antiX 23 releases

 The antiX project continues to grow and offer a variety of choices.

For the antiX 23 release, there are four distinct release choices:

1) antiX-full (c1.7GB) – 4 windows managers – IceWM (default), fluxbox, jwm and herbstluftwm plus full libreoffice suite. x64 versions come with 2 kernels. Legacy 5.10 and Modern 6.1.

2) antiX-base (c1GB) – 4 windows managers – IceWM (default), fluxbox, jwm and herbstluftwm.

3) antiX-core (c520MB) – no X, but should support most wireless.

4) antiX-net (c220MB)- no X. Just enough to get you connected (wired) and ready to build.

These four choices have iso files for sysVinit or runit.

They are also available for 32-bit or 64-bit systems, so there are a total of sixteen images available.

Known issues.

IMPORTANT IF INSTALLING GRUB TO UEFI/ESP

Before installing
sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade
This will update the gui and cli installers and bring in missing efivar and efibootmgr

Alternatively,
sudo apt update && sudo apt install efivar efibootmgr

antiX-23.1 will have this fixed

On antiX-base versions:

1. the browser may not open from the menu or toolbar/taskbar.
Fix: Open Control Centre > Preferred Applications > Web-browser > Select first SeaMonkey option > Apply

2. ps_mem.py tool doesn’t open
Fix: sudo apt install python-is-python3

Also, The default repos for antiX and Debian are reported to be extremely slow.

Use Repo-Manager in full versions or manually edit /etc/apt/sources.list.d/antix.list to a more reliable one.

antiX 23 update

 The antiX 23 distribution was originally planned to be released in August.  The primary developer, anticapitalista works in education, and the months of August and September have been particularly busy for him personally, and there were also a few issues that he wanted to resolve before prematurely releasing antiX 23.

The "relative", MX Linux, had also experienced difficulties with the boot loader configuration, but their development team is larger and they overcame their issues and released Version 23.

I have no problems with either of these distributions.  Both of them emphasize reliability over other concerns and are excellent examples of what freely available software can accomplish.

Both operate using Debian software packages for the majority of their programs, and they build their own configuration management and appearance tools, as well as their own packaged images.  The results are predictable, stable software like Debian, with the added value of better appearance, forum support, and distinctive distribution "use cases" - specific things that work well.  For MX Linux, it is the desktop, for antiX it is the leanest possible stable software.

It's well worth the wait!

Distro: antiX-23-beta2-runit_x64-full Arditi del Popolo 11 June 2023

 I'm now using the next update to the antiX 23 test image;

if all works out as expected, this version will be upgradeable to the final antiX 23 Arditi del Popolo release.

I've had no trouble at all during the testing cycle so I look forward to the release with patience and positive expectations.

Distro: antiX-23-beta1-runit_x64-full Grup Yorum 21 March 2023

 I've been testing the upcoming antiX 23 release for a few months.

Typically this distribution puts out a new release when there is a
Debian release - definitely when there is a major Debian release change,
for example from Bullseye (Release 11) to Bookworm (Release 12).

While the upcoming Debian release effort is going well, in typical
Debian style, though they have a release planned, and it's been on
their calendar for at least a year, the last I looked, they STILL did
not provide a projected final release date, so I'm not 100% certain if
the antiX 23 release will WAIT for Debian's eventual release, or if
it'll release as the functionality freeze sufficiently stabilizes the
software enough to make it practical for antiX to finalize their own
release, with or without a final Bookworm release date.  Time will tell.
There are still minor issues to work out in both releases; I'm not sure
if any of them are considered release blockers for either release or
not.  If I see anything definitive about those matters, I may get an
opportunity to write about it and check into it.

antiX 22 wtih updater and icon manager

 I've been working with a couple of different antiX distributions.  My main one is antiX 22.  The others are Legacy OS 2023 and antiX 23 Alpha 1.

Legacy OS 2023 is a stable, good looking, minimal and useful antiX alternative for older systems.  As such it doesn't work with my newest system, my HP-14 laptop, but it's especially good on my old Lenovo X201 and my Dell Inspiron 5558.

As for the updater, PPC, an antiX contributor, has written several useful tools using yad with either Bash, Python, or a combination of both.  yad-updater, icewm-toolbar-manager, icewm-quick-personal-menu-manager, yad-touchpad, and FT10 are several of the tools written by PPC.

