i just tested last week antix 17b2, and the most annoying bugs, for me seem to be the 2 concerning booting

1. booting unpacked iso from hdd boots, but cant install to same drive, wich i detailed earlier in this thread
2. booting packed iso, from hdd does not work, boot device is hardcoded to cd/usb

otherwise ... still the best distro

If you want to install it, why don't you want to use an optical disc or a pendrive to install from?

I'm curious about what you are seeing as a problem.

zpimp wrote:1. booting unpacked iso from hdd boots, but cant install to same drive, wich i detailed earlier in this thread

There is a trivial change to a script to work around this. Comment out line 328 in /sbin/partition-info:At the time it seemed best not to let people install on the live device they booted from. Part of the motivation for this was that the Linux kernel had recently started naming /dev/sda /dev/sdb and so on differently on some systems when you live boot. Leaving the live system off of the list of installation targets seemed like it was giving the user yet another hint about which device they should install to. I'm not claiming it was the right decision but it does not seem unreasonable, especially since there is an easy work-around for the very rare case where someone legitimately wants to install to the drive they live booted from.

2. booting packed iso, from hdd does not work, boot device is hardcoded to cd/usb

Use the"from=hd" boot parameter. Or"from=all". I believe the"Failsafe" boot option does this for you automatically. You can also use something like"bdev=sda1" or"blab=some-label" or even"buuid="abcd123*" to specify the partition to boot from. We probably provide more flexibility in this regard than any other distro.

I've explained numerous times why it is a bad idea for the live system to go poking around internal disks without invitation. Since the clock is seldom set correctly so early in the live boot process, that poking around can result in a bunch of"mysterious" boot-time error messages when the installed Linux systems boot if the partitions that are poked belong to them.

OTOH, I'm not sure what you mean by"booting packed iso". We support booting from an iso file but it is much better to boot from a live-usb made with the live-usb-maker program. If you are running a live system then the live-usb-maker program (both cli and gui) will offer to clone your running system to a new usb stick. This was partly to provide an easy migration path to a full featured live system for people who had to boot from a live-cd/dvd, a"dd" live-usb, or directly from an iso file.

zpimp wrote: i just tested last week antix 17b2, and the most annoying bugs, for me seem to be the 2 concerning booting

1. booting unpacked iso from hdd boots, but cant install to same drive, wich i detailed earlier in this thread
2. booting packed iso, from hdd does not work, boot device is hardcoded to cd/usb

otherwise ... still the best distro

My /etc/grub.d/40_custom code (created with helpful advice of BitJam) to boot antiX and MX ISO files from disk.

I haven't (unfortunately) had much time or opportunity to wring out the latest test images of either antiX 17 or any upcoming MX-17 - (but I can tell you that the regular installed versions of MX-16 and antiX 16 have served me well.

Because of what may have been a power surge or something equivalent, I may have lost my Ethernet card on my main Dell Inspiron 5558 system.  That had a side effect of rendering antiX and Debian completely unusable (probably because I had not set up Wifi access on them), but I'm not 100% certain until I do the proper research, checking hardware, software, firmware, and system configuration.

I did, the other evening, reinstall antiX 16.2 from a handy USB stick and it worked perfectly, except that I had no Ethernet access, only Wifi (and that was one of my tips that pointed me to the potential hardware issue).  I attempted to install Debian 9.1 and had bigger problems because it didn't have Ethernet access and it didn't load the drivers to run from Wifi.  MX-15 or 16 is still working, though only in wireless/wifi mode.  So until I get that stuff taken care of (and it may be a few WEEKS; I'm pretty busy on my job), I may not get to testing - besides, you guys are doing a great job with it.  Hopefully I'll get a chance to install before final, and I most certainly will pick up the software when released.  I do miss testing early and often - but I'm doing that every day on the job and I've been putting in a lot of extra time, plus personal life has also been busy.  I'm not the first to be in these situations, but it is what it is.

Thanks all of you who have tested and/or helped anti in any way to get out the usual great software!

It is possible that internet access will work better in antiX-17-pre-rc1 and later.  There could be a problem with having both wifi and wired interfaces on the same machine.  It seems solid now in antiX-17-pre-rc1.  It was flaky in some earlier releases, often depending on the phase of the moon.

