Ey, the lightweight 'heavyweight' antiX released version 26 a few weeks back with some nice ease of use improvements and a lot of options available as standard. You can see the release notes on their website, where it lists the included five init systems, the four window managers, and all the pre-installed apps of the 'Full' version. The alternative init systems and use of window managers consume a lot less system resources than most other distros (using systemd and a full desktop), which is why it is such a solid choice for older hardware (or newer stuff if you don't want the system 'in the way'). They also continue to support 32-bit ISOs on a Debian 13/Trixie base, one of the very few distros doing so. More rambling below...
*I'm not covering every new thing or interesting feature, just stuff that has stood out to me personally ;)
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My Install Base
I now have antiX 26 installed on two of my older laptops; the Toshiba Satellite C660 from 2010, and the HP Pavillion 15-n008tx from 2014-ish. The default (and most robust) setup is the Full version with runit + IceWM, so that's what I have been using along with the more modern 6.6 kernel (this is the standard setup it will automatically boot into, no configuring required outside of hardware issues)
- Toshiba Satellite: This has a core 2 duo and has lived on antiX for a few years already, benefiting from the low-resource setup. It previously had antiX 23.2 with sysVinit which was responsive and worked well. I mainly use this for website related text editing, for which it is more than capable. It obviously struggles with modern browsers, so I use the included Links browser when I don't need to read a js heavy site. Generally uses 250-350MB of RAM idle and boots in about 30-40 seconds
- HP Pavillion: This is my main laptop and has a fourth gen core i5 mobile. I have had Mint Cinnamon and XFCE on this in the past, and while those do work fine, they feel sluggish compared to antiX. Over the past few months I went from antiX 23.2 to Mint XFCE and now to antiX 26, which really highlighted the speed/performance difference. I use this laptop for general web browsing, video playback, and older games. Generally uses 300MB-400MB of RAM idle and boots in about 10-15 seconds.
Ease of Use
There's been some solid improvements with antiX 26, adding to useful tools already present;
Menu Labelling Change: Applications in the menu are now labelled with their function AND name. So I am writing this post in 'Text Editor ("Geany")' for example. This is a little touch that improves the level of relevent menu information without using the resources and visual space of context pop-ups or a larger static app menu. I also prefer this setup because it doesn't assume you know the name of every single app ever made, while also allowing you to know the true app names and expect the features of them that you are familiar with. The latter is something that annoys me with GNOME inspired desktops, where it is harder to find true app names for downloading elsewhere.
Control Centre Additions: Control Centre is antiX's graphical settings/configuration manager. There have been some additions and improvements made, with certain apps moved from the menu into this interface now. Specifically I noticed ARandR ('Set Screen Resolution (ARandR)' in the Session menu) and Synaptic (the second 'Manage Packages' button in the Software menu) have made the move since antiX 23.2, but there may be more. Even though I was a little annoyed at first (ma muscle memory) this makes the menu less busy with stuff that isn't often used, and I think adds a more beginner friendly barrier to tools that can easily screw with the system. Each entry in the Control Centre menus has an appropriately descriptive context pop-out when you hover over them though. It's worth going through and reading them all at least once to get to know what tools are available and what may have moved from previous versions (if you are coming from an older antiX). And at the end of the day you can get to an app you know quicker with the 'Run...' app menu option, or add it to your 'Personal' submenu with the editor there.
Updater + Software Installer: These are low resource graphical software managers. 'Updater' is essentially a 'sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade' button, which is nice to have standard in a lightweight distro (absent from base Xfce, LXQt, MATE). 'Software Manager' is like a more beginner friendly Synaptic, drops you into 'Popular Applications' but also allows searching all repos (Repo Management is a separate button in the Control Centre though). I think these are simple to use, and provide a soft barrier preventing a beginner from damaging the system, while also not sitting in the background using resources like PackageKit software managers.
Wingrid: Not new or altered in any way (afaik), but a custom script antiX makes to tile windows. So Alt+Ctrl+ 1-8 on the number row will tile the current window in a specific grid location, 9 will fullscreen, 0 will close. Their FAQ has pictures that demonstrate this, it is a good alternative to baked in tiling/snapping of other desktop environments.