 

antiX 23 Alpha 1

 

 The first build for this year's version of antiX, a lean, efficient distribution, is available.  The first build was generated using  "runit (is) an init and service management scheme for Unix-like operating systems that initializes, supervises, and ends processes throughout the operating system."

"Why use runit?

"Runit's simple collection of tools can be used to build flexible dependency structures and distributed systems, or blazing fast parallel runlevel changes (including the initial boot)."

Regarding antiX - "(from 2017)

The Most Extensive Live-usb on the Planet!

Back in 2009, the antiX devs foresaw that usb flash drives would be the wave of the future for live Linux media. During the ensuing eight years antiX has been refining their live-usb technology striving to improve the live-usb experience and to find new and unique ways for making use of fast read-write live boot media. During this same time usb flash drives have got larger, more reliable, much cheaper, and much much faster."

Regarding the new test image -

"Just to give you a taste of where antiX-23 stands at the moment.

Do not use this on critical systems.
The default Debian repos point to bookworm, but antiX ones to testing.
This will change to bookworm once the Debian hard freeze begins.
This is labelled an alpha as it will not be supported at all.
It is only to help in testing, bug fixing etc.

Size of iso = approximately 1.6GB
Includes 2 kernels – 4.19 legacy and 5.10 ‘modern’
Defaults to zzz-IceWM ‘desktop’
No ft10 transformaton pack, but PPC’s changes to zzzFM are included (eg trash option). Still single-click though.
New wallpaper from Sakasa (thanks to roky for posting the links). I reduced the size and made it smaller though since the original weighs in at 9MB!"

Legacy OS 2023

 I’m here on my old Thinkpad X201 with John’s adaptation of antiX called Legacy OS 2023.

inxi -v4
System:
  Host: LegacyOS Kernel: 5.10.57-antix.1-amd64-smp arch: x86_64 bits: 64
    compiler: gcc v: 10.2.1 Desktop: IceWM v: 3.3.0 Distro: Legacyos-2023_x64
    base: Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye)
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: LENOVO product: 3249CTO v: ThinkPad X201
    serial: <superuser required>
  Mobo: LENOVO model: 3249CTO serial: <superuser required> BIOS: LENOVO
    v: 6QET66WW (1.36 ) date: 05/31/2011
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT0 charge: 78.1 Wh (98.5%) condition: 79.3/84.2 Wh (94.2%)
    volts: 12.0 min: 10.8 model: Panasonic 42T4696 status: N/A
CPU:
  Info: dual core model: Intel Core i7 M 620 bits: 64 type: MT MCP
    arch: Westmere rev: 5 cache: L1: 128 KiB L2: 512 KiB L3: 4 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 1572 high: 1777 min/max: 1199/2667 boost: enabled cores:
    1: 1413 2: 1469 3: 1777 4: 1632 bogomips: 21281
  Flags: ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel Core Processor Integrated Graphics vendor: Lenovo
    driver: i915 v: kernel arch: Gen-5.75 bus-ID: 00:02.0
  Device-2: Lenovo Integrated Webcam type: USB driver: uvcvideo
    bus-ID: 1-1.6:4
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 1.20.11 driver: X: loaded: intel dri: i965
    gpu: i915 resolution: 1280x800~60Hz
  API: OpenGL v: 2.1 Mesa 20.3.5 renderer: Mesa DRI Intel HD Graphics (ILK)
    direct render: Yes
Network:
  Device-1: Intel 82577LM Gigabit Network vendor: Lenovo driver: e1000e
    v: kernel port: 1820 bus-ID: 00:19.0
  IF: eth0 state: down mac: f0:de:f1:19:05:16
  Device-2: Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 driver: iwlwifi v: kernel
    bus-ID: 02:00.0
  IF: wlan0 state: up mac: 00:24:d7:60:86:70
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 119.24 GiB used: 7.07 GiB (5.9%)
  ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Toshiba model: THNS128GG4BAAA-NonFDE
    size: 119.24 GiB
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 110.9 GiB used: 7.07 GiB (6.4%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1
  ID-2: swap-1 size: 6 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sda2
Info:
  Processes: 172 Uptime: 19m Memory: 7.57 GiB used: 1.39 GiB (18.4%)
  Init: SysVinit runlevel: 5 Compilers: gcc: 10.2.1 Packages: 1920 Shell: Bash
  v: 5.1.4 inxi: 3.3.24