- This topic has 45 replies, 12 voices, and was last updated Oct 29-5:37 pm by Brian Masinick.
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mikey777
Updated 22 Mar 2020
Sure, but I think they’re still stuck on kernel 3.16, as far as I know. Last Autumn, they were talking about kernel 4.14, but I don’t know how far they got – also uncertainty about continuing with 32bit, etc. Amidst all the uncertainty, as well as unanswered posts on the forum, I decided to switch to antixcore, and since then haven’t look back …
▪ 32-bit antix19.4-core+LXDE installed on :
- (2011) Samsung NP-N145 Plus (JP04UK) – single-core CPU Intel Atom N455@1.66GHz, 2GB RAM, integrated graphics.
▪ 64-bit antix21-base+LXDE installed on:
- (2008) Asus X71Q (7SC002) – dual CPU Intel T3200@2.0GHz, 4GB RAM. Graphics: Intel Mobile 4 Series, integrated graphics
- (2007) Packard Bell Easynote MX37 (ALP-Ajax C3) – dual CPU Intel T2310@1.46GHz, 2GB RAM. Graphics: Silicon Integrated Systems.PDP-8
I’ve actually “rediscovered” Slitaz. For the hardware I’m running it on, I had to do a soul-search.
I have no problem with the kernel – it still works. It still boots the machine, and runs the applications I use. And busybox, the cli environment which runs everthing underneath, is one step away from the latest from that project. I wondered if I was getting into an “upgrade-itis” mindset.
One thing to keep in mind is that for the machines that Slitaz is typically target for, with limited ram and cpu speed, if you DO succeed in get LibreOffice, multimedia players, ram-hoggy modern browsers, will you be satisfied with the performance of say only being able to have one browser tab open?
Kind of like how early raspberry pi owners found out that those sbc’s don’t really make good “desktop replacements” when they try to do the same. One tab maybe. Slower graphics etc etc.
This is a trend I’m seeing lately with the small ram projects – the newbs don’t try to keep it small, but want to turn a tidy project into something gargantuan when they might have been best served by using one of the big ones first.
The other thing to consider about small projects might be developer and member burn-out. Many of these small projects that are still around don’t have anything against newbies, but if you search the forum posts, the questions are all still much the same: “How does persistence work?” “How can I install DOOM?” “My dial-up modem doesn’t work, do I need 2400 baud?” 🙂
After answering stuff like that for more than a decade, the 3 or 4 guys left, who are non-paid volunteers with real life to contend with, may just be pooped out. Still hanging around, but simply don’t have the energy to be totally active online.
So I’ll cut Slitaz some slack. Like here, there are real people with real lives to tend to first I think.
Brian Masinick
@PDP-8: There is definitely a tendency for newcomers and beginners to either ask for or expect easy to use programs.
We see it here and we see it in virtually every forum. antiX does not get quite as much of this as some of the major distros, maybe because we can point people to MX Linux and we are pretty clear about what we provide, but we have added as many convenient tools as possible in a modest size.
I think that we have a good balance of features in antiX and MX Linux. Quite frankly if the features we offer in these two distros do not appeal to someone I would recommend something like Linux Mint or big distros like openSUSE or Ubuntu.
- This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by Brian Masinick.
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Brian MasinickBobC
The problem I had was that nobody would give me clues to migrate my simple games myself. If I had migrated a few, there would be a few more.
I still have it on my system, but don’t really use it. It is quite light requirements wise, though, and I kinda like the build it from source with a recipe mentality, if I understood how to do it myself. We don’t walk in “all-knowing”…
olsztyn
Quite frankly if the features we offer in these two distros do not appeal to someone I would recommend something like Linux Mint or big distros like openSUSE or Ubuntu.
This made me curious:
What would be such features that users would miss in antiX and would have to go to Mint or Ubuntu to get them?
My perception is that antiX has everything that is included in Ubuntu and more, such as:
– Live antiX with all the maintenance tools, such as LUM and Remaster
– System tools – probably more than Ubuntu has
– Frugal installs – compact and fast
– Choice of WMs
– Can run from USB2 comfortably, not even USB3. Try this with Ubuntu…Just curious what makes people pick Ubuntu bloated and less capable system…
Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_ParametersBrian Masinick
@olsztyn said: “Just curious what makes people pick Ubuntu bloated and less capable system…”
Comfort and familiarity are the reasons people pick the full-featured versions.
People who are comfortable setting up what they want tend to prefer systems like ours with excellent tools.
