MX-14, a fast, lightweight, and easy-to-install Linux Live CD distribution based on Debian stable, for Intel-AMD x86-compatible systems, has been upgraded to version 14.3 and is now available for download.

It's been a while since the previous upgrade for MX-14 and it looks that the developers have been quite busy. They've done a lot of work and they upgraded a number of key core components, including the Linux kernel and some of the major applications.

This was to be expected since the developers want to provide support for this distribution until Debian Wheezy, the base system, will reach end of life. This is expected to happen at the beginning of 2016.

The developers moved the system from Debian Jessie to Debian Wheezy a while back, which made their Linux distribution a lot more stable. It also allowed them to provide support for very old computers, which is actually one of the developers’ goals.

MX-14.3 gets a lot of package upgrades

The developers actually have two different operating systems that have a rather similar name, MX and antiX, but they are very different beasts. They are both light and based on Debian, so new users might be a little confused about the situation.

"Upgraded bugfix versions (pae and non-pae) of MX-14 are now available. This version has fixed some bugs found in MX-14.2 and Debian upstream. Major applications have been upgraded. We have added some new features eg MX-Tools."

"MX-14.3 is based on Debian Wheezy and therefore uses sysVinit. Now that Debian has frozen Jessie and has moved to systemd, MX-14.3 offers a rock-solid ststemd-free experience for those that would prefer to stick with sysVinit. MX-14 series will be supported until the end of life of Debian Wheezy," reads the official announcement.

The developers have also explained that the Linux kernel has been upgraded to version 3.14-0, the Iceweasel browser has been updated to version 31.2.0 ESR (based on Firefox ESR), VLC 2.1.5 has been added, a number of new packages have been added (MX-Tools application, MX-findshares, and libparted2), the mx-snapshot tool has been improved, and the localization of the distro has been further refined.

More details about this release can be found in the official announcement. You can download MX-14.3 right now from Softpedia and give it a try. This is a Live CD so it should work very well for virtual environments or from a simple USB stick.