Two paths to Enlightenment: AV Linux 25 and MX Moksha step forward

AV Linux and MX Moksha are a pair of distros tweaked for audio and music production, each using a different branch of the Enlightenment family of desktops. The longstanding AV Linux distribution has a new release, AV Linux 25, along with a new sibling distro called MX Moksha 25. Both are based on MX Linux 25, which appeared in …

[Uncle Slacky]

Love me some Moksha!

I used Bodhi's early versions on my eeePC 701 4G netbook, good to see that it's available on a more modern base. I installed it last weekend (on a slightly newer netbook, a Lenovo Ideapad S205) and couldn't be happier with it.

[nematoad]

On the one hand.

Both have much to recommend them.

And one thing against them.

Any guesses?

[Uncle Slacky]

Re: On the one hand.

If it's systemd that concerns you, it is possible to add sysvinit as a boot option like previous versions of MX: https://forum.mxlinux.org/viewtopic.php?t=86241

[Greybearded old scrote]

Why the forks?

I've long used original Enlightenment on Debian. What are the advantages of the two forks?

Not criticising, just wondering.

[JessicaRabbit]

Re: Why the forks?

Yeah I was rather hoping the article would go into more detail about what makes these distros better for AV work than say, Linux Mint.

[TVU]

Re: Why the forks?

I guess because they're specialist creative media distributions like Ubuntu Studio is:

https://ubuntustudio.org/

[JessicaRabbit]

Re: Why the forks?

Yeah so I did some looking into it and besides the obvious bundling of pre-installed software it seems the main difference is that the kernel boot parameters are tuned for low latency audio.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Why the forks?

> what makes these distros better

I have written about MX at length, multiple times.

21:

https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/31/mx_linux_212/

23:

https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/03/mx_linux_23/

25:

https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/13/mx_linux_25_infinity_released/

I try to not repeat myself _too_ much, so consult them.

As for the Audio stuff -- different sound server, lots of admin tools for it, and a low-latency kernel. I mentioned this. I do not own a synth, or any MIDI kit, or any electronic instruments, or even a dedicated mic. I don't even own a hifi. More than this I can't judge.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Why the forks?

> What are the advantages of the two forks?

Note: they are _not_ forks of Debian. (They are not forks at all.)

They are variants of MX Linux, which is in turn based on Debian, but with lots more tools to let you choose additional components.

So, as an example, running any Linux in a VirtualBox VM, you should install the VirtualBox Guest Additions. These are FOSS.

On Ubuntu, it's easy. The GAs are in the Ubuntu repositories. You type:

````

apt install -y virtualbox-guest-x11

````

And it sucks them in along with all their dependencies. The modules need DKMS so you need the `dkms` metapackage. You need to compile kernel modules, so you need the kernel dev tools and the Linux kernel headers. This gets them all for you automatically.

On Debian it's not so easy. They aren't in the repos. You can do

````

apt install -y dkms build-essential

````

... and the relevant kernel headers, for which I forget the incantation. Then you run the installer from the hypervisor's ISO image. But it's much more work and they don't automatically update.

But in MX, and these, you can run the MX Tools, pick Package Installer, search for "virtualbox", tick the box next to "guest additions", and give it your password and it adds the repos, installs all the dependencies, and a few minutes later you're up and running.

This is the sort of thing that confounds and confuses non-experts and it's why Ubuntu continues to grow and thrive while Debian enthusiasts profess bafflement over what Ubuntu gives them that they don't already have.

MX has comparable ease of use, it's about as compatible, but it's smaller and faster.

MX only offers 3 desktops: Fluxbox, Xfce (the default and the best), and KDE.

Now with these you can also have E27 or a maintained modernised E17. With all the MX goodness.

[mark l 2]

Ive not tried Moksha on anything other than Bodhi Linux. But i was impressed on its low RAM usage. On a computer with only 2GB RAM it was idling at startup at around 350MB in use so this give me a lot more overhead for running actual programs than some other DE i tried.