Live architecture of antiX can be applied to other Linux distros

[Member olsztyn]

Please let me know (antiX developers and/or owner) if this topic should not be continued any further…
First, I want to again emphasize that IMHO Live/Frugal architecture developed in antiX is far superior in design to anything I encountered out there. This meaans something about genius of antiX developers… I did play with linux-live.org of Tomas-M, which sounded very good and general across Linux but so far I have not been successful enough in making it work for me. In addition, examining how live file system is packaged, I still think that the way antiX Live/Frugal is architected to package into squashed fs linuxfs file is more general than SBs implemented by Linux-Live.org.
Having said that I just want to bring up some facts that I am confident are known to antiX developers:
Live/Frugal antiX architecture can be applied to other distros as well, having tested so far on some Debian derivatives with the following results:
– ISO-Snapshot of antiX appears to work well on other distros once installed with appropriate dependencies.
– Resulting ISO can be processed into Live-USB using Live-USB-Maker.
– Such created Live-USB is an antiX-packaged ‘other’ distro squashed into linuxfs. It boots with antiX Live menu along with typical options such as setting persistence and/or Frugal installation of the ‘other’ distro on hard drive. When booting Live it continues with antiX boot scheme, until un-squashing linuxfs and starts booting the ‘other’ distro, although initially with message ‘antiX 17 Live (generic)’, but such message can be changed appropriately…
– Such ‘other’ distro can be installed or Frugal-installed and such Frugal instance of the ‘other’ distro can be configured with persistence modes per antiX Live architecture.

All this means that Live architecture developed for antiX is more general and can be applied to other distros as well, along with it’s superior functionality.
Is this not something that Linux community could be made aware of such superiority of antiX Live architecture as applicable also to their respective distros?
Or rather it should be kept restricted to antiX and only for the benefit of antiX?
Just my two cents…

• This topic was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by olsztyn.

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

[Member ModdIt]

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Western developers have known the antiX tools for years and not seen fit to adopt them.
Why not let distros like for example Astra (russia) which you kept harping on about being so special spend some
money from their, “based on debian commercial offerings”, develop and setup their own tools.
Astra is by the way also involved in a new Chinese linux setup for government and military in partnership with Huawei.
Also assisting with development of Harmony OS on top of, or adapting AOSP for Huawei and Honor phones.
More money raked in to states which are not heedful of human rights….
My 10 cents..

[Member olsztyn]

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Since you speak as an antiX Moderator therefore I take your word as an official word of antiX strategy management, to keep these architecture assets restricted to antiX, with no intention to publicize to wider Linux audience.

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

[Moderator christophe]

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You know, olzstyn, you and I (and others) here on the forum use the live system extensively. Many others here barely use it, if ever.
You are free to tell whomever you want about the antiX live system.
Because this is open source, if any developers wanted to use any antiX components, it would be very easy. The simple answer to why they don’t, is because they don’t want it.
I know. You & I know they are missing out. You can proclaim it from the rooftops, but I think you are headed for a very lukewarm response…

confirmed antiX frugaler, since 2019

[Member olsztyn]

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Thank you Christophe! The tone and balance of your statement is truly Moderator’s reason that makes sense to me and I respect. The reasons you outlined behind not publicizing these architecture assets to a larger audience speak far more viably to me than some agitated political statements…
Thanks for clarification and Best Regards…

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

[Anonymous]

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Western developers have known the antiX tools for years and not seen fit to adopt them.

The quoted line jumped out at me ~~ I haven’t yet read through all the posts in this topic.

While viewing BunselLabs forum last night, I noticed that they are shopping for an installer program for their forthcoming release of their distro. Seems wierd that no one posting there is aware of Gazelle installer. Manyroads, sleekmason, and others post to both this forum and the bunsenlabs forum.

Also, they have realized that ClipIt clipboard manager has been dropped from debian. Aha, I could drop a link and let ’em know about “clipski” available from my gitlab source repo. Whoops, no, I (my years old account) couldn’t login. Google captcha problem? Idunno. Clicked to request a replacement password, visited the reset URL they sent to my email… nope, cannot login. “Please wait at least an hour before trying again”.

