Antix vs. MX – what’s the difference?

[Member scruffyeagle]

I really don’t understand this, so I’m exposing my ignorace. Could we please discuss the difference between Antix & MX?

What are the developments, advantages, & disadvantages of these two operating systems? What would the basis be, for picking one over the other? How stable &/or durable are they?

[Member sybok]

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Not quite sure if you already did; a good start is to read the descriptions of both systems:
1) antiX:
https://antixlinux.com/about/
2) MX-Linux:
https://mxlinux.org/
https://mxlinux.org/about-us/

and optional trying to install them in a virtual environment, testing and seeing/feeling the difference first-hand.
Also, one can search the forum/fora of both systems.
I did search antiX forum but due to the collaboration, MX Linux appears too often (some 120 pages of results) to find quickly whether this has been discussed already.
https://forum.mxlinux.org/viewtopic.php?p=619886&hilit=MX+versus+antiX#p619886

Init:
antiX: without systemd
MX-Linux: your choice, you can boot into systemd handled “session”.

Both dev. teams collaborate on some tools (e.g. remastering etc.), antiX-linux uses some packages packed by MX-Linux etc.
My guess/feeling is that antiX is more minimalistic (“lean and mean”) in its approach.

Stable/durable:
Depends on your choice – using antiX/MX Linux based on Debian stable/testing/unstable.
Durability: Similar to Debian; e.g. testing is essentially rolling release (though security fixes are sometimes slow when compared to (un)stable).

• This reply was modified 1 year, 4 months ago by sybok. Reason: Add stable/durable

[Forum Admin anticapitalista]

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Note the spelling.
MX has both letters capitalised whereas antiX only has the last letter.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 4 months ago by anticapitalista.

Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.

antiX with runit - leaner and meaner.

[Member marcelocripe]

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Hi scruffyeagle.

Your question is frequently asked by new members of the Telegram group “MX Linux & antiX Brasil”.
The other questions they usually ask in the Telegram group are:
-“will MX Linux and antiX Linux ever be a single distribution?”;
-“will MX Linux replace antiX?”;
-“which is better, antiX Linux or MX Linux?”

Sybok, I appreciate you sharing the MX Linux forum thread.

marcelocripe
(Original text in Brazilian Portuguese language)

– – – – –

Olá scruffyeagle.

A sua pergunta é frequentemente feita pelos novos integrantes do grupo de Telegram “MX Linux & antiX Brasil”.
As outras perguntas que costumam fazer no grupo de Telegram são:
-“um dia o MX Linux e o antiX Linux serão uma única distribuição?”;
-“o MX Linux substituirá o antiX?”;
-“qual é melhor, o antiX Linux ou o MX Linux?”

Sybok, eu agradeço por você compartilhar o tópico do fórum do MX Linux.

marcelocripe
(Texto original em idioma Português do Brasil)

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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scruffyeagle wrote:

I really don’t understand this, so I’m exposing my ignorance. Could we please discuss the difference between antiX Linux and MX Linux?

What are the developments, advantages, & disadvantages of these two operating systems? What would the basis be, for picking one over the other? How stable &/or durable are they?

First, antiX is designed specifically to run primarily on old equipment and it is conservative in the use of all system resources – memory, CPU, and storage. Secondly, antiX uses command line tools and utilities extensively and small, efficient window managers along with simple graphical tools.

MX Linux is designed to be a complete, easy to use, desktop oriented system. While in comparison to many other full-featured distributions, MX Linux is reasonably efficient, usability and simplicity are the primary design goals.

Both distributions share several tools and utilities, and share a lot of history. There are users and developers that participate in both distributions. The main differences are that antiX places emphasis on resource conservation and support for aging equipment, whereas MX Linux places emphasis on application and desktop integration and work flow.

--
Brian Masinick

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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Regarding stability, I give both of these distributions outstanding marks. Throughout their history, both of them are known for being well thought out and well suited to general purpose computing.

--
Brian Masinick

[Forum Admin BitJam]

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MX is designed to give you a smooth, stable experience entirely through the GUI while antiX is designed to be fast and lightweight. IMO antiX is better for making a fast-booting “rescue” live-usb.

One thing that makes MX different from most distros is the community repo. MX is based on Debian stable which is notorious for being filled with out of date packages. OTOH, it is very stable. MX tries to bridge this gap by back-porting newer packages to the older, stable Debian. They have a whole team of developers working on this (perhaps bigger than the entire antiX dev team). They even have a forum dedicated to user requests for packages to back-port.

