antiX-forum

No, not by bus, train, bicycle nor car, but from which distro or OS?

To start the ball rolling.

I developed antiX as I felt MEPIS was too heavy and Debian too 'difficult' to install and easily set up.
My 'roots' in linux began originally with a slax livecd, quickly followed by Ubuntu 4.10 and even quicker MEPIS 3 (pre release).
Since then, like most I guess, I distro hopped, but always felt comfortable with Debian or close-to-Debian derivatives, my favourite being for a very long time MEPIS 3.4.3.
Afterwards I tried and really enjoyed kanotix, Debian sid net-install and eventually sidux.

As you can see Debian based distros are what I really like. I have tried and find excellent distros ranging from Puppy, TinyMe, Absolute, Wolvix, DSL, BeatriX and others.

So, how did you get to antiX?

About 7 years ago I unsuccessfully tried to instal RHL 4 on a win95 box. Then about 3 years ago I installed suse personal edition 9.0 on a homemade box. It worked except for my wireless card and sound card (if I only knew about ndiswrapper and disabling onboard soundcards in the bios back then). So I googled a bit and luckily found distrowatch. The first distro on the screen was a brand new vector linux 4 soho edition. It worked wonderfully until I a dist-upgrade. Since then I've been distro hopping - mostly slackware-based distros (zenwalk, vector, wolvix, absolute, and goblinx) with a few fedora-based (blag and fox) and debian-based (*buntu, mint, etc) thrown in for good measure.

Then one day antix appeared on distrowatch. I liked it immediately, but it was missing too many components that made it comfortable to me and I wasn't able to do much about it at the time. As I gained more experience and confidence using linux, I began to understand exactly what I wanted in a distro and how to get it if it wasn't there ootb. So one day a new version of antix hit distrowatch and sometime later the first release of fluxbox mint hit distrowatch as well. I liked antix better, but mint fb was more comfortable to use. Next thing you know, I began porting some of my favorite ideas from mint fb to antix. Then tinyme goes 1.0 and next thing you know, I began porting some of my favorite ideas from tinyme to antix. For some reason the community liked it and now I'm chained to antix against my will. Please help.

john

My first dip into the Linus pool was with Knoppix version 3???. It was no installable but a lot of fun. Then I found Mepis 3.3.2. I installed it on an old Hp celeron 466 and it worked perfectly. I used this for quite some time and everything was great. Then came Ubuntu.

I first used Ubuntu hoary then moved to dapper where my personal hate for gnome peaked. I then switched to Kubuntu and was pretty happy there. I found Dapper to be the best *buntu release ever. I stayed with Kubuntu right up until after feisty was released. After another net upgrade, rebooting and nothing working again I had it. I was really getting tired of Ubuntu's methods and their lack of focus to anything other than gnome. Time to look again.

I tried, breifly, several distros(suse,mandriva.xandros,puppy and more) but nothing really fit. While reading an article one day the author mentioned the release of Mepis pre7.0. I d/l it and booted. Everything looked real familiar. Nice clean desktop and no *buntu. After installing I had a fairly long list of issues so I hit the forums. Once on the new forums I saw some familiar names and the activity I remembered. I managed to get most of my issues ironed out but during all of this I saw mention of this thing called Antix. What was this?

I followed the links, d/l'ed the iso booted...........PERFECT! Everything worked and perfectly. I had to brush up on my Fluxbox skills but that did not take too long, I had played with it on and off in the past. When 7 was released I now had a solid Debian base to work with and play. What I really liked was the option to get just a base iso, great for limited bandwidth and something you can customize the hell out of.

I now sit at version 7.5 and I guarantee you my antix looks nothing like yours but that is exactly what I wanted, Something I can make mine and the OS didn't get in the way.

Thanks!