[Anonymous]

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facts that I am confident are known to antiX developers:
Live/Frugal antiX architecture can be applied to other distros as well, having tested so far on some Debian derivatives with the following results:
– ISO-Snapshot of antiX appears to work well on other distros once installed with appropriate dependencies.
– Resulting ISO can be processed into Live-USB using Live-USB-Maker.
– Such created Live-USB is an antiX-packaged ‘other’ distro squashed into linuxfs. It boots with antiX Live menu along with typical options such as setting persistence and/or Frugal installation of the ‘other’ distro on hard drive. When booting Live it continues with antiX boot scheme, until un-squashing linuxfs and starts booting the ‘other’ distro, although initially with message ‘antiX 17 Live (generic)’, but such message can be changed appropriately…
– Such ‘other’ distro can be installed or Frugal-installed and such Frugal instance of the ‘other’ distro can be configured with persistence modes per antiX Live architecture.

Well, I am NOT confident the developers are aware of all those things you’ve mentioned.
I suspect they are busy being busy, doing what they do, knowing what they know.
Via your extensive experimentation/observation, olsztyn, you have become one of experts of this niche.

Wannabe cross-pollinators like you and I, we are probably both blessed, and cursed (at).
BusterDog ships a cool mkqsuashfs GUI utility that even enables a user to choose the compression method to be applied. Yet when you notice such a thing and mention it to “across the pond” others… the comfy-in-their-own-pond others are likely to shrug and utter “meh, sqoosheffess, who would wanna mess with those!?!”

> Since you speak as an antiX Moderator
> therefore I take your word as an official word of antiX strategy management,

Naw, the forum moderators here are just helperbots, not policymakers. Maybe your face doesn’t realize it, but even loudmouth skidoo served a yearlong stint as moderator here. Ah, retirement ~~ still a loudmouth, but without the risk of mis-representing the fine “official” folks whenever I’m compelled to call a potatohead a potatohead.

[Member olsztyn]

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Thank you skidoo for such well articulated insight…
Best Regards…

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

[Member Xecure]

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As skidoo already explained, antiX and antiX tools are Open Source, so anyone can copy, modify, use and redistribute as they like. I believe a few distros (at least one of the (community) puppy versions) used the antiX live system at one point or another. The antiX devs have enough work on their plate with antiX, you cannot expect them to work on other distros. If other distros want to use the antiX live system and antiX tools, they can fork the project and play with it. antiX is not tying anything up (heck, it is FOSS!). SO things like this:

olsztyn wrote:

Or rather it should be kept restricted to antiX and only for the benefit of antiX?

would lead to people think that antiX is a closed source project, which it is NOT. People can do with the antiX tools whatever they like, but don’t expect the antiX devs to support those projects. If you have an idea and want to start to work on it, you are free to do so. The antiX devs will not go after you, so don’t worry about that.

Also, you may not know, but antiX live system is not only running from USB, persistence and frugal, but there are hundreds of other tools inside the live system that only work with SysVinit, and only with Xorg/X11 (no wayland support), so many other distributions will not care about this, as they are SystemD based. See some of the many many boot options here: http://download.tuxfamily.org/antix/docs-antiX-19/FAQ/boot-params.html
Also, most distros don’t care about live-USB, and expect people to install their distro, and not run live from USB, so “of-course” they have no interest in antiX live tools.

As you well know, antiX main objective is not supporting old computers, but the incredibly rich live system. Some users forget this, and are a bit demanding on software and default configurations, more older system support (or even more newer kernels, packages and software) but what makes antiX special is the antiX live system.
You can start studying the live init here: https://gitlab.com/antiX-Linux/live-initrd.gz

antiX Live system enthusiast.
General Live Boot Parameters for antiX.

[Member olsztyn]

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Xecure wrote:

Also, most distros don’t care about live-USB, and expect people to install their distro, and not run live from USB, so “of-course” they have no interest in antiX live tools.

Thanks Xecure for additional perspective. Particularly, in relation to the above most distros are too bloated to be able to run Live effectively.
Regards.

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

[Forum Admin rokytnji]

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Sigh. Member response so I don’t freak anyone out.

Most distros use systemd. Most distros frown on /usr/local/bin. Since systemd defaults to using /usr/bin.

I figure it is just easier maintaining such distros by not trying to be like us. Cuz I guarantee in the ” Linux World”. They
are aware of our tools.

