Should antiX have its own entry on Distrowatch?

Give your reasons.

AntiX is far enough away from Mepis for real distinction and I believe it will stand proud on it's own merits.

My answer---YES!

I also answer yes.

It seems to me that Antix is sufficiently different from Mepis to warrant its own distro listing, however, I must admit that I have only tried Mepis on a livecd and did not spend much time with it. So, aside from the kernel (which can easily be changed to liquorix, Debian or sidux) what other Mepis vestiges is antix carrying?

I'll also ask another question: how much difference will being listed as a separate distro make?

I suppose it might increase traffic to Antix since Mepis won't come up as the default listing, However, I think they appeal to differences audiences so I'm not sure it will actually increase users. I hope it does.

i also answer yes. antix has it's policy and different views from mepis. and from what i can tell the most important part that came from mepis is the installer, as for the kernel i see that a lot of us are using liquorix. it is a good thing to post it on distrowatch because there are some distros out there that do the same thing as antix, worse in my opinion, and have more recognition. as a down side the traffic and questions about how to use it will increase a lot (second is a joke). also at the current moment antix is hosted on mepis. so how antix will be listed in ditrowatch?

First maybe that's some up to you, anti. How mature do you feel antiX is? It's light and it's flexible. It has some cool options under the hood that we as a community should bring to light, like BitJam's recent post about improving the boot menu.
How well configured do you feel it is? antiX is still basically MEPIS config wise? Its live-cd build process is basically from MEPIS? This subject is still over my head but if it can be explained in simple terms, it could be useful to hear about it.
GRUB2 is getting better all the time and sidux has set up their isos to boot fromiso with it. antiX isos don't boot in certain situations as we sometimes hear about. The sidux devs, as inflexible as they may be, are very active with their development. Should antiX iso be built based on sidux's way, but with Debian testing?

antiX's been 'our' distro (from anyone that wants to jump in the community). Distrowatch will make it an 'official' distro, as perceived by the world. It will need to improve its documentation.
antix.mepis.org, with its wiki style, is quite adequate. First (roll up the sleeves) we should perhaps bring the FAQs to wiki pages. Every now and then I figure something to be improved or added but no way to keep asking SB for that and also in a wiki the sections could be separated in pages. Everyone could easily contribute. For most of the up-to-date stuff having been added by me in that page just shows how far it is from what it could be with yours, eriefisher's, Lee/oldhoghead's, Harry/roky's, ICE-M's, John/OU812's, Pedro's and many others' (some of whom are technically savvy) contributions.
Then trim the edges and have a site organized and with valuable content.

My answer is yes.

Yes.

I am not a long time Linux user, but am the type of person that has to tinker with things to understand how they work. Though most distros are relatively easy to put to use once you've adjusted to using Linux, Anitx is by far the most feature rich and flexible light-weight distro I have used. Hands down. I bet if we all posted screenshots the only similarity would probably be that most of us have one of Sakasa's wallpapers. The fact that it makes an old computer come back to life is great, but what it does on an even semi-modern PC just blows my mind. I dual boot for the wife because the site that she likes to play flash on doesn't quite get along with Linux, but my P4 512MB Dell with Antix smokes all the other computers that my family members use. Most have at least 2GB RAM and dual-cores or better, but Vista and W7 just can't keep pace. Whenever I have to get them operational again, which is quite often, I drop off an Antix LiveCD. I harbor no ill will against Microsoft or it's users, but just feel if there is something better, for free no less, you should give it a whirl. I didn't used to do this with Xubuntu, Unity, Puppy, Fedora, or any of the many other LiveCD's I have on my desk (over 30 at last count). Just Antix. I liked Linux well enough before, but Antix put me on the soapbox.

Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and Lubuntu are respins of Ubuntu. Each has their own Distrowatch listing. MintFluxbox, MintLXDE, etc. are respins of Mint, but they do not have their own listings. In our case, we are a respin of MEPIS. However, unlike the previously mentioned respins, we don't necessarily follow the same release cycle as MEPIS. Also, as has been previously mentioned, we are moving further away from MEPIS with each release. Therefore, I believe it is time for antiX to have its own entry.

john

Voted Yes. Though I like being non mainstream (rebel without a cause __{{emoticon}}__ ).

NimbleX has its own listing as well as Zenwalk and Absolute Linux. They are based on Slackware and 2 of those Distros are hand built by one person.

Though we use the Mepis Kernel and installer. We also use Debian Squeeze repos.

I know we are a small group. So be careful what you wish for. You might just get it. __{{emoticon}}__

Testing Antix core is gonna be on hold for me for a while.

Gonna be gone for a while guys. I will take my EEEPC to Arizona. Have dire family problems for the next month. Will have to find a wifi spot like a library or something to check in with you guys. So if ya don't hear from me. You'll know why.

Happy Trails, Rok

Rok, safe journey.

