This is STILL my main distro, and Puppy Linux is STILL my backup distro. Despite the improvements in Puppy Linux 5.0, it STILL falls far short of the superior repository of Ubuntu or Debian. I like the improved menu of antiX Linux version M8.5. I found the menu of version M8.2 to be confusing.

The selling points of antiX Linux for me are:
1. Lightweight: antiX Linux works great on this old desktop computer (256 MB of RAM, 1 GHz processor) and on my other desktop computer (384 MB of RAM, 467 MHz processor). The full installations of Ubuntu and Xubuntu are too heavy for these old computers, and Ubuntu also has a record of bloatware.
2. Great wireless support: I'm part of a group that has an old Dell laptop with just 256 MB of RAM and a 500 MHz processor. Not only does antiX Linux work fast, it even works with one of our wireless cards that didn't work with Puppy Linux, Ubuntu, or Debian. I didn't even have to mess around with ndiswrapper, download drivers, etc.
3. User-friendly: I've been spoiled by my experience with Puppy Linux. antiX Linux is almost as good as Puppy Linux on this front.
4. Superior repository: antiX Linux users can use all of the same software packages that Debian users can.
5. Stability: I like the fact that antiX Linux is based on Debian testing rather than Debian unstable.

I consider antiX Linux to be the gold standard for Linux distros. While Debian can be lightweight and is the champ at repository size, it's not user-friendly. I had to download a package just to power down properly.

Dreamlinux is stable (based on Debian stable), uses the Debian repository, and is slightly more user-friendly than antiX Linux (better default desktop), it's not as lightweight as antiX.

Puppy Linux is lightweight and user-friendly, but it has a much weaker repository.

In my opinion, Ubuntu is bloatware. Whle I have tried command-line Ubuntu and added just the packages I needed, this detracted from its much-hyped user-friendliness. While I didn't notice stability issues, it just doesn't seem like a good idea to base a distro (particularly one marketing to Linux newbies) on Debian's unstable branch instead of the better debugged testing and stable branches. Given the bloatware trend of Ubuntu, I expect all distros based on Ubuntu (and not just Kubuntu and Xubuntu) to also have escalating hardware requirements. Also, any stability issues in Ubuntu would also apply for any distro based on Ubuntu.

While I consider antiX Linux to be the gold standard, there are some things that I think need improvement:
1. Make Rox Pinboard standard: Perhaps I was spoiled for too long by Puppy Linux, but I like having shortcuts to basic applications on the desktop and the option of adding shortcuts to the directories containing the personal files that I use the most. While it's easy to add ROX Pinboard and disable Conky and to even make these changes permanent, it would be better to make this the default configuration. Those who don't feel the need for Pinboard can easily deactivate it. First impressions are important, and making new users comfortable will really win them over.
2. Better support for digital cameras and scanners. In version M8.2, Gtkam and Xsane didn't work with my hardware. However, these SAME programs did work for me in Puppy Linux 4.1.0. This is why I still use Puppy Linux as a backup distro.
3. CD/DVD burning programs that offer verification: This is another reason I still use Puppy Linux as a backup distro. GnomeBaker doesn't offer the verify feature. Puppy Linux comes standard with PBurn and burniso2cd, both of which offer verification.
4. Flash/script blocking programs STANDARD: This isn't an issue specific to this distro or even Linux, but it's a growing problem. So may web sites have Flash animations and scripts that AUTOMATICALLY run and bog down the whole computer. There are software packages that autoatically disable Flash animations and scripts and give the user the OPTION of running them. In my opinion, all Linux distros should INCLUDE these flash/script-blocking programs that work for the default web browser.
5. A default web browser that's faster than Iceape: I find Iceape to be slow. The only reason I'm using it is because I the xul-ext-noscript and xul-ext-flashblock packages work with it.
6. Make antiX its own distro rather than just another version of MEPIS. antiX needs its own spot on Distrowatch and shouldn't be lumped in with its parent distro MEPIS. Kubuntu and Xubuntu are nothing more than Ubuntu with a different desktop environment and come from the Ubuntu team, but they have their own spots on Distrowatch.
7. More publicity: Why is antiX Linux so obscure despite its merits, and why is Ubuntu so popular despite its shortcomings? Ubuntu promotes itself better than all other distros combined. antiX Linux can match Ubuntu in repository strength and user-friendliness but offers more stability and is FAR superior in speed. There are many computers out there (like mine) that can't handle Ubuntu but can fly with antiX Linux.
8. Silly gimmicks: A Kubuntu user created Hannah Montana Linux. Hannah Montana Linux is nothing more than Kubuntu with Hannah Montana wallpaper and a script that plays the thme song upon startup. Why not do something similar for antiX Linux? We could have Harry Potter Linux, ALF Linux, Magnum P.I. Linux, Spice Girls Linux, Metallica Linux, NASCAR Linux, Twilight Linux, Sopranos Linux, Sex and the City Linux, and more.

