.
Using MX-14.4 as a LiveUSB on 16 Gb Cruzer USB 3.0 Ultra Fit on
a Dell 1545 Inspiron Win7 computer with 2 cpus & 4 Gb ram.
MX-14's most remarkable feature in my estimation is its built-in
persistence and remastering capability; however it has many other
fine features. See http://www.mepiscommunity.org/features for a
description of all the new features in MX-14.4.
The specific MX-14.4 version I chose has a 32-bit i686 linux 3.14
pae mode kernel. My MX-14.4 set-up has 845 M squashfs compacted linuxfs,
75 M of ext4 rootfs and 48 M of ext4 homefs. This represents a full
rolling release update of all Debian, Xfce, LibreOffice, Iceweasel,
etc elements plus my own tweaks and comfort programs.
It boots to wifi online in 30 sec; shuts-down in only 6 sec.
I needed three work-arounds to enable my MX-14.4 to perform as I like.
Two are hold-overs from 14.3, which were discussed at length previously
on the MX forum. All are minor and inconsequential, once discovered and
adjusted-for.
One previously reported flaw, possibly unique to LiveUSB application
is an initial absence of a directory /var/tmp. Its absence makes the
apt-upgrade process break down due to an 'initramfs update' difficulty.
As in 14.3 an adequate work-around is to add /var/tmp via /etc/rc.local.
A second previously reported flaw, not of consequence to most MX users
apparently, is a missing helper program to display the actual choices
of a remastering exploration menu. As with 14.3, one helper that works
is rox-filer, easily added via Synaptic.
The third flaw is, for me anyway, unique to 14.4. This is an impediment
to the legacy boot process, that makes finding persistence files fail.
The work-around here is to add the cheat-code 'load=all'. I do this
once and add a 'custom boot' option to the usual boot menu choices.
It may be noted that I had no problem at all with booting a Win8 machine
with the new uefi boot option.
My thanks to BitJam and Anti' (principals in the MX world and active
on antiX & MX fora) for suggesting the work-arounds.
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