Re: Oh Gawd - Now MX Linux "Security Verification" - NO !!!

On Thu, 20 Aug 2026 22:30:33 -0400, c186282 wrote:


>    32-bit versions of anything are RARE now alas ...

We had a few gotchas. The Esri C++ API was 32 bit up until their version 
11 a few years ago. The necessary operations were in a dll wrapped in 
'extern C' so they could be called from the legacy C code.  While it's 
theorectically possible to call a 32 bit dll from 64 bit code it ain't 
pretty.

We used Motif so another sticking point was some of the support libraries. 
The biggest problem was the Mrm (Motif Resource Manager) library. 

https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/motif/vol6a/Vol6a_html/ch22.html

We used it extensively since UIL allowed us to customize the GUIs for each 
site. For a while you could jump thorough the hoops and get the libs and 
pass the compiler flags on 64 bit Ubuntu but with one release that stopped 
being feasible.

Physical 32-bit machines were long gone but some applications got locked 
in for one reason or the other. 

>    I think XFCE is a bit *excessive* - pref LXDE instead.

The Xfce on the 32-bit Debian seemed quite bareboned. I was surprised by 
the default Xfce on MX. Much nicer.


>    However LXDE distros/installs are becoming more and more difficult to
>    find promptly - and LXQt sucks.

Considering that the LXDE developers mostly jumped to LXQt I'm not 
surprised. I had a moment of senior confusing when the library project 
started looking at Mint. LMDE? WTF? You're kidding. Oh, wait a minute...

>    Spent a LONG time using SUSE/OpenSUSE for my servers and personal
>    boxes ... but eventually it got a bit too weird and 'fat' and I moved
>    to Deb. *I* like it better. YOU may pref something else. As said
>    there's no really "best" distro branch, just "best"
>    for YOU.

So far Leap 16 is working out okay but it's the KDE/Plasm version which is 
a lot like the Fedora KDE/Plasma version which looks like EndeavourOS KDE/
Plasma, and I presume Debian KDE/Plasma.

I do have to find PackageKit on Leap and drive a stake through its useless 
little heart. The Fedora box has Discover too but when I run 'sudo dnf 
update' it doesn't bitch about PackageKit being busy.  zypper does.