I am really enjoying antiX M8.0, just as I expected I would, given the excellent results with the previous M7.5 release (which I'm actually still running on one of my systems, but it is updated, so it is virtually equivalent to M8.0), and also because of the great results during testing.

When Squeeze first became active, there were a flurry of updates. Fortunately they did not harm a thing on my system, and I have kept the testing repos active. I did some updates today and there were only a few of them. The Stable repos are quite stable, but the Testing repos also seem rather stable right now.

Performance, stability, and flexibility remain really strong points with antiX M8.0 and I am enjoying it, though as far as"new excitement" goes, I am really looking forward to both ou812's remaster effort and anticapitalista's next testing cycle, and you can count on me to get involved in both of them, assuming I am still breathing (hopefully that will be the case, I'm not planning on being underground any time soon!) __{{emoticon}}__

As always, I hope to not only test antiX, but also continue to spread the good news of what it can do.

How's it going for all of you? I take it that things are running smoothly for you too. Any positive tales to tell? Anybody just keep their system up all the time (and have three month uptime reports to bring to us)?

I think we can all say something nice about antiX. For me, I run a trilogy of systems. I use the parent distro, SimplyMEPIS, to have a solid, simple, stable distribution around. With how well my other distros have been doing, I have not HAD to resort to SimplyMEPIS at all, so I just have to run it every now and then to enjoy it. No software updates the most recent time I ran it. sidux is my other distro, a cutting edge desktop system that shares a few tools (ceni and smxi in particular) with antiX. Like SimplyMEPIS and antiX, sidux 2009.1 has had a real nice run. The only irritation has been some stupid conf file messages about a future Debian requirement to have all config files end in .conf - we have seen the same messages with antiX as well. sidux also recently made the jump, along with Debian Sid to KDE 4.2.2. They did a great job managing that. The only issues in it are the issues remaining with KDE itself, which are finally showing solid signs of clearing up.

antiX has been a thing of real beauty. I can easily run it as either a stable, testing, or"Sid" unstable Debian system, and I can use the smxi system management tool to help me harness any of those environments. Moreover, I can keep antiX a light, relatively straightforward system, or I can morph it into something else. I've done both over the past year or two, and recently I've simply been maintaining what I've done with each of them, and they are all humming along as smoothly as can be. The fact that Eriefisher can morph antiX into a nice XFCE based system and John (ou812) can morph antiX into IceWM, as he's done for us, and then Openbox or LXDE, speaks well for our existing tools and infrastructure.

I am looking for more great days ahead and the next release to take us to the next level with what we can do with the release, yet keep the basics light and simple. I like the combination of light at the core, yet extensible. I believe we do it as well or better than any other project at the present time.

Great post masinick, and i heartily agree..... antiX M8 is"The Best!"...... __{{emoticon}}__

Just recently i have tried a LOT of different distros, some out of curiosity, others out of the challenge (ie: Arch!) but most of them i tried with the main purpose of comparison to antiX.

I tried several flavours of Arch, Zenwalk, Mint, several Puppy versions, and although they all had their strengths & weaknesses, None of them had it all, or even came close....... antiX does have it all, or it comes very very close.

Also, what was a surprise was that both the Zenwalk (version 6) and the Arch installs, were actually slower and more sluggish than antiX. Zenwalk used to be really fast, and quite a light distro, but not any more it seems. It's fast going the way of Xubuntu, which is a shame because it does look really good., and it's very slick.

Arch..... well, what can i say? Arch is great, if you have so much spare time that you don't mind wasting an afternoon to get you to the same place a Debian Netinstall will get you in 20 minutes or so!! ..... AND, the Deb Netinstall will give you just as much speed & responsiveness as Arch will. So, for me, although i find Arch interesting (although i'm not really quite sure WHY i find it interesting) it's just TOO much work with very little results.

Linux Mint 7 (RC1) - Well, being a big fan of Mint i like to give the new versions a look, see what's different & how they fare etc. Mint 7 is every bit as good as the previous releases, and for those that want a Gnome based distro that gives you everything out of the box, it's a good choice. The Mint tools are great, and the whole thing just works really well. Also, oddly enough, i have found (in previous releases also) that Linux Mint (with Gnome) is extremely fast for a Gnome distro. It gives antiX a run for it's money for sure, and with all the extra bloat that it carried i'm not sure why this is.