Hmm, VERY interesting post, and I appreciate your label of antiX as"The Gold Standard" for Linux. While I agree that there is always room for improvement in everything, I doubt that we'd have consensus, either from me or from others about just what those changes ought to be.

What IS SO NICE about antiX is that even the areas that you'd want to change are actually quite easy to change, especially as you gain expertise with the system. There are few systems that are more flexible than antiX, none offhand that I can think of.

In any system where you have such great flexibility, you trade off simplicity versus flexibility. I feel that we've made a few changes to make things a little bit simpler, yet retain all of the flexibility. For example, we changed the default window manager from Fluxbox to IceWM, while retaining both of them. The experts tend to favor Fluxbox, but they have a greater ability to navigate between window managers, so it's not an issue for them.

I for one advocated a move from Firefox and Claws to the integrated Seamonkey suite, which gives you Web browsing, Email, Web Page composing, and Chat in a single suite, yet takes up slightly less memory than Firefox, and certainly less than Firefox + Claws. As far as speed goes, it depends on how you set it up. Seamonkey is flexible and you can change parameters (such as turning off IPV6 address checks) to speed things up. I for one hope we stick with Seamonkey or the Debian branded Iceape.

Regarding Rox, I am sure that there are arguments one way or the other about the default setup. Your ideas are just as valid as anyone else's, both in this and in the browser arena.

I do hope that as we prepare for the next release we'll have plenty of discussions about what to keep and what to change, and I hope that you weigh in during those discussions, and if your ideas were accepted, I'd have no problem with them; they are good ideas.

Nice post jhsu, but personal preferences are personal preferences.

None of us on this distro run the same Desktop, Browsers, Appllications, Startup Sounds (me), Wallpapers, the list goes on.

IMO, AntiX is a distro that gives you tons of tools to personalise however you wish. Of course this can be a little intimidating at first. But like any distro. Familiarity settles in and things get easier with just a little practise.

My favorite part of the distro is the members here who trip over themselves nursing new users to the ins and outs of this Distro. How many Developers do you know in any forum that takes the time out to help a new user. I have only seen this at Mepis Lovers, AntiX, SMXI, Some Puplet Derivatives, and Plop Boot Manager forum.

Because of this. I Bookmark em all. Check on them regular like. And enjoy visiting them.

AntiX motto is Lean and Mean. That means it is up to the user to make thisHighly Tweakable Distro look,act,and feel the way they want it to. Anti gives you the tools.

Depends on you after that.

Masinick is a faster typer than me LOL __{{emoticon}}__ But Him and I are on the same wave length.

rokytnji wrote:Nice post jhsu, but personal preferences are personal preferences.

...

Masinick is a faster typer than me LOL __{{emoticon}}__ But Him and I are on the same wave length.

Maybe faster, maybe not, perhaps I just got here first! __{{emoticon}}__ We do agree, though. I think we already have very good defaults, and the flexibility is outstanding. Would I mind if we changed anything? No, if we can keep the flexibility and yet manage to make something easier, I'd go along with it. Frankly, though, I think our time is best spent doing even more in the configuration toolchest. It's already good, but what's available out there is always changing, so it's healthy to assess what we have periodically and make adjustments as needed.

Another change needed: I think the default wallpaper for the ROX Pinboard background should be none, not the black-and-white earth. I found it harder to read the icons and associated text. It was so much easier to read after I went into the Rox directory, clicked on the Wallpaper icon, clicked on the Advanced tab, and blanked out the xearth command. In my opinion, the default settings should be plain and easy to read. Those who want something fancier can always change the wallpaper to something else.

I also changed the thme to Thin Skin 2. The original setting made the bottom panel hard to read. Again, I think plain and easy-to-read should be the default, and the cooler and fancier settings should be left as options for those who want them.

jhsu wrote:Another change needed: I think the default wallpaper for the ROX Pinboard background should be none, not the black-and-white earth. I found it harder to read the icons and associated text. It was so much easier to read after I went into the Rox directory, clicked on the Wallpaper icon, clicked on the Advanced tab, and blanked out the xearth command. In my opinion, the default settings should be plain and easy to read. Those who want something fancier can always change the wallpaper to something else.

I also changed the thme to Thin Skin 2. The original setting made the bottom panel hard to read. Again, I think plain and easy-to-read should be the default, and the cooler and fancier settings should be left as options for those who want them.