Themes: Also not new or altered afaik, but in the IceWM menu there is the option to change themes on the fly without needing to open the IceWM Control Centre. I frequently plug this laptop into a monitor, and most themes come in different sizes (Small-Med-Large-Huge), so I can quickly open the Menu>Settings>Themes and choose the 'Huge' variant of my current theme for better readibility. If anything is busted while changing themes or background (sometimes the conky system monitor will not adjust properly), you can just hit the Menu>Logout and click Restart Session.
Options
The Full install of antiX provides a lot of options and interesting features as standard;
The Inits: This isn't something I normally interact with, I have just always used the default with antiX which was sysVinit and is now runit. Init system initialises the system... and manages/supervises while it is running. antiX 26 is the first to offer the choice of five 'alternative' inits, as in alternative to the most popular; systemd. As I mentioned earlier, these inits all run leaner on resources than systemd, which is helpful for older hardware, and snappier performance on newer stuff. The antiX devs do a lot of work repackaging and handling repositories so that essential software will work without systemd (which Debian defaults with). Although there is software that relies on systemd which will not be able to function under antiX, including all Flatpaks and Snaps, and I think some desktops like GNOME and KDE (at the very least there would be problems). Not having heavy DEs and Flatpaks/Snaps fits with antiX's low resource goal anyway, and using system packages will take a lot less storage space than Flatpaks of the same thing. You can experiment with these other and learn a bit more about how Linux works, or you can just use the default runit and remove the rest if wanted.
The Window Managers: I have only been talking about IceWM as it's what I use. It is styled to look like a regular desktop and be familiar to any computer user, while being far lighter/faster than a traditional desktop. antiX 26 also offers and styles the even lighter window managers fluxbox and jwm, along with the tiling window manager herbsluftwm (requires setup and configuration to personal preference). You are able to switch between them from the login screen and try them all out if desired.
Configuration: There are a few graphical configuration tools throughout antiX (IceWM Control Centre, Personal Menu Editor) but some of the configuration options in the Control Centre will simply open the relevant config text files and allow you to edit them directly. I've learned a lot more about config stuff since using antiX, I feel it allows you to see how things work a bit clearer. It isn't always intuitive, but there is a really solid video guide by StaempunkTV embedded on the antiX homepage that covers just about everything. It's two hours long, but labelled with chapters so it's useful to come back to and check how to change a specific thing.
Installation: antiX provides tools and options for a variety of install methods. Most prominent is their live USB persistence, which allows you to install to an external USB stick/drive that can be plugged into any computer. The system will run in RAM and use storage from the USB stick, so initial boot and shutdown takes a bit longer (moving GBs into or out of RAM). I have messed around with this before and it still functions as a standard antiX ISO too, allowing regular installs to be made. This can be used to have a portable system set up how you like on a keyring, it's also good for devices with very limited storage space (USB sticks are a lot cheaper than harddrives). There's also 'frugal' harddisk installs which put the essential system stuff on an internal disk, but use storage from a USB (kind of in-between live and traditional installs).
Snapshots/Remasters: Another key feature is their snapshot and remaster tools. Snapshot takes an image of the system as-is which can be used as a backup or written out into a Live USB. So essentially you can set up/theme your system exactly how you like it and burn it onto an installable ISO, allowing it to be installed on other devices without doing all the configuration again. Remastering takes that a bit further by creating a kind of personal development environment. Using a live antiX usb/iso (maybe a snapshot you made) you can make changes like adding/subtracting features and configs, then write them back onto the usb/iso, and if something breaks you can reboot and rollback to the previous version. This is how 'respins' are made; using antiX as a base for customizing your own personal distro that can be shared with others if desired. These tools have graphical interfaces and allow for much easier and safer experimentation because you can reinstall a working version if something breaks.
Troubleshooting & Bugs
*these may already be fixed, it's just what was around when I installed a couple weeks ago.*
antiX has a well frequented, publicly accessible forum that I often scroll through to pick up on potential problems and fixes. A few issues I read about or experienced with antiX 26 were;
- Installer stuck on 93-7% - read in forum that this was/is apparently occuring if you make changes to the desktop and check the box 'Save live desktop changes' (or whatever it actually says). The solution is to just not check that box and make desktop changes after install, or update package repos and upgrade the installer before installing.