Earlier releases should be fine with just one network interface.  Of course antiX-17-pre-rc1 won't fix hardware problems (yet).

Thanks BitJam!

I'm not sure whether I have a failing Ethernet card or system issues with the interfaces, but our code is not the primary culprit because I am experiencing Ethernet issues with all distributions right now. Probably a hardware component failing. We'll see...

Hi, new user here, testing antix 16.2 and 17 live versions...

I boot from both USB and CD, on 2 very ancient pc's (my desktop not even support booting from usb, not even with plop...)
Even so, having Libreoffice was a dealbreaker for me to use Antix live distro (I use it for work). The distro boots faster from USB than the distro I have installed in this netbook pc. Runs smoother that the installed distro (Xubuntu 12.xx)...

So, if I had a vote I would say, stick with the Libreoffice packages in the live iso...

Thoughts: I'll probably install,in a few days, Antix 16.2 on my desktop (that boots from CD) because I find that Antix 17 (both b3 and pre RC1) run a lot less smoothly on my pc's (that have 1 gig of ram each).

Is this the right place to ask if it's normal that this newest version of Antix consumes a bit more ram that the previous running on idle, and a huge lot more RAM running Firefox ESR?

The constant increase of  RAM usage  and of swap in USB live Antix 17 is what made me go back to trying USB Antix 16.2...
For example, in my netbook (that has 1 gig of ram shared with the onboard video card, and the Intel Atom CPU clocks at 1667 according to Conky), I've been using live USB Antix 16.2 daily as my main distro for a couple of weeks because it does not hang like Xubuntu does sometimes).
Also: I prefer to manually set up my video output and printer at each boot because I tried twice to use persistance and noticed 2 things: my video output configuration does not get saved between boots, and strange thing: I get promped to choose new passwords at boot, but when I try to use the new passwords or the default"demo", the system complains I'm not using the correct password!?

A big bonus of using the live USB is (and I don't know of any other distro that does this): even without persistance, we get the"liveusb storage" wich is great! This feature is a keeper!

One last thing: I manually installed Firefox 57 beta on my live Antix 16.2 and noticed 2 things: no sound (!?), and a lot more memory usage (the exact opposite of what mozilla advertises), is that usual?

I want to to leave a word here for those  (newbies like me) that are wondering if Antix is a good out-of-the-box OS to try on live USB/CD for very old pc's (about 10 years old)...
Booting from USB, I have the following user experience:
In a 1 gig of ram, 9 years old intel netbook without a dedicated videocard, the system boots in less than a minute, in my own language (if I select it on the boot menu), with a very small tweak (I have to fire up the terminal and run"sudo cupsd" before using the Comand Center) it's lighting fast to set up HP printer (less than a minute).
I get to use LibreOffice (granted a old version, but it works fine). If I set up the"run from memory" Libreoffice option, it starts instantly (5 seconds if I haven't used it recently, less than a second with regular use!)
Firefox boots in about 10 seconds...
I get to have my word processor (Libreoffice Writer), the file manager, geany and firefox (with 7 open tabs) running in 504mb of RAM (a bit over 50% of the available RAM).
For the regular home user, I even did some tests: youtube plays fine in the browser (for all resolutions below HD), out of the box it even plays very smoothly a 720p MP4 video test file... it even plays a full HD video file, but it's choppy...
If the default OS (windows 7 pro) that came with this netbook ran like this, I would not have to turn to linux distros to make this obsolete netbook usable...



Keep the good work, sorry for the long and partially off-topic post...

One last thing: I manually installed Firefox 57 beta on my live Antix 16.2 and noticed 2 things: no sound (!?), and a lot more memory usage (the exact opposite of what mozilla advertises), is that usual?

I think ESR is lighter on ram than current releases of firefox. I run seamonkey instead on my old gear.
Use your meta package installer in antix control center under system>internet to find the seamonkey package built for us.

Palemoon is also available and is supposedly lighter than firefox-esr.

the later firefox may require pulseaudio or some other sound server trick to have audio in the browser.

dolphin_oracle wrote: the later firefox may require pulseaudio or some other sound server trick to have audio in the browser.

