MX Tools, Backup, and Systemback

Hello!

I am always learning new stuff about my wonderful favorite MX-17 Linux distribution! Today I want to share some cool stuff about backing up data and making a bootable iso of your installed system!

BACKUP:

MX-17 ships with a supercool application called Luckybackup. Opened as root, it lets me save my whole /home directory (which has my bookmarks, email settings and kept emails, address books, documents, photos, videos and all that stuff) to my /DATA drive. My desktop ‘puter has two hard disk drives (HDD for short). One is “regular” and has what most people’s HDDs have on it, and the other is named /DATA (after the artificial lifeform who rescued our world and became my friend). /DATA keeps a bootable copy of my installed system and all my weekly backups of my /home directory. I was using Systemback for this on Linux Lite, but Luckybackup and MX Live USB Maker are better! One of the things I really badly wanted to do was keep Systemback when I switched from Linux Lite to MX-Linux. Linux Lite 3.x has Systemback, but the upcoming LL 4.0 will not ship with Systemback, and neither does MX. The nice folks at MX repackaged Systemback for MX-17 from MX-15 at my request! That was totally awesome! I later felt I needed to apologize for asking for Systemback before even trying out the wicked-kewl stuff MX ships with. It was only because Systemback was buggy and hesitant on MX-17 that I was forced to try something else, but lesson learned! Sometimes just sticking with the familiar stuff (aka being lazy and ignorant) is not advantageous!

Luckybackup is simple, graphical, thorough, and very fast! Not only did it create a full backup of /home and let me put it where I wanted it (it must be opened as root),

but it also lets me schedule my backups whenever I want to and to wherever I want them.

MX Live USB Maker:

One thing Systemback did (in Linux Lite, but not at all in MX-Linux) was make a perfect, beautiful bootable copy of my installed system. MX’s awesome tool does the same thing, just as easily, and offers two options: make an iso of just the installed system suitable for sharing with someone else, OR, make a full copy of your installed system including the /home directory and all the settings and stuff! Menu -> Ststem -> MX-Tools -> MX Live USB Maker.

I copied my entire system from my desktop to my laptop effortlessly in just a few minutes!

There are tools like a USB-formatter available too, just like MintStick in Linux Mint which I always thought was super awesome and simple. Someone requested it in the forums, and in a few days, there it was in the Testing repo for people to try out. After testing, it goes to the regular MX repo for everyone to enjoy.

No bloat, plenty of speed, rock-stable, awesome cool tools. What else does a technophobic Ba’ku boy need?

Linux Lite Control Center is back! – Unlockforus

I could not get AntiX to fully cooperate on the old Dell Dimension, so it’s running Peppermint Linux today, and it’s surprisingly faster than even LXLE was! It’s a wonderfully curious mixture of LXDE and Xfce. Made especially newbie-friendly with the addition of UnlockMe, it races along better than brand new. Linux Lite runs adequately on the same machine, by the way… but as old as that old relic is, I wanted to go even “lighter.”

I haven’t been a Linux Lite user for very long, but for users who have used it since before series 3.x, there is good news! My friend and techno-wizard Ralphy has resurrected and updated the Lite Control Center.

Under the summary of “My Computer” there’s a whole set of options, from desktop to network shares. Do have a look at the latest cool tool from Ralphy’s treasure chest of awesomeness:

https://unlockforus.com/linux-lite-control-center/

Cheers!

• Home
• Get in touch…
• Log In

Unlockforus

Because it is fun

• General
• Linux

Linux Lite Control Center is back!

ralphy February 28, 2018 Linux Lite Control Center is back!2018-03-01T02:52:12+00:00 No Comment

Linux Lite Control Center is back for Lite users! – for better or worse. Over time, I’ve seen Lite users wishing to get back the Lite Control Center application; the simple yet quite useful app Johnathan put together in his Lite journey. Unfortunately, it went unmaintained after been completely dropped with the release of Linux Lite 3 series and the rest is history.

So, here it is… now you can once again enjoy from the Lite Control Center if you’re within those who missed it for so long.

Some new features have added while others have been fixed. I took it a step further and integrated it with UnlockMe. After all, it was the UnlockMe app who gave me the idea to complement it by adding some of its features into Lite Control Center.

Features Overview

Desktop Section

– The Add and Remove icon buttons have been merged into a single clickable option. Instead of having an array of buttons to either show or hide specific icons on the Desktop, a single button now covers both functionalities. This will not only save usable space in the interface but also makes it easier for users to find the button they are looking for with less clutter.
– A new Add/Remove Browser icon option has been added. It shows or hides the Desktop icon for your default browser as defined in Preferred Applications.

NOTE: FEATURES OVERVIEW IS BEING ADDED AS TIME ALLOWS. IT IS RATHER INCOMPLETE.

Anyways, the best way to see it in action is to actually install it and use it, so let’s jump right into it.