I prefer antiX due to its speed, simplicity, and agility. OTOH MX is the king of the hill in the distrowatch page hit rankings while antiX is usually in the top 20.

Context is worth 80 IQ points -- Alan Kay

[Member PPC]

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anticapitalista wrote:

the spelling.
MX has both letters capitalised whereas antiX only has the last letter.

I had a laugh when I read anticapitalista’s post too fast- the difference between both distros? It’s the spelling 🙂
Now seriously:
MX (in the default XFCE and the more recent KDE version) uses a Desktop Environment and offers some extra GUI tools to simply managing of the system.
In short: MX has more “bells ans whistles”. For the average user (say a Windows refugee) it’s more intuitive to use, but that comes with a cost: it uses much more resources than antiX.
antiX is not hard to use, but has some peculiar system defaults – like using rox-filler as a default File Manager (and with some default settings many users find too alien), lacks (antiX 21, not previous versions), for now a GUI off-line .deb package installer, does not offer, out of the box, automatic updates (you have to click antiX-updater to check for updates). antiX offers no way to run SystemD as it’s init system (MX does give you that choice). antiX’s Package Installer does not offer flatpak support (MX’s does)
Many packages/functionalities are shared between antiX and MX.

You can run a lighter version of MX: MX Fluxbox, that uses an implementation of Fluxbox window manager (with a tint2 toolbar by default). Fluxbox is one of the window managers antiX ships with, so running antiX with Fluxbox as window manager gives you a user experience closer to running MX Fluxbox.
You may configure antix any way you like, even installing Desktop Environments, docks, menus, etc… Also you can make antiX look and feel more like MX, installing FT10 transformation pack that I’m currently developing- it install tint2 toolbar and uses jgmenu to give antiX a “make over” (costing a whooping 2.6mb of disk space)- using a tint2 toolbar in antix running Fluxbox window manager is a very similar experience to running MX Fluxbox (but MX uses about some more 150mb of idle RAM)

Edit: and, as stated below, MX and antiX come with different Kernels (how could I have forgotten to mention that)

P.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 4 months ago by PPC.
• This reply was modified 1 year, 4 months ago by PPC.

[Member oops]

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… And antiX does not use by default the same kernel as MX.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 4 months ago by oops.

[Member olsztyn]

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oops wrote:

… And antiX do not use by default the same kernel as MX.

What is actually the difference in kernel except version?

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

[Member oops]

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olsztyn wrote:

oops wrote:

… And antiX do not use by default the same kernel as MX.

What is actually the difference in kernel except version?

For example (see the file below):
diff-5.10.0-8mx-amd64 vs 5.10.88-antix.1-amd64-smp.txt

Attachments:

1. diff-5.10.0-8mx-amd64_vs_5.10.88-antix.1-amd64-smp.txt

[Member olsztyn]

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oops wrote:

For example (see the file below):
diff-5.10.0-8mx-amd64 vs 5.10.88-antix.1-amd64-smp.txt

Thank you for the diff…
Regards…

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

[Member oops]

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olsztyn wrote:

.. Thank you for the diff…
Regards…

… Yes a lot of diffs for the same kernel 5.10 version.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 4 months ago by oops.

[Forum Admin rokytnji]

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Also under MX hood.

Latest non esr-firefox vs our latest esr firefox .
Sure there are lot more differences.

Even MX fluxbox pulls more ram while running vs our Fluxbox edition because of big apps like thunderbird, and other big apps like for music video.

I am surprised no member posted this quote

As secipolla stated, antiX started out as a MEPIS respin for older computers or for those that prefer a ‘mean and lean’ desktop system. The first remaster of MEPIS I did was not long after MEPIS 3.4.3 was released, but I only made it available to a few testers and it was called flepis (fluxbox Mepis, no icewm)

citation

MX left my Panasonic cf-48 in the dust long ago. Along with Fluxbox Mint 6 and Ubuntu Gnome 3. But I am guessing this question is being asked by a member with better gear than I have.

Sometimes I drive a crooked road to get my mind straight.
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How to Search for AntiX solutions to your problems

[Member scruffyeagle]

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Thanks for all the replies! I’ve got a few unused 30GB partitions, and I’m thinking about using one of them for experimenting with installing MX. I’ll be reading all this stuff a 2nd time…

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