I started about 3 or 4 years ago with a system I built. It was one of those barebones systems you can purchase off of Tigerdirect. I didn't want to buy Windows for it so I threw on Ubuntu, I think Breezy. I used Ubuntu up until Fiesty I think and then I found Mepis on distrowatch. I installed Mepis 6.5 and that was my main distro for awhile until 7 came out and then I used that. I have tried every distro under the sun and none seemed to just work like Mepis does. From looking around on the MepisLovers forum I discovered antiX and became very impressed with how functional a lightweight distro could be. I now toggle between three distros mainly, Mepis 7 (waiting for 8 to be finalized), antiX 7.5, and Arch. I find antiX to be the easiest to install, configure, and customize. Also the best OOTB.

as for me... about 10 years ago, i tried some server editions of linux , hated them. half a year ago, i was surfing on softpedia and i saw an article about ubuntu beating windows and mac os at security. i didn't knew at first that ubuntu was linux . it taken me about a week to research about how to install it, what was a distro, how to dual boot. i installed ubuntu, very excited the first week, playing with beryl and ubuntu satanic edition themes. but i didn't like it because it was to bloated. i searched on google for light distro and on one article a guy said that mepis is the best. i wanted to get mepis but in the same time antix 7 was out on softpedia. it said in the article that antix was a mepis distro, i liked the screenshots ALOT and the political side of anti. i installed it and after i couldn't get pppoe.conf and the ntfs partitions to work i joined the forum and here i am. since then, i'm all antix, no windows. i had looked at other distros but i still find antix the best (kiss-up). hope i didn't bored you peace!

Could I be the oldest on this train and the longest in my use of Linux software?

My UNIX software experience goes back to 1982, where I first used UNIX minicomputer and desktop computer systems intended to be used in departmental computing to offload heavily worked mainframes. We were also looking at PCs and DOS. I personally found the PCs to be interesting in terms of feel and responsiveness, but greatly lacking in features and performance. The UNIX systems of the time lacked usability but had great flexibility to make up for it, so I assumed that in time, the usability issues would be addressed. They were, sort of, but not well by the UNIX community. It was the upstart Linux in the nineties that began to change the tide.

I actually got a brief look at a Digital PDP 11/45 computer running UNIX back in a lab at Michigan Tech around 1976-77, but did not really get to use it with any depth or productivity, nor did I write any programs for it at that time. Just after that, though, I did get into the PDP-8 to write assembly language programs, and shortly thereafter, the Heathkit H8 and H11 microcomputer kits. It was the Heathkits that turned me on to microcomputers, which later spawned the PC generation, but this was BEFORE that time!

My Linux experience began in 1995, shortly after I joined the Digital UNIX software engineering organization in Nashua, NH. About ten years earlier, I had met Jon Hall, literally in the hall of the same building in Merrimack, NH where I work today (for another company, a large financial services company). In 1995, Jon sent out a note to the Digital UNIX Engineering mailing list that he had a bunch of Debian Linux CDs that he was giving away. A bunch of us went to Jon's office, with tip-toe steps around the papers that littered his floor. True to his word, Jon handed out a bunch of CDs that were mislabeled or something, but were usable.

I actually got my start by purchasing a book by Volkerding, Johnson, and Reichard about Linux installation and configuration, entitled, "Linux Configuration and Installation". Written in 1995, I purchased the book some time around November, and I got my first home PC that same month for the specific purpose of running Linux on it.

I used that box mostly as a terminal server, over modem, to access my UNIX workstation and production servers in Nashua. Often, though, I would copy the files I was working with to the local PC, edit them, and when done, copy them back to the UNIX server.

In 1999 I finally got a broadband Internet connection, and I put Caldera Open Linux eDesktop 2.4 on it with only a 6.4 GB hard drive on a Cybermax laptop. That started me on an accelerated path, but I still did not have enough space to do as much as I wanted, plus I had started graduate school and the school used Outlook Express to connect to the online school, plus a lot of Word, Powerpoint, Excel, and MS Project work.

Once that was over in 2001, I got a Compaq 5000 desktop PC, bought an extra disk and extra memory, and put around seven different Linux images on it along with Windows ME, and later removed Windows ME altogether. That year, I started writing often and enthusiastically about my positive Linux experiences, which by then included Mandrake, Red Hat, SUSE, and Debian, along with Slackware and Caldera. I ended up getting a freelance writing contract with Ziff Davis Media for their Extreme Tech site, and they sent me a Dell Dimension 4100 desktop, which I still have today, where I have tested literally hundreds of Linux images.

Today, I use many distributions, but all but a few of my favorites are Debian based, and all of my top five favorites are definitely Debian based. I use sidux, SimplyMEPIS, and antiX more than anything else today, and I have multiple instances of them on what has grown to five home systems.