If you are currently using the UnlockMe app, just update it and visit the Application Software section to install Lite Control Center.

To install or update UnlockMe app, open a Terminal and copy and paste the line below (all in one line):

cd /tmp && wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ralphys/unlockme/master/install.sh && chmod +x install.sh && ./install.sh

You’ll be running the latest version cloned from Github shortly after.

You can then launch UnlockMe and browse to the Application Software section; Lite Control Center will be there for you

You could also install Lite Control Center directly from UnlockForUs repo even if you are not running the UnlockMe app. From a Terminal:

 ~$ echo "deb https://unlockforus.com/repository/dists/xenial/ /" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/unlockforus-xenial.list ~$ curl -s https://unlockforus.com/repository/keyFile | sudo apt-key add - ~$ sudo apt update ~$ sudo apt install lite-controlcenter 

Last but not least, if you are not running the UnlockMe App and you’re not interested in receiving updates for Lite Control Center at all, you can manually install it in your system without even adding the UnlockMe repo; from a Terminal:

 ~$ cd /tmp ~$ wget https://unlockforus.com/repository/dists/xenial/all/lite-controlcenter_1.0-0010_all.deb ~$ sudo dpkg -i lite-controlcenter_1.0-0010_all.deb 

Feel free to share your feedback and enjoy the revamped Lite Control Center.

Cheers!

Related Post

Numlock in Linux Mint Let’s see; you want Numlock to be on (enabled) when the system starts. After all, if your password has numbers it’s annoying to find out you can’t log…

SSD TRIM in Linux Lite 3.x Series – The miss… Linux Lite, a delightful, tasteful distro that makes Linux feel like a breath of fresh air, is a well suited Operating System for novices and most imp…

Remember screen brightness settings in Linux Mint … Linux Mint 17.2 Rafaela suffers from a long known Ubuntu bug where the screen brightness setting is reset on every session/reboot, which translate…

No Comments Yet

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

New and Improved Linux Lite 3.8 Released!

Linux Lite 3.8 has been released, yaaaaay! And upgrading from 3.anything-below-eight is a snap. Two mouse clicks, enter your password, and the magic happens.

This time I have it set up much differently from anything I’ve tried before, because my computer has two hard drives! So cool. So I let Linux Lite have the entire first hard drive, and the second HDD, /media/root/DATA, holds all my backup stuff. And how do I do backups? Again, super-simple:

Linux Lite has the bestest, most wonderfulest and awesomeful back-up utility in the history of ever installed by default. It’s called systemback and it creates restore-points, which are like snapshots of your entire Linux Lite system. You can even include all the stuff in your /home directory if you want. I have systemback scheduled to make new backup snapshots once a week (but you can do it daily, hourly, whatever you want) and store them on that second hard drive (/DATA). You can even make your snapshot bootable and store it on a thumb drive!

Systemback won’t be maintained after 3.8, so they are clooking to replace it, probably with Timeshift (also awesome), but I intend to retain it for use long after it’s unsupported. It’s that good.

Now I wouldn’t run even Linux Lite – or any other Ubuntu-based distribution – without the Update Manager from unlockforus.com. Annnnnnd, I also have Ralphy’s best work yet – UnlockMe – installed. I wanted Waterfox instead of Firefox on my system (I think Firefox has been going out of it’s way to tick users off lately for some unknown reason). Open UnlockMe, click the Applications tab, find Waterfox, click. No PPA to add, it’s one of those “tarballs” that newbies find troubling at first. No need. It searched for a PPA. Finding none, it grabbed the tarball from Waterfox’s page, unpacked and installed it, and added it to the whisker menu! Automagically!

I also used UnlockMe to get the coolest Dark Arc theme and Papyrus icon set that is equal in beauty and intuitive appeal to Faenza, but even better looking in my opinion.

Got my usual analog clock and weather widgets in the Xfce panel, and I’m not quite through putting frequently-used stuff launchers on it, but I was too anxious to share this. Oh, y’see that second Conky panel there? I got it from UnlockMe too! Just look under Applications and install Conky Manager. Click, click, done.

Simplicity is how I need and want things to be on my computer. I also want it fast and I want it to stay out of my way when I’m doing stuff. Linux Lite has a highly modified Xfce desktop that is absolutely without a doubt the leanest and easiest out-of-the-box configuration I have seen in any Xfce-desktop distro.

I did enjoy Linux Mint Sylvia (Xfce), but LL is faster on modest hardware and comes with some cool tools that Mint doesn’t offer. I got those same wonderful Mint tools (MintStick, the Updater, etc) from “Ralphy’s Repo of Awesomeness” and added them to Linux Lite. I don’t think you can add Linux Lite’s supercool tools of awesomeness to Linux Mint, however, which is a big part of the reason I went back to Linux Lite after a 2-month flirtation with Mint on the new machine.