Then are distro philosophies. Like Slackware, Ubuntu, Open Suse, and others to contend with. Kinda like politics. Which makes them uncomfy adapting file systems or our file calls to accept their file structure. Let alone dependencies like libs and such.

My uneducated 2 pesos.

Sometimes I drive a crooked road to get my mind straight.
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I'm not outa place. I'm from outer space.

Linux Registered User # 475019
How to Search for AntiX solutions to your problems

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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rokytnji wrote:

Sigh. Member response so I don’t freak anyone out.

Most distros use systemd. Most distros frown on /usr/local/bin. Since systemd defaults to using /usr/bin.

I figure it is just easier maintaining such distros by not trying to be like us. Cuz I guarantee in the ” Linux World”. They
are aware of our tools.

Then are distro philosophies. Like Slackware, Ubuntu, Open Suse, and others to contend with. Kinda like politics. Which makes them uncomfy adapting file systems or our file calls to accept their file structure. Let alone dependencies like libs and such.

My uneducated 2 pesos.

I think you are right @rokytnji.

[My persomal opinion only] Some of our technologies are, at least to some extent, copied or rebuilt from code developed by Absolute Linux, Puppy, and even KNOPPIX. Most of our own recent stuff however is home grown or built in collaboration with MX Linux. I doubt that anyone is taking code directly from us, though our ideas are as good as any others. I speculate that some of it has to do with our specific architecture, which is becoming less common the more we diverge from the original Debian and MEPIS roots.

--
Brian Masinick

[Member olsztyn]

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rokytnji wrote:

Most distros use systemd. Most distros frown on /usr/local/bin. Since systemd defaults to using /usr/bin.

Question related specifically to the above, not to the topic of this thread:
Would you be so kind as to shed some light on separate /usr/local/bin vs. /usr/bin to be used by antiX? Specifically, I have also noticed that most linux distros do not use /usr/local/bin at all, however antiX seems to be using both /usr/bin and /usr/local bin. E.g. ISO-Snapshot appears to be in /usr/bin while live-usb-maker is in /usr/local/bin… Is /usr/local/bin only for antiX specific variants of code, such as non-systemd only? Common applications appear to be still placed in /usr/bin…
This becomes interesting, as I remember Intel’s Clear Linux is also using /usr/local and going further in their re-architecting they completely discard using /etc since these are just pure linux mess.
Thanks and Regards…

• This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by olsztyn.

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

[Forum Admin Dave]

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I think /usr/local/bin/ is used for home grown antiX programs / scripts, /usr/bin/ for the programs/packages from debian (or adapted from debian).
My personal opinion / feel at this point is that a number of the antiX programs probably could be put in /usr/bin. It is still nice to see all the antiX specific stuff in /usr/local/bin however. As far as the live system / init items. I know BitJam actively works to keep the code from being “antiX only” in favour of more generic to allow others to use the code. I was recently conversing with him about set-screen-brightness with suggestions for adding a save to file option (similar to arandr) that could be loaded in desktop-session if the file exists. However this was becoming (as was pointed out) too system specific for the scope of the app. So yes these items are weighed when writing the programs. Anti and I have also recently worked on splitting and repackaging desktop-menu, desktop-defaults, and desktop-session so that hopefully users working from core can utilized each item independently; this should also work if you wanted to use them in another debian based system. Another example is the wallpaper app. There is fair amount of system specific code, as we have 3 (4 Openbox?), that we need to accommodate for as well as the rox/space variants. That said, all that *should* be needed is a “code” in ~/.desktop-session/desktop-code.0 which could be anything really and it would work (rox-* space-* *). All the antiX apps are gpl2/3 licensed if I recall correctly and anyone is free to use them. I cannot speak for the others, but anyone is free to try and make them work on other systems; Then if they have questions/modifications to recommend they are also free to make such a request (preferably on gitlab). However, myself I am not actively trying out other distributions (antiX/MX mainly and some Debian) and then trying the programs on those systems.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by Dave.

Computers are like air conditioners. They work fine until you start opening Windows. ~Author Unknown

[Member olsztyn]

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Thank you Dave for shedding light (inside information) on development approach to directory structure use for antiX and in wider scope as related to the entire thread…
Greatly appreciated.

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

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