I got into computing in general, from music. I was playing in a band that played music that I hated but I needed the money. We started coming into some real cash after a while and I blew all mine on the new sampler/sequencing toys that were just starting to come out. The brands of choice for me were Commodore and Ensoniq. I was a Transoniq Hacker, heh,heh. I was syncing everything (midi sequencer) w/ midi time code (FSK, I think...) to one track on a Tascam reel to reel multitrack recorder, and recording audio w/ the Tascam. I laugh now when I see kids using Garage Band or Acid and seeing how easy it has become.

I bought my wife a laptop; she is a writer and I thought she would use it but she loved the gesture but not the hardware. So I started tinkering w/ it. I used Windows 95/98 and started getting Certs for A+ and Network+ and realized there was another great O.S. out there that most folks were overlooking. I installed OpenLinux eDesktop 2.4.

For a while, I was satisfied...

So, distro hopping like a kid in a creek (rock hopping), I went through Red Hat, Suse, and others until a Google search landed me on Warren's web site. He was living in West Va. (hey, neighbor!) so I thought that I would try it. I downloaded an .iso of one of his first offerings and have been using SimplyMepis ever since.

SimplyMepis started to grow up a little to where it wouldn't fit on some of the older hardware that I was coming across, so when Anti started tinkering, I kept one eye on him, heh, heh. My good eye.

As we say in the south, I want to thank all ya'll for your efforts here. I can't wait to tune in and see what you are up to next.

The Tramp

Welcome, and glad to hear from you, PhantomTramp! Y'all come back now, heah?

Hey, maybe The Tramp can come up with a welcome tune for starting the desktop?

A few years ago PC Magazine ran a column on Marcel Gagné's Moving to Linux - with a custom Knoppix live cd. That was my intro to Linux, but since I couldn't figure out the network connection, one of my daughters and I just played with it off and on.
Later I tried to install suse and fedora core, but I couldn't get either to install; kernel panics are scary when you don't know what you're doing. LOL! Then we found Point & Click Linux! by Robin Miller at a local bookstore, and so we downloaded Mepis 3.3. Everything just worked for us, and so we've been using Mepis ever since. I started using antiX at 6.5, I think, when I inherited an old PII laptop and needed something lighter.

mariel77 wrote:A few years ago PC Magazine ran a column on Marcel Gagné's Moving to Linux - with a custom Knoppix live cd. That was my intro to Linux, but since I couldn't figure out the network connection, one of my daughters and I just played with it off and on.
Later I tried to install suse and fedora core, but I couldn't get either to install; kernel panics are scary when you don't know what you're doing. LOL! Then we found Point & Click Linux! by Robin Miller at a local bookstore, and so we downloaded Mepis 3.3. Everything just worked for us, and so we've been using Mepis ever since. I started using antiX at 6.5, I think, when I inherited an old PII laptop and needed something lighter.

SimplyMEPIS really has been a "Point & Click" experience, for the most part, hasn't it? The soon to be released version promises to be better than ever!

Speaking of that, the upcoming antiX version will also be better than ever, too. I've been involved in testing both SimplyMEPIS 8.0 Beta and the internal test versions of antiX M8.0 and I am extremely pleased with both of them! Glad you found antiX to complement the fine SimplyMEPIS!

Mariel, I remember you from the original Mepis forum. I didn't realize you started there about the same time as myself. It's been a fun ride.

@masinick: I'm glad you're testing the antiX 8 betas; everything always works pretty well for me, and I don't have many suggestions. You always have good suggestions and also good advice in these forums.

@ eriefisher: Yes, I remember that too, but you've always known more than I have; I really appreciate all your advice here and on Mepislovers.

mariel77 wrote:@masinick: I'm glad you're testing the antiX 8 betas; everything always works pretty well for me, and I don't have many suggestions. You always have good suggestions and also good advice in these forums.

@ eriefisher: Yes, I remember that too, but you've always known more than I have; I really appreciate all your advice here and on Mepislovers.

Thanks! I agree that eriefisher has a great deal of good advice, suggestions, and in the case of antiX, stuff that probably ends up as part of the distribution.

Great family of MEPIS Lovers around here, to be sure! Lots of other great contributors!

mariel77 wrote:@ eriefisher: Yes, I remember that too, but you've always known more than I have; I really appreciate all your advice here and on Mepislovers.

I think we have both done our fare share of learning. Don't sell yourself short mariel77, you do just fine.