Yep.

========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/03/firefox-52-no-sound-pulseaudio-alsa-linux"
linktext was:"http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/03/fire ... alsa-linux"
====================================

It’s no surprise that we (like many Linux users) were idly unaware of the change. Mozilla makes no mention of it in the Firefox 52 release notes, and you’d need recall an obscure blog post from 2016 (one with no timeline) to even know dropping alsa was on the roadmap.

As usual. D.O. is sharp as a razor blade.

If wanting pulse-audio. It is also available in the meta package installer. Under sound.

I get promped to choose new passwords at boot, but when I try to use the new passwords or the default"demo", the system complains I'm not using the correct password!?

I have to fire up the terminal and run"sudo cupsd" before using the Comand Center

Those symptoms suggest that you are inadvertently choosing a default (non persistent) boot session.
During a persistent session, the conky onscreen display will include a line at the bottom stating something like"Root Persist is Enabled".
Are you seeing this?

Understand that even when you select"custom" line in the boot entry, you have the freedom to (separately) choose persistence, or not.

If you choose persistence from the dropdown options menu AND perform F8 save,
you choice to use persistence will be remembered, and automatically selected during future boots.

(Later, to accomplish a"one time" NON-persistent custom session, you can choose"no persist" from dropdown options.
To set this as the new default choice, you can also perform another F8 save, along with choosing"no persist".)

==========

cupsd
~~"cheat codes" passed on the bootline may be suppressing the autostart of various services, including  cupsd
someone else needs to chime in -- i'm not using cupsd & can't recall what"cheat codes" are supplied on the default liveboot

Antix 17 (both b3 and pre RC1) run a lot less smoothly on my pc's (that have 1 gig of ram each).

Amen, and FWIW, I've noticed the same when testing on machines that have 2Gb+ RAM.
And it's not specific to antiX ~~ it's endemic across all the debian9-derived distros I've tested.
Even after troubleshooting by stripping all non-essential session autostart items & unneeded services...
...many operations during throughout a desktop session (regardless compositing, or non-compositing window manager) are syrupy annoyingly slow.
Until I learn otherwise, I'm pinning the blame on"policykit stuffs".

a huge lot more RAM running Firefox ESR?

No, I can't confirm. Be sure you are comparing apples-to-apples ~~
ensure both your tests are using identical (e.g. v52.4.0) browser, with an identical selection of extensions installed, etc

Firefox boots in about 10 seconds...

tested: a faster CPU and/or more RAM won't significantly change this stat.
Tweaking certain firefox preferences can (will) lessen the startup delay...
...and the startup delay inevitably increases based on the number of installed extensions.

I manually installed Firefox 57 beta on my live Antix 16.2 and noticed 2 things: no sound (!?), and a lot more memory usage (the exact opposite of what mozilla advertises), is that usual?

no sound is the expected result (not expected by you, eh).
Debian ecosystem is only supporting the esr firefox version. Wisely so, IMO.

ff57 ships with"full-blown" multiprocess operation (aka"e10s", aka"electrolysis") enabled by default.
You can (read a book's worth of tutorials and) reduce its RAM consumption by tweaking preferences to lessen the number of content processes, etc... but it will still consume   comparatively more RAM compared to v52 due its extra junk (IMO) inbuilt components.

"WHAT extra junk components?" Partial list: screenshot tool, 2-factor authentication client, newtabpage"activity stream" and"suggested reading" crap, shiny new dev console tools... all of which you may, or may not, be able to"disable" via prefs, but cannot prevent from being loaded into memory @each startup.

skidoo wrote:AFAIK, cupsd should (would) be already enabled, per the default configuration...
...but that might not be the case ~~"cheat codes" passed on the bootline may be suppressing the autostart of various services, including  cupsd
someone else needs to chime in -- i'm not using cupsd & can't recall what"cheat codes" are supplied on the default liveboot

The default disable cheat is disable=lx.  The list of service that are disabled is in the file /etc/live/config/disabled: The cups service is on the list so it is disabled by default on the live system.