As you can tell, i like Mint.... But it's still not antiX! __{{emoticon}}__

Oh, and i also installed the XFCE version of Sidux. I really like Sidux..... it looks great, it's fast, & of course it's Debian. __{{emoticon}}__ But the whole smxi script thing just puts me off completely. Far too much work, even though the scripts are fantastic. When i finally got around to finishing my Sidux dist-upgrade (using smxi) it looked ugly (ie: all the fancy sidux artwork had vanished) and it also ran like a dog!! It was awful, but that was more probably down to something that i did wrong than anything else. Still didn't compare to antiX though. __{{emoticon}}__

Also tried several smaller distros (Slitaz, Austrumi, BoxPup etc) and they're all really nice, especially Austrumi, which is based on Slackware and looks fantastic! I'd recommend people check out both Austrumi and Slitaz....... they're incredibly small (30mb for Slitaz) but they are so full featured...... quite amazing!!

Anyway, getting to the main reason for this post..... (At last!)...... I find that however many distros i try, and however many times i may change distros or hop over to something else for a while...... i always end up coming back to antiX. It's fast, installs in Minutes (Not hours), is very flexible, has great forums where the people are very active. It also works on just about any box you put it on.
(PII's & PIII's with very little RAM, will work very well with antiX.) It's also incredibly stable, even using the testing repos!

So yeah, after all that time trying other distros and messing about with drive partitions & installs that get borked etc, i still come back to antiX. Sometimes you have to make these journeys i guess, in order to fully see what you already have available in antiX! __{{emoticon}}__

DJiNN

Great post, DJiNN! About the only thing where we've had different experiences is with sidux - it has been awesome (and fast) for me. I, like you, enjoy experimenting. I keep sidux, antiX, and SimplyMEPIS as my"always keep 'em" distros, but I rotate around on some of the other distros. What I love about antiX so much on my installed systems are its speed and flexibility. Where I REALLY love antiX is when I am out and about. I often bring a CD with me if I am using a work computer, and if off work site, maybe at a food place that has Internet access (many do these days), I can boot up antiX live, jump into ceni, and select a wireless access point and in a couple of minutes I am online. PCLinuxOS and SimplyMEPIS do this well, too, as does Mandriva, but I can get antiX running, even loading fully into RAM, in about 3 minutes, take about another minute to get wireless up, and in under 5 minutes I am fully networked - takes closer to ten minutes with most other live CDs. If I bring my own Lenovo laptop, which has antiX on it already, I am on the air in about 1 - 1 1/2 minutes at the max!

Ah! You guys are nothing but a bunch of antiX fan-boys!!!....................Like me.

Come on guys tells us how you really feel!

eriefisher wrote:Ah! You guys are nothing but a bunch of antiX fan-boys!!!....................Like me.

Come on guys tells us how you really feel!

Ayup, dat be me! __{{emoticon}}__

I have my reasons, though, as I am sure all of us do. Mine include stability, flexibility, speed, and also this great community! __{{emoticon}}__

Now how do you really feel, Eriefisher? __{{emoticon}}__

I'm not a tester or fanboy. Just a Joe Blow user. I dualboot AntiX 8 and Linux Mint 7 Fluxbox RC1 on my Ibm T23 Laptop. You could equate me as one of the masses that are self teaching themselves about Linux and how it operates. I like it that Antix just friggin works! Even when I try to bork it by my changes it is very forgiving. Not Like lets say, a Mandriva install at all. I run Lenny instead of Sidux.

Comparing AntiX next to Mint on the same Laptop, I can say that speed is not noticeably different. (uneducated observation, so don't bite me)

AntiX has Debian Repos. Mint has Ubuntus. I have never delved into whether there is more choice or better packages from either distro.

All I can say is that I have been a Antix user for a few months now and

I have AntiX 7.5 and 8 installed on 2 different Laptops
I changed Grubs Boot screen to Antix because I like it better than Mints. (I installed Mint 2nd after Antix)
I like it that my SLIM splash screen has my personalized splash screen.
I find myself mostly booting into Antix than I do booting into Mint. I find I just boot into Mint to check on Update Manager more than anything else. If I want Fluxbox menu I can stay in Anti. I have more choices like themes,chat clients,etc....
Sakasas Wallpaper is the Bomb and is Better than Mints Wallpaper IMO.
The forum here is nicer than Mints.( I'm a member there but I hardly post there (personal reasons))
So I guess I sound like a fan boy but I like good tools. So it is what it is.

rokytnji wrote: AntiX has Debian Repos. Mint has Ubuntus. I have never delved into whether there is more choice or better packages from either distro.

