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ZDNET’s key takeaways
- MX Moksha is a new take on MX Linux.
- Moksha is a fork of the old-school Enlightenment desktop.
- MX Moksha is fun to use and can revive old hardware.
Back in the early 2000s, Enlightenment was my desktop of choice. To this day, Enlightenment is still an option, and it’s one that remains just as fun and unique to use.
Also: MX Linux has an old-school look and feel. Here’s why it’s so popular
Back in those days, I had to install Enlightenment manually, because there were no distributions that offered it as a default. At one point, a new Linux distribution came into being that made use of Enlightenment as its only desktop environment — Bodhi Linux. After some time with Enlightenment, the primary developer decided to fork the DE and created Moksha. Moksha is still in the vein of Enlightenment, only with a dash more user friendliness. It offers a vast amount of configurations and a menu that can be accessed from anywhere on the desktop with a left mouse click.
The developers of MX Linux have decided to create a new spin, MX Moksha, and it’s delightful.
I downloaded and installed MX Moksha to see how it fared, and here are my thoughts.
An old-school favorite feature
A nice pink theme to show off the left-click desktop menu.
Jack Wallen/ZDNET
Like Bohdi Linux, MX Moksha still includes one of my favorite old-school Linux features: Window shading. If you’ve never experienced this, you can double-click on a window titlebar, and the window will roll up until all you see is the titlebar. It’s a wonderful way of making space on the desktop, without having to minimize applications.
You can also easily set up Samba shares with the MX Samba Config GUI.
Jack Wallen/ZDNET
Keep in mind that not all applications honor window shading. For example, Firefox does not. Essentially, if an app doesn’t make use of the default window decorations (such as the titlebar), it won’t shade.
Ah, multitasking of days gone by.
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Moksha is still Moksha
For a couple of years, Bodhi Linux was my go-to Linux distribution, and I loved using it. It wasn’t until I purchased my first desktop PC from System76 that I moved away from Bodhi and made Pop!_OS my distro of choice.
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What I found very refreshing about MX Moksha is that Moksha is still Moksha. It retains the flavor of the original Moksha theme (with a few twists) and is configured similarly. The default layout is fairly straightforward, with a panel, system tray, desktop icons, and menu.
I couldn’t resist tweaking the look of the desktop, so I right-clicked the panel and made a few changes.
I also changed the theme. There are only three preinstalled themes, but you can always find a few more in the package manager. I decided to install all of the available themes, so I could pick and choose what I wanted. That, however, didn’t work. To get more themes, I had to open the terminal window and issue the command:
sudo apt-get install bodhi-theme-pack -y
Oddly enough, that installation took much longer than I thought it would have. However, once that was taken care of, I had several themes to choose from.
MX Linux is zoomy
After reveling in the Enlightenment of it all, what really struck me was the speed at which MX Moksha ran. I’ve used plenty of lightweight Linux distributions, and this one can stand toe-to-toe with them all.
MX Moksha is like a cat with the zoomies… it’s super fast. Super duper fast. I ran MX Moksha as a virtual machine with only 4GB of RAM and 2 CPU cores, and it was every bit as fast as Pop!_OS, with considerably more RAM and cores.
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If you’re looking for a unique operating system to give an old machine new life, MX Moksha would be a brilliant choice.
Workspaces
Enlightenment was the first Linux desktop that helped me to really appreciate Workspaces, and Moksha is every bit the same. You’ll find a desktop applet on the right edge of your display with 4 workspaces. If you open an app, you can drag it from one workspace to another via the thumbnail.
A different theme to highlight the Workspaces feature.
Jack Wallen/ZDNET
I’ve always loved the way Enlightenment (and Moksha) handled this feature.
Should you use MX Moksha?
If you want a desktop operating system that is unique, blazing fast, and highly configurable, I would highly recommend you give MX Moksha a try. It’s every bit as fun as Enlightenment and will feel like a breath of fresh air as an alternative to Windows 10.
Download an ISO of MX Moksha 25 and install it on a spare PC. You won’t regret it.
