Hello, I am very new to linux but have installed mx14 on an old laptop and have been impressed with what I have seen so far. (Have been a windows user for about 15 years!)

I know I have a lot to learn about linux and wanted something easy to start with. I have seen the excellent videos on youtube about mx 14 and antix 13 and see that people have system information on screen using a program which I found out is called Conky.

I like the idea of this and wonder if anyone can either explain or point me to a source which explains very simply how to install it.

Many thanks for your time and help

Dziekuje

Welcome and howdy! Learning linux can be a PITA, but you learn that you are in control. Don't even try to learn a little bit about everything. You will get a headache. Learn something good about one thing, and learn it well. Be sure to watch Dolphin-Oracle's videos on you tube at
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.

I see you posted on the antiX board rather than the MX-14 board. Are you using antiX? Or are you using MX-14? The reason i ask is that antiX uses conky on start-up, whereas MX-14 has to have it added.
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For antiX, you can search for various conky write-ups that individuals have done. Like from this link: conky-configuration-t233.html AND
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Then change your conky to match (usually using copy-and-paste). you will probably need root authority to do this.

For MX-14, you need to do some changes to get some stuff downloaded. I'll go through each set that I had to do in MX-14.
1 - Open SYNAPTIC, the mega-package-installer. Type in your ROOT password.
2 - Open up SETTINGS and go to REPOSITORIES.
3 - You will notice that
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and
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are NOT MARKED. This is so you do not accidentally download TESTING programs, instead of STABLE programs. Go ahead and mark these two.
4 - Go ahead and close the REPOSITORY window.
5 - Click the RELOAD button, and wait for it to finish.
6 - The little magnifying glass is your search request. Click it and then type CONKY MANAGER. Then click click SEARCH.
7 - When it is finished, you will have a list with CONKY-ALL and CONKY-MANAGER in it. Select each of these one at a time and MARK FOR INSTALLATION.
8 - You will get a small window stating that you also need to download additional files with them. Click OKAY or YES.
9 - On the upper area of the Synaptic window is a Green Checkmark for APPLY. Click it and it will automatically download all the required files you need. (You can mark the Auto-Close box to let it close when finished.)
10 - After everything is finished, reopen the SETTINGS to change the REPOSITORIES list to uncheck the mx-est and testrepo boxes. Then close Synaptic, and open the Whiskey Icon to see your menus. Conky Manager will be in the ACCESSORY portion.
11 - In CONKY MANAGER, you can highlight each conky and hit PREVIEW to see what it looks like. Be sure to close each preview before going to another. It will seem that Conky Manager has frozen. It is because there is a hidden window with the preview hiding behind it.
12 - When you have decided which to use, CHECK the box and select it. Auto-installed.

Thank you for this very helpful and supportive answer, I will sit down this long weekend and have a try.

To answer your question, I am using MX 14, why I posted here? Possibly because I was half asleep after work __{{emoticon}}__ I have seen the dolphin oracle videos on youtube which are very clear and straightforward - big thank you to the dolphin oracle. This is where I learned how to install some of the other packages and play with the toolbar.

It took me a while to learn all the ins and outs of windows but have used puppy linux to recover files from windows in the past but have only learned the basics needed for this operation.

I have seen that there is a free linux course
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on offer this summer which I hope to have time to look at and learn more - may have to take one of my old laptops to the UK with me while I work

One thing that I was really impressed with about MX 14 was that the speakers on this old laptop (a thinkpad X40) started to work straight away, with some of the other distros I tried, they were dead and I thought that maybe a cable had become dislodged or the sound on the motherboard was dead!

Again thank you

dziekuje

Glad that helped. It's nice to see old equipment getting back to work. I had helped several people at church, who gave me their old desktops. Between 4 or 5 I managed to get an old Dell motherboard with a P III Coppermine 996Mhz, added up 512 Mb memory, a working 40 Gb HD, and an old Sony 4X CD burner to play nice. I made an open frame from aluminum angle-iron. I was intending to make a sheet metal covering for it, but left it open. The cpu cooling fan is the only fan.

MX-14 was a collaboration between the antiX and MEPIS communities, taking the best of each and getting them to play nice. Both distros are based on Debial Linux. AntiX is a light-weight distro geared primarily to the older computers. MX-14 is considered middle-weight as it utilizes programs that tend to take up more memory. AntiX uses up about 132 MB of memory, while MX-14 uses about 214 MB. (You're mileage may vary.) Some people have built their own"frugal" version of antiX using the core and what programs they wanted, and have gotten that down to under 100 MB, and still work okay.

For learning linux, try one of these sites to get your whistle wet:


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Also take a look at my 'sig' below for a couple of free books.
(Both AntiX & MX-14 are based on Debian.)
& welcome aboard.

Thank you both for your posts and links, I will have a look at them later. I seem to have been accumulating old laptops so maybe will have a look at some other distros later.

Dziekuje

Another distro for old machines is SliTaz, a live distro & very small footprint when installed.

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jd your instructions were very clear and I managed to install conky without any problems - just trying to find a theme that I like.

Just a thought - as these instructions are so clear, is there a place where we can find them or perhaps a place should be created for newbies with this type of advice.

fatmac - thank you for this additional distro - I think I will try and learn one at a time - I have also looked at dsl but used mx 14 as I was looking for a replacement for xp for these older machines.

Dziekuje

Dsl is very cool, but it is also very outdated.
Slitaz is also very cool, but imo, it is a bit hard to figure out. But that might just be me being used to debian?

Good luck!

rust collector wrote:Dsl is very cool, but it is also very outdated.
Slitaz is also very cool, but imo, it is a bit hard to figure out. But that might just be me being used to debian?

Good luck!

RC - You are correct about DSL. Slitaz can be confusing for nOObs. Actually, antiX was easier to try to learn linux in.