Ubuntu usually pulls sources from Debian sid and then rebuilds them against stable libraries. Although this give Ubuntu the latest and greatest it by no means makes it stable. The packages in sid are there for a reason. Some may take a long time to to move into testing and then stable, some may never move at all.

If you are willing to pay the price, sid can be great. Just be prepared for a few bumps in the road. Even with it's hiccups I would take sid over any *buntu any time.

Oh ya, I forgot..........ANTIX IS GREAT!!!!!!!(ok that's my fan-boy stuff)

masinick wrote:Now how do you really feel, Eriefisher? __{{emoticon}}__

At the moment, a little sleepy. __{{emoticon}}__

antiX? Never heard of it. Is it a new laxative? heartburn medication?

Actually, to make a long story short, I have been distro hopping for a few years now. It started after I installed Suse Personal 9.0 on my desktop (I actually bought at a bookstore - Borders), but couldn't get the sound card (probably because I didn't turn off the on-board sound card in the bios) or wireless network card (probably needed ndiswrapper) to work. The next distro I tried was vector linux soho (version ?) - it had just been posted at distrowatch. It worked wonderfully until I did an update. Then my neighbor found out I was dabbling in Linux, he gave me some ubuntu (5.04?) discs to try out. I liked them, but didn't love them; they just made me want to try other distros.

Eventually I stumbled upon an early version of antix. I was impressed by the choice of applications, but was not thrilled about fluxbox. I also felt antix was incomplete. After trying a few lightweight distros, I reinstalled antix since it was the most impressive. So I gradually started integrating what I felt were the best features of the other distros I had tried into antix. Anti and the community dug my ideas (although some weren't thrilled with the logout and control center windows at the time) and so anti was kind enough to incorporate some of those ideas in subsequent releases.

We are currently working on 8.1 and I am working on two personal versions: An"lxde light" environment based on stable for my desktop (where I need a stable system) and an xfce version based on testing for my laptop. I plan releasing the lxde light version within the community, but the xfce version is erie's baby.

john

I'd love to see both of those babies, John! When I use sidux instead of antiX, about half the time I run XFCE instead of KDE, and other times I run fvwm-crystal. When it comes to distros, choice is one of the things I love about Linux and detest about proprietary software.

AntiX 8.0 is so far the only Linux I could install on an old Toshiba laptop. All other distros would fail for one reason or another. And I tried many including Knoppix, Debian and many, many others. It recognized my Atheros wireless card and connecting to my home router was a breeze. It even remembered my settings on reboot! WOOHOO! I'm hooked on AntiX! Thanks.

uplfosi wrote:AntiX 8.0 is so far the only Linux I could install on an old Toshiba laptop. All other distros would fail for one reason or another. And I tried many including Knoppix, Debian and many, many others. It recognized my Atheros wireless card and connecting to my home router was a breeze. It even remembered my settings on reboot! WOOHOO! I'm hooked on AntiX! Thanks.

Hey, that's what it is all about! Thanks for sharing with us uplfosi, and welcome to the community of successful antiX users!

I like antiX 8 a lot because it just works well for what I use it for on my older laptop. I just added a few apps and it just works. I like it because I can keep up-to-date (well in testing anyway __{{emoticon}}__ with the graphics apps I use. I'm still running M7 on my desktop; hopefully I'll install M8 there too soon.

I have been running Ubuntu on my desktop and Mint XFCE on my laptop for a while now. rokytnji was talking about antiX on another forum, so I tried the base cd, liked it and now am dual-booting the desktop. I had a bad image the first time-couldn't log in-and had to install the second image twice to get a working root account, because I couldn't figure out how to reset it with knoppix. Now its working nicely. I like fluxbox, so will stick with base for a while, until I decide what additions I'll make. I may install sidux since I have an unused partition and end up triple-booting.

Or you could run antix using sid repos. There's more than enough posts in the forums that could help you out.

john