- Graphical ufw using resources - There is a graphical on/off button for ufw (uncomplicated firewall) in the antiX Control Centre. I read in the forum that some people had a bug where turning it on this way was using way more resources than it should. The simple workaround (if not already fixed) was just turning it on in a terminal (sudo ufw enable).
- Battery Life - not really a bug, just something I noticed. antiX comes with 'tlp' installed, which is a simple automatic battery optimizer package for laptops. It does not have 'tlp-rdw' installed though, which makes tlp more effective (rdw = Radio Device Wizard, it powers down wireless devices when they aren't being used). I've used this on other laptops and it helps with battery life a decent amount.
- Screen Tearing - this one is hard as solutions can be device specific. antiX does not use a compositor by default, and may have screen tearing without any configuring done (I think it's more common on laptops too). You can maybe direct your GPU (if you have one and it supports this) to enable v-sync or a 'tear-free' mode to fix this, or install and use a compositor. I tried this AMD X11 config file fix from the Debian wiki on my HP laptop, and it just broke X so I had to delete it via command line :( (here's a potential solution for NVIDIA). I gave up on those options and installed/enabled a compositor instead after seeing this antiX forum thread saying the resource/power use was negligible. This required the following:
- Repo/Mirror Reliability - This won't effect everyone, but repositories for linux distros 'mirror' the one(s) hosted by the distro itself. Depending on where you are in the world, and the popularity of the distro you are using, local mirrors can be out-of-date or unreliable. This means that it may take longer to obtain updates to software, which can be a concern for security in certain use cases and software (browsers, kernels). It may be advantageous to switch to a mirror hosted in a larger population center, or the main distro repo, if you notice that software isn't getting updated (like if you get an update on a different computer but not this one, or you follow the software's news/announcements). To do this on antiX go to; Control Center>Software>Repo Manager>antiX repos, and pick a location. You may find information regarding reliable repos close to you on the antiX forum, or make an educated guess (think popular server hubs or capital cities). This was a problem for me and I switched to the LA antiX/MX repo, as it is known to be reliable. Pretty sure antiX's main repo is in Greece btw.
- Kernel Updates - This has been big news recently among all linux distros with multiple major exploits being identified and patched. antiX does not automtically update it's included kernels, which may be problematic for some use cases as you have to personally keep up with manual updates. They build a customized kernel on top of Debian's, so updates can lag behind slightly also. Some solutions on a traditionally installed system are as follows:
1. installing the 'picom' compositor from software manager
2. adding a new line reading 'picom -b' to the icewm startup file (/home/user/.icewm/startup or 'manually edit' from IceWM Control Centre)
3. creating a picom config file (/home/user/.config/picom/picom.conf) and adding the following three lines, without brackets: (backend = "glx") (dithered-present = false;) (vsync = true;).
Those steps allow the picom compositor to start at login and run in the background, and fixed screen tearing for my HP laptop. There is a sample picom.conf file at (usr/share/doc/picom/examples/picom.sample.conf) that can be copied and pasted, but will require commenting out any other lines (# before them), otherwise just entering those three lines should work.
1. keep up with antiX news/updates yourself and install updated kernels when available. These are available in the software installer under the 'Kernels' tab, and require a reboot + choosing the updated kernel in the grub menu upon startup (should load automatically on subsequent boots). *Make sure* that you have a reliable/up-to-date repo for this (as explained in the previous list item)
2. install the standard Debian 'fallback' kernel (same method as antiX kernel above, in software centre), or some other auto-updating kernel like liquorix, per their install instructions.
this forum post is a good termianl-based guide and has more detailed info regarding 'live' install updates (they require a 'remaster' and use of 'live-kernel-updater').
Anyway, that's all that comes to mind for now. I obviously really like antiX, but it's not for everyone or every use case. I just wanted to share some of the stuff that really drew me to it. Also worth noting; antiX is developed in a co-op with MX Linux and shares many of the standout tools like the live USB stuff. If those features sound interesting but the something puts you off about antiX (non-auto kernel updates, window managers vs traditional desktops, etc.) then MX may we worth looking into. They offer Xfce and Fluxbox versions with sysVinit (or systemd) that are still relatively light-middleweight, and also a KDE version with a 'HWE' kernel for newer hardware compatability.
Thanks for reading!