Again, we do have the realm of personal preferences involved here, but I think your opinions about easy to use defaults definitely have merit, worth consideration as the next release is established. Other opinions?

My opinion/response:

1-I don't use desktop icons of any sort. They remind me of a throw back to windows days. For that matter, I don't even use Rox.

2-I have not encountered any issues with my scanner( which I use over a network, connected to a server and shared to everyone-even windows). As far as GTk, it doesn't see my Poloroid, a limitation of the app not antiX.

3-Personally I don't burn many CD/DVD's. I think it's a slowly dieing technology. For iso's i use md5sum.

4-I totally agree with you on flash. It can be real annoying at times but this should be taken up with web site developers.

5-For web browsers you have a couple choices installed but there are may to choose from. Dillo, Links/lynx, iceweasel, firefox, and the list goes on.

6-Maybe not on purpose, but I think antiX is slowly moving away from Mepis. Probably never entirely.

7-I think as time passes antiX will be showcased on it's own merits. Remeber *buntu has billions of dollars behind it. This is why it's so popular, marketing.

8-I think derivatives should be left to the individual user. If they want an theme just create/install one it's easy.


I don't disagree with you on anything you said but to me it's all personal preferences and antiX gives me the ability to do what I want without having to start with a lot of stuff that someone else wants. If you saw my desktop, you would have no idea I'm running antiX. I use XFCE but the other stuff is still there.

Enjoy your ride.

Just another note:

For me, what would be Ideal, and it has been mentioned before is a text only antiX or a server edition. Start with nothing and install only what I want. The rest would be considered cruft.

I have to get back working on the antiX repo server just for this reason. A place to get all the antiX magic.

eriefisher wrote:Just another note:

For me, what would be Ideal, and it has been mentioned before is a text only antiX or a server edition. Start with nothing and install only what I want. The rest would be considered cruft.

I have to get back working on the antiX repo server just for this reason. A place to get all the antiX magic.

Now THERE is an interesting point of view. I am content with things as they are, but for the BASE installation at least, a BASE that barely starts with anything at all, kind of like the place where Arch Linux starts, would be an interesting diversion. I think that a BASE with Fluxbox is a reasonable compromise because it gives something easy and light to start with. However, efforts like Tiny Core show just how small (around 10 MB) you can get with an ISO image if you truly cut it down to the bare bones. Personally, I feel that our compromise is quite reasonable and I build from antiX, not from a Tiny Core, Tiny Me, or SliTAZ, or even from Puppy, for that matter.

Ours is easy, I can live with the defaults until I have time to muck around, and when I am ready to muck around, the tools do not get in my way, they help me accomplish my objectives, so I think we are real solid with what we have.

I realize that you might not like icons because they are a reminder of your Windows days, but they appeal to new Linux users, and that is part of the target market. (The distros that don't need to appeal to newbies are the expert ones, like Debian, Arch Linux, Slackware, Linux From Scratch, etc.) Every time I installed or even booted up Damn Small Linux, I set it to show icons. The icons in Puppy Linux helped win me over. Clickable icons for the basic applications are convenient. As Damn Small Linux, Puppy Linux, and antiX Linux show, clickable icons on the desktop ARE compatible with a lightweight distro.

CDs and DVDs will be obsolete eventually, but I don't see this happening for a long time. We'll know that they're on the way out when they start making computers without them. But even then, CDs and DVDs have been around for so long that they'll take at least as long to fade away as the 3.5" floppy disk has. Newbies trying out a distro like it when stuff works and are alienated when stuff doesn't.

I know that Linux developers aren't at fault for the speed bump on the Information Superhighway known as Flash, but enabling Flash-block by default would really win over Linux newbies. Flash-block can't possibly be that taxing of resources (certainly nothing compared to Flash run amok). If Linux were a business, having flash-block enabled by default would be something that adds very little overhead but LOTS of value.

antiX Linux really needs better marketing, and becoming a separate distro is critical. Having billions of dollars isn't necessary. Look how far Linux Mint has come. Look how far Puppy Linux has come.

No other distro combines Debian repository compatibility, lightweight operation, AND user-friendliness as well as antiX does. Puppy Linux is lightweight and user-friendly but still has a weak repository. Debian has the great repository and offers lightweight operation but is far from user-friendly. Ubuntu and several other distros have great repositories and user-friendliness but are bloatware. Dreamlinux has the merits of Ubuntu and is lighter but is still heavier than antiX Linux.

