Linux

I thought it is highly possible they may had gamed the system at some point, but doubting it less and less by the day... they would have been very consistent for hundreds and hundreds of days! Once you actually installed it, you will realize it is among the most polished yet stable Linux distros there is and has had a very consistent competent team.

Now, I don' think it has a high popularity at all among newcomers, let alone people on forums (look at the popular KDE variant download per week... 112 vs the 'rare' Xfce 3444). Their base are people that probably are more avid visitors to the legendary Distrowatch than the resort to these forums, therefore the low visibility to us.

By the way, tried MX KDE and it is really good, I recommend its team stop selling it just as ideal for "old machines", it is perfect for any one that does not want a rolling release. It is for people that would like Debian but want it more polish without getting into Ubuntu or Cinnamon territory. I would go even further... they should even offer a KDE-advanced version with updated Kernel and KDE (like TUXEDO OS does) and i think they will become a hit! But I understand they may lacking resources for that... offering SystemD and SysVinit must be highly intensive on itself already. I have grown to trust them.

Wym?

Yeah I just left it default.

I used to love the minimalism of lxqt over xfce until I learned that QT is proprietary and GTK is open source, therefore I'm with now xfce for life.

This is XFCE.

Not OP, but I'm really enjoying it because it's light and stable, and the set of MX tools it comes with are great. Their backup tool is so good that as my old laptop started to die I was easily able to transfer my entire setup to a totally different computer and pick up exactly where I'd left off

It's super light. Unlike Fedora or other distros I've tried, it doesn't play weird with my mobile hotspot.

MX Linux is great for resource management on my Dell E5470. While the switch to Thunar from Fedora/Debian had a slight learning curve (especially the Shift+drag mechanic), the customizability via GTK themes is excellent. The biggest win for me is the hardware compatibility—it handles my mobile hotspot flawlessly where other distros like Fedora and LMDE struggled. It’s stable, light, and just works I personally use it as my Daily Driver at the moment because I've yet to find a better distro that doesn't eat my resources and disconnect my mobile hotspot but I've been messing around with NixOS in a VM it might be my next one this is like my fourth or fifth distro.

To be fair, at this point any distro is beginner friendly.

Just stay away from Gentoo, and from arch if you don't want the maintenance burden.

I'd say it's beginner-friendly. This is only my fourth distro, so I'm still relatively new, but it wasn't that hard. If you can manage to get past the installer, it's actually very straightforward. Most stuff is already configured; it's pretty cool.

Why not Debian directly instead of MX?

Debian requires more config out-of-the-box to get a nice desktop/laptop experience. This is ready to go.

MX Tools. The same reason why one daily drives LMDE

I was actually on Debian for a while, but I had constant issues with it dropping my mobile hotspot connection. It required a bit too much configuration for my liking, though the installer itself was decent. ​Debian was actually my fourth distro—I’ve spent time with Lubuntu, LMDE, Fedora, and MX. After struggling with Debian for a while, I’m back on MX Linux. I've also experimented with Parrot OS home edition, but I’ve found that some distros just play better with mobile hotspots than others. Home internet is getting pricey, so I prefer sticking to public Wi-Fi and my hotspot for the time being.

During the install of MX Linux, you can choose between systemd and init. The installer actually boots up and lets you select your preference, which is a great feature. I personally went with the systemd option because I don't know much about init, but it really comes down to personal preference.