MX-16 Metamorphosis RC1 Is Out!!

This is the release announcement by Anticapitalista:

Ahead of schedule, MX-16 release candidate 1 is available for further testing.
We have quashed many bugs and added improvements since the first public-beta1.
eg Horizontal panel now defaults to the bottom rather than the top.
The dev team hopes that, with additional feedback, the final should be ready very soon.
Please help us by testing and reporting any issues that crop up.

Get it here:https://sourceforge.net/projects/antix-linux/files/Testing/MX-16/

Torrents here:

64 bit - http://linuxtracker.org/index.php?page=torrent-details&id=1aea41cd87e786fe332c5c524e1336c33f035c03

32 bit - http://linuxtracker.org/index.php?page=torrent-details&id=ab64a00e3d97d4f1bfd0def28acb735b8c86317f

It is built on the reliable and stable Debian Jessie (8.6) with extra enhancements from the antiX live system and up to date applications provided by the MX Linux packagers.
Just like previous versions of MX, this release defaults to sysVinit.

Available in 32 and 64 bit.
The 32 bit version ships with 2 stable 3.16 Debian kernels (pae and non-pae), while
the 64 bit comes with the more recent Debian backports 4.7 kernel to cater for newer hardware.
All kernels have been patched against the Dirty COW exploit.

Both iso files weigh in at around 1.2GB in size.

What does MX Linux ship with?

Applications:
* Xfce4.12 is the desktop environment.
* Latest Firefox 50 for browsing and Thunderbird 45.5.0 for email.
* VLC 2.2.4 caters for videos and Clementine 1.3.1 for playing and managing your music.
* Full LibreOffice 5.2.2 suite
* Shotwell 0.24.1 digital photo organizer
* Pepper Flash Player - browser plugin
* Chinese and Japanese fonts included on the iso
* gimp 2.8.18
* grub-customizer 5.0.6
* gscan2pdf 1.5.1-1 GUI to produce PDFs or DjVus from scanned documents
* mx-clocky attractive desktop-agnostic analog clock
* mx-debian-backports-installer
* openjdk-8
* samba shares
* smtube - watch youtube videos without using a browser - ideal for low-powered laptops.
* Security: Passwords and Keys 3.14.0

Further improvements and enhancements to running Live from a usb stick or frugally from a hard drive.
New! - live-kernel-upgrader - as it says, upgrade the kernel and remaster a running Live system
live-usb-maker - new cli tool to install a full-featured live environment to USB device that boots legacy and UEFI!

Open Source Is not an Unknown Concept Anymore

I remember when, several years ago, Mechatotoro and I started to use Libre Office and moved to .odt for all our word processing needs.  Some colleagues did try to force Microsoft file formats on us in spite of the university's approval of ODF.

But slowly, more people have come to understand that open source is here to stay and that closed source is neither better nor safer. At the end, most of the complaints by closed-source defenders can be reduced to the following:

1- They are used to X and don't want to learn anything new.

2- They want to use open source but are locked into closed source.

3- They think closed source is better because X has more features. [Which, by the way, most people don't know about or don't really care for because they don't use such features and probably never will.]

4- They had a negative past experience with open source and did not care to update their knowledge.

5- They don't really know what they are talking about but pretend they do. 

6- They simply prefer closed source as a personal choice.

In spite of all that, I've noticed that more students know about ODF and some of them are using Libre Office themselves nowadays.

An interesting case happened a few days ago: a student who wants me to direct her thesis is interested in using Twine, an open source tool for writing interactive texts.

The world is changing.  Many just don't really see how it is doing it.