The gimmicky themes I suggested would really attract some much-needed attention. Given two items of merchandise that are identical except that one has Hannah Montana on it while the other is plain, which one would sell faster if both had the same price? If Linux were a business, adding the Hannah Montana theme would greatly increase the price the market would bear but add very little to the cost of production.

Well, it remains to be seen if antiX wants to get into a marketing situation or not. Neither SimplyMEPIS, its current parent, nor antiX focus on marketing, but instead focus on features. SimplyMEPIS is based on two primary principles - a simple desktop and a rock stable platform. The antiX premise, on the other hand, is a lean and mean platform, meaning light and flexible, sacrificing a little bit of simplicity in exchange for newer, more easily modified configurations.

While some of your personal preferences are certainly laudable and have considerable merit, and are worth some consideration here, I do not personally consider them the main focal point. Flexibility and nimbleness, to me, are the design points of antiX which are executed with excellence.

Hopefully when anti arrives on the scene (and he will probably be in here while we are sleeping) he will comment on this.

anti, any thoughts or comments? I do believe that this dialog is well worth having.

I welcome this post from jhsu as indeed antiX could be improved further and any suggestions are welcome.

1. Rox with icons can be set in live mode and this will automatically set a rox desktop on install. The cheatcode is Rox at boot/grub menu.

2. gtkam and xsane are the best lightweight. If you know of others that work better I'll consider them.

3. I'm open to this.

4 and 5. If we can set up iceape and a flash block script OOTB all the better.

6. This will probably happen at some point in the future, but it isn't my most pressing concern to be honest.

7. Publicity is usually good, but like 7 is not really a priority. I really don't care if antiX has 3 users other than myself or 3 million as long as those users enjoy it and find antiX useful.

8. I'm not too keen on gimmicks, but if any user wants to create one, that is fine by me. There is an antiX-e16 in the pipeline, but it needs work and I don't have the time to keep it maintained. IMO this is the real problem, not the creation of a distro, but keeping it maintained.

For information, there is a very basic antiX-core ready to be upploaded (486 and 686) that is less than 100MB and comes without X and has a basic, but effective cli installer. It can be used as the base to build whatever you wish and is the closest to Debian.

Thanks for weighing in on the topic, anti! I believe that jhsu has some good ideas and I like the enthusiasm, though, like you, I am more personally interested in keeping the framework and the overall simplicity of the design, and the continual improvement of that framework and the tools associated with it than I am in creating a particular spin of the system to produce a result aimed at a particular market.

I am not opposed to such things at all, and if we had thirty offspring from either SimplyMEPIS or antiX, that would be fine by me. The one thing I would not want to see is the compromise of the core values of either SimplyMEPIS OR antiX. I personally believe, even as is, that SimplyMEPIS is the top stable, easy to use distribution around today (though it has solid competition from Mint and PCLinuxOS), and I simply do not see anything at all quite like antiX, (even though the PCLinuxOS and Ubuntu projects have offspring that, on the surface, have some similarities).

The Puppy, Unity, Quirky, SliTAZ, and Tiny Core projects all have elements of the kinds of things that can be used to assemble a solid core and extend it, but I like the balance of what is included, as opposed to what I have to add, in antiX BASE and antiX FULL. I can literally run with either one of them as is, or I can customize them beyond recognition. I can also install them, release by release, or I can just take one and live with it indefinitely. I really like those choices.

I don't want to stifle any conversation and consideration of things to look at for future releases, yet at the same time I wish to express my own desire to preserve and improve the things that have made antiX what it is today and will ensure its health and vitality in the future. I think these are great conversations to have; let's keep them going, and refine, over time, what the important features are, create an ever more useful framework, so that if anyone does want to dive off from what we've been doing here, they can freely do so. That would be exciting, to bear siblings off of this outstanding trunk root! __{{emoticon}}__

Flashblock for Iceape can be installed from
========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://flashblock.mozdev.org/installation2.html#current"
linktext was:"http://flashblock.mozdev.org/installation2.html#current"
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anticapitalista wrote:I welcome this post from jhsu as indeed antiX could be improved further and any suggestions are welcome.
8. I'm not too keen on gimmicks, but if any user wants to create one, that is fine by me. There is an antiX-e16 in the pipeline, but it needs work and I don't have the time to keep it maintained. IMO this is the real problem, not the creation of a distro, but keeping it maintained.

I have E17 installed, It looks great but it's buggy. Fun though.

For information, there is a very basic antiX-core ready to be upploaded (486 and 686) that is less than 100MB and comes without X and has a basic, but effective cli installer. It can be used as the base to build whatever you wish and is the closest to Debian.

This I'm interested in. If this can be distributed an then have access to antix repos the possibilities would be endless.