to version 5.10.
One thing you may have notices if you follow MX Linux at all, is there was no version 20. If you asking yourself why is that, the simple answer is because they use their major release versions based off of the year that it’s released. For example, this is MX Linux 21, and year is 2021. The last major MX Linux version was 19 that was year 2019.
And being that they are going off of these major Debian releases, if Debian doesn’t have a major release neither is MX Linux. So that is why we have that missed version.
What’s New in MX Linux 21
Now other than some basic application additions and updates, a major focus is actually on the new UEFI Live boot menu. Now you can select all your live boot options from the boot menu instead of having to use the system console menus.
Additionally, MX Linux 21 has added LVM support in the partition selection area. At the moment this really only works if a LVM partition already exist. Probably the MX Linux devs are going to later on add full LVM support so you can make LVM partitions through this.
Furthermore, another change in the system is the super user password is going to be required whenever you do any administrative tasks. MX Linux 21 added an option within the MX Tweak tool to go ahead and enable or disable this if you see fit.
There is also a lot of general configuration changes and you are gonna primarily notice this within the actual panels of Xfce as well as the default panel plugins.
On top of that, now Mesa vulkan drivers are installed by default and there is added a better support for Realtek-based WiFi devices. On the desktop environments front, you get the latest Xfce 4.16 and KDE Plasma 5.20. The fluxbox edition of MX Linux 21 features Fluxbox version 1.3.7 with mx-fluxbox 3.0 configurations.
For users new to MX Linux, there is a utility in MX-21 that is intended to help you understand the basics of your desktop. It is called MX Tour, and is available from the main menu, and the Welcome screen.
Last but not least, MX Linux 21 introduces a new theme called MX-Comfort, which is now the default theme, including dark variants and “thick border” Xfwm variants.
For detailed information about all changes in MX Linux 21, you can refer to the official announcement.
Download
You can download the latest .ISO from the project’s download page. The MX Linux developers are offering both 32-bit and 64-bit versions too. Only the KDE Plasma variant doesn’t have a 32-bit option.
