Some special features of antiX

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Some special features of antiX25

AntiX is an unusual distro. Even with just a glimpse at the live iso, you will see some things that are not found elsewhere.

Here is a brief look at the features that impress me

Icons on the taskbar

  • antiX Updater … auto or manual
  • Software Installer … same as in MX
  • Unplug Removable Device
  • File Manager … zzzFM
  • Browser … Firefox
  • Toolbar Icon Manager
  • IceWM Window Manager
  • 3 workspaces.

Apps in the Menus

  • CherryTree … note taker
  • Geany … text editor and light IDE
  • Meld … GUI diff compares fils or folders
  • mpv Media Player
  • Alternatives Configurator
  • Deb install
  • Grsync … GUI rsync
  • Mountbox … mounts filesystems
  • Repo Manager

Packages

The following link contains a full list of all packages available in antiX25-bet
a1 and MX25-infinity

ndlist=mx&firstversions=0&secondversions=0&showall=yes#allpackages

antiX Control Centre

You can do most system tasks with the Control Centre GUI. It is available in the man dropdown menu

Notable items on the ‘Maintenance’ submenu are

  • ISO Snapshot
  • System Backup
  • Boot Repair

The ISO Snapshot will make an .iso file of your live running system. It has 2 menu screens

followed by

and a final go ahead screen

On the ‘Network’ submenu there is an 'Adblock’item, which brings up the following

My /etc/hosts has 16084 lines … sites blocked
You go on to another screen

where you can choose what to block

Discussion

There are, of course other features. AntiX is tailored for older systems with fewer resources. It has 32 bit .iso’s. It has a small footprint. Hence, the Window Manager rather than a full DE. You can install any of the major DE’s if you wish.

The antX25beta1 version I am currently testing is a ‘full’ iso. On the main download site

there are ‘full’, ‘base’, ‘core’, and ‘net’ downloads available, in 64 and 32 bit. It does not support other architectures ( eg arm).

There is more to antiX than init systems. It is worth exploring, just to encounter different ways of doing things.

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@nevj :

Hi Neville, :waving_hand:

thank you very much for this great article you wrote. :heart:

In fact it´s of special interest to me as I´m looking for a (new?) daily driver after April 2027.
Until this point in time my present Linux Lite 6.2 system will be supported.
As Lite´s latest version 7.6 has raised its demands on RAM I am looking for a resource-friendlier distro.

Debian, MX LInux and Antix seem to be hot candidates.
Unlike MX Antix doesn´t seem to come with Xfce DE though. :confused:

Many greetings from Rosika :slightly_smiling_face:

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You can install Xfce from the repo.
I am going to try that and see if there are any traps. … a default antiX offers 10 different window managers as a choice on the login screen. I am not sure how Xfce would fit in with that … I want to see.

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Hi Neville, :waving_hand:

thanks a lot. But please don´t worry about that too much.

I already did some research on that very topic and it seems some additional utilities should be installed alongside the core components:

sudo apt install xserver-xorg xfce4 xfce4-goodies lightdm lightdm-gtk-greeter

LightDM as your default display manager should be chosen.
And after a reboot, you should see the LightDM login screen.
Select Xfce from the session options and you should be able to log in with your credentials.

But I believe I also read somewhere that running Xfce on Antix might not always be without problems. Unfortunately I cannot remember the exact source.
It´s often recommended to stick to the defaults.

Thanks again and many greetings from Rosika :slightly_smiling_face:

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