Edit. If you read the thread many or all of my misunderstandings got corrected.
What Debian versions that AntiX is based on being the most important.

Hi Folks. As I get it .Mepis use stable and AntiX use experimental latest unstable?
Another difference is that Anti and BitJam has built in the new feature that AntiX
can save homefs and rootfs to NTFS formatted internal drives which no other Debian can?

But something else caught my eyes. Could be my lack of knowledge or lack of creative imagination.
I copy from Mepis homepage.

========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://www.mepis.org/discover-mepis"
linktext was:"http://www.mepis.org/discover-mepis"
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...intriguing possibilities

* More than one OS installed, so that you choose which you want when you boot.
* A complete OS you can boot and run from a CD-ROM or USB stick without installation.
* The ability to view and copy files from another OS, even if it won't boot up.
* An easy method to use another OS, including Windows, in a virtual environment so you don't have to keep rebooting back and forth.

is this just fancy language or is it something very unique that Mepis has and AntiX lacks? or does AntiX
have it too? What does it refers to?

They are talking I think about running Windows in VM which AntiX can do also. Something you either don't have the power or are interested in since you are a run linux as frugal in windows guru.

AntiX can do anything Mepis can do but more IMO (kernel wise). Mepis is geared more towards KDE though and has it's own repos also.

newbody, mepis uses stable with backports for different programs and antiX uses testing, not experimental or sid. testing is in the works to be made a rolling release by debian because of the overall stability and update of the programs. as you know stable is frozen for the most part and sid is always getting updates to it that makes it unstable __{{emoticon}}__ , testing is in the middle. as for the ntfs feature as i understand yes we are the only ones that have it at the moment. also the quote from mepis are some marketing words for: grub to install and use several OSes; second is for LiveCD and Live USB that u can play around with Linux without installing it, persistence is a step further as you can save what you modify in the LiveCD/USB and keep the changes for it; third is a description for a rescue disc or telling windows users that they can access windows partitions without windows, windows can't access linux partitions installed or not __{{emoticon}}__ ; forth is VirtualBox that i suspect you know what it does. As for antix being able to use all this, we are as any linux distribution out there and we have the features present or at short distance of installing them through smxi, metapackage installer or other scripts. i hope i gave you a good explication, if not others will help. good luck.

edit: as for the question in the post title. as i told you antix is based on testing, we have other kernel (the majority of us also use the liquorix kernels), all our programs are lightweight and we don't use a desktop environment as KDE, we use small window managers as icewm, fluxbox and others. at this point all we have in common with mepis is the installer and the legacy that we are a mepis derivative. that about it, we are 99% all debian.

I really see the standard versions of MEPIS and antiX going after completely different audiences, which is why they are complementary to one another. Though there are plenty of hobbyists in the MEPIS community (after all, antiX got its start as a MEPIS derivative, and there are nearly always community-based MEPIS alternatives taking place), I would say that SimplyMEPIS, as produced at release, is definitely aimed squarely at people who want a fairly basic, stable system that is far more concerned about reliability and simplicity than it is about fancy features.

Though antiX is relatively stable as well (and you can MAKE it more stable by switching from the Testing repository that is enabled by default to the Stable repository used by SimplyMEPIS and the Debian Stable release), antiX is definitely aimed at the hobbyist and tinkerer. Originally created to keep aging systems working well, it still does that, but it's so much more now. In fact, we have three fairly distinctive ways to go: the usual released version, sometimes called"full" to distinguish it, the base version, which still includes a graphical user environment, but omits applications, so you can customize it to suit your own tastes, and core, which provides a system kernel and just enough utilities to allow you to build your own 100% customized system.

Note that while antiX is natively based on Debian Testing, anticapitalista includes commented out versions of the various Debian repositories, making it fairly easy to switch to another version {Stable, Testing, Sid} for those so inclined. That's an exercise that only those who understand the differences between them should initially undertake, unless you love to learn by trial and error; in which case, dive right in!

Much appreciated that so many of you participated. I like AntiX even if I am most used to
using Puppy due to that one having the features that I like already 2006 or 7 or 8.
Knoppix is close to my needs too. So apart from Slax varieties like Porteus and Nimblex
Puppy and AntiX are my faved distros and one thing that also count much are the friendly forum.