I vote yes although I recall that it was in checking out Mepis that I was introduced to antiX. antiX uses different gui's, default applications, and has many custom tools. It aligned more towards debian than mepis, with the exception of the kernel. Many other projects are listed separately from their base systems. The ubuntu redux distro's alone make the mind spin. we certainly have a relatively vocal group of proponents and several third party reviews.

When did the name change from antiXMEPIS to antiXLinux?

eriefisher wrote:AntiX is far enough away from Mepis for real distinction and I believe it will stand proud on it's own merits.

My answer---YES!

I agree with eriefisher. Though we certainly have some ties with MEPIS, including the MEPIS Lovers Forum and the MEPIS kernel, as well as the MEPIS installer, even from the beginning, antiX has had some autonomy, but increasingly, antiX, while not 100% independent of MEPIS, it releases independently of MEPIS, we have additional support here, and we offer a variety of options that in many ways make it a unique distribution.

I don't want to totally distance ourselves from MEPIS unless that ends up being a direction that anti chooses to take, yet I would like to see our distribution have the right to announce itself to the DistroWatch community without having to go indirectly through MEPIS channels, and I do not want to see public test releases ignored on DistroWatch because we can't announce them.

I love both the antiX and MEPIS communities, but personally I recognize them as related but independent ventures, just as MEPIS is independent of its upstream source, Debian.

From my in some sense sparse knowledge about antiX, this is what I think: as much as the MEPIS tools and configuration may have been a base to create a friendly, Debian based light distro they mostly don't fit with antiX well now.
If antiX would be a lighter MEPIS, using the same repos as MEPIS, then the tools would mainly need to be tweaked to be rid of the KDE relationship.
As it is now the system just can't stand the MEPIS configuration which just creates drawbacks to a Debian testing system. Also I believe Debian is getting much friendlier (as Linux itself also matures). I'm not deep into the details but I've heard Debian's installer is being worked on and even Crunchbang Linux is now adopting it.
Recently I've tested the 'alpha' version of antiX-core, which I have here very well set up with JWM in a 1.1 GB partition. Besides it being a live-cd and installing very quickly because it just copies files, I felt, in case it's to be installed, the Debian netinstall much more worth (I made a similar JWM installation in VirtualBox to try to 'debug' some things I had found in antiX-core).
I didn't dive into the live-cd scripts issues but while they create relatively small issues compared to the benefits of of a live full system, they're not worth the hassle when compared to the Debian netinstall, which installs an up-to-date and properly configured system, when it comes to a minimal installation.

So, all-in-all, the mepislovers community is great and a part of what antiX is now but if it were to change then it would be on top of another community (even if it included the mepislovers one still) so no need to worry beforehand about that.
For antix to stand as a tweaked, Debian based, light o.s. it needs people that have knowledge to create some scripts or tweak some apps specifically for it. That maybe would depend on how much interest is it there to still work on these light window managers.

One example are the menus. The current system in antiX has a simple output but is rather weak, leaving some things out. The best menu system for light window managers I've found is menumaker, but it's been some years that it isn't updated and started to get some deprecation warnings (still works, though). The only improvement I see that it would need would be to separate the xlock and xscreensaver modes from other utilities. It's a Python program that would need to be made sure it's updated for current Debian too.

Also nowadays the MEPIS tools may be a bit overkill and if there were simpler versions they could be useful. I know Absolute has a control panel but don't know if something could be borrowed from them.

YES! YES! HELL YES! antiX Linux should have its own entry on Distrowatch. Kubuntu and Xubuntu are little more than Ubuntu with a different desktop environment, yet they have their own entries on Distrowatch, so why not antiX Linux?

antiX Linux differs from parent distro MEPIS by more than just the desktop environment. antiX Linux is substantially lighter and will run on many computers (like the one I'm using right now) that are too old and underpowered for the full MEPIS.

This distro is too obscure and deserves some recognition. If antiX Linux had its own entry on Distrowatch, it would attract far more attention and users. More users means more developers and ideas for making antiX Linux even better. This is the gold standard of distros. No other distro is this lightweight, has such a superior repository, AND is user-friendly.

anticapitalista, I still cannot understand what's stopping you from applying for a Distrowatch listing. What are you waiting for? Puppy Linux is #10 even with the handicap of having a weak repository. Arch and Debian are in the top ten even with the handicap of being user-unfriendly. The top three (Ubuntu, Fedora, and Mint) have the handicap of being heavy.

Voted yes, it is seeming very one sided. I feel that antix is great, it has a strong enough leverage point away from mepis to start on its very own path. For new people looking for an alternative to whatever OS they have, would it not be great to come across antiX? I would have not known about antiX myself if eriefisher had not introduced it to my familly and I. Others should also have the opertunity to be able to find it easily, able to have this same type of experience. I have grown to like antiX greatly, people I have talked to love it and find it should be more accessible. To me it is obvious that it needs its own part of the spotlight. I believe it is time to release this lean and mean machine!