People who want things already configured often do not understand how to use the same tools that we enjoy.--
Brian MasinickBrian – you are right. I love antiX and mx. My main attraction was the awesome persistence setup, which I use all the time. However, I wonder how many just use either one the old-fashioned way, accept the defaults, and head straight towards the install icon to splatter bits on rotating oxide. 🙂
It might be that these days, many expect a distro forum to be a “product support” forum, rather than a random collection of devs and users doing something cool on their own time / dime, especially the small projects.
Some reasons for not getting an answer is because doing so leads to a total can of worms. I’m not pointing fingers, but just saying I see plenty of “I’m a newbie with linux, and want to compile this source program not found in the repos. How do I do it?”
And the reason for not answering sometimes is that to do so, means giving a college-level course over and over. 🙂 Starting from how to unarchive a file, run gcc, learn what dependencies are needed and pull them in, tell them all the compiler flags that are necessary, how to do the normal unix file management things, recompress it all and submit back to the project. In the meantime, the user hasn’t learned a thing from it – just typed in what the helper said to do. Next!
It can burn you out, not because you don’t want to help, but it is because the questioner is just one of the thousands that will follow.
Anyway, getting waaay OT. Back to my rocking chair. 🙂
Yes, not “faulting” anyone at Slitaz, but when those kinds of questions have been asked here, ideas, links and help has been given, and I’ve been able to make progress. I try to pay it back by helping where I can as well.
It just is what it is, I guess. Life is what you make of it, yourself. It feels good to be help with my own projects or ones needed by others who have a good idea, but don’t have the skills to make it appear on the screen and work.
Brian Masinick
@PDP-8: I guess that if you actually have used the PDP-8 you deserve to use your rocking chair any time you want!
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Brian Masinickseaken64
do I need 2400 baud?”
Yes, yes you do. It’s time to move on from that 300 baud cartridge. Get with the times!
Seaken64
- This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by seaken64.
ModdIt
PDP-8 wrote: if you search the forum posts, the questions are all still much the same.
Very much agree, often because search is not as efficient as it might be. Interestingly
we often end up in Arch gentoo or Ubuntu forums when searching for solutions. I dislike
bloated ubuntu but Forum search works better than most and have often found easily
understandable answers to complex issues with debian based system.I often think a Linux Wikipedia like searchable compendium would be a big help to newer users.
Antixforum is not the prime example of searchability, drives some new users nuts, some old ones too.
“just typed in what the helper said to do. Next!” applies to the kids and I understand why,
work to be done takes priority over in depth learning because for them the computer is just a
tool. For some of us more, times change.- This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by ModdIt.
I often think a Linux Wikipedia like searchable compendium would be a big help to newer users.
This is a great idea. If only correctly implemented…
Currently in Linux world to find both relevant and correct information on the Web takes a long time and effort. My experience is there is that 95% of Linux info I google is nothing else but junk and misinformation.
Perhaps some articles appear authoritative and knowledgeable so you waste your time reading and trying to understand details until you realize that such article was written 15 years ago and nowadays this is no longer valid and is very incorrect. Most Linux articles on the Web do not even have dates. How a new to Linux user is supposed to figure out if the info he reads is correct at all?
Another, though less common phenomenon is that even if the article might be in fact conveying correct info but it is written in such a way as to make it difficult for less expert reader to understand. I do not mean truly complex subjects but something that can be articulated clearly and in reader friendly way is intentionally obfuscated and made difficult, so the writer looks so smart that only experts in the subject can figure this out…
So if such authoritative ‘Linux Wikipedia’ is correctly implemented with dates of validity of info, people would go to it first, before wasting lots of time and effort to sift through tons of junk out there…
Just my two cents…Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_ParametersBrian Masinick
I often think a Linux Wikipedia like searchable compendium would be a big help to newer users.
This is a great idea. If only correctly implemented…
Currently in Linux world to find both relevant and correct information on the Web takes a long time and effort. My experience is there is that 95% of Linux info I google is nothing else but junk and misinformation.
Perhaps some articles appear authoritative and knowledgeable so you waste your time reading and trying to understand details until you realize that such article was written 15 years ago and nowadays this is no longer valid and is very incorrect. Most Linux articles on the Web do not even have dates. How a new to Linux user is supposed to figure out if the info he reads is correct at all?
Another, though less common phenomenon is that even if the article might be in fact conveying correct info but it is written in such a way as to make it difficult for less expert reader to understand. I do not mean truly complex subjects but something that can be articulated clearly and in reader friendly way is intentionally obfuscated and made difficult, so the writer looks so smart that only experts in the subject can figure this out…
So if such authoritative ‘Linux Wikipedia’ is correctly implemented with dates of validity of info, people would go to it first, before wasting lots of time and effort to sift through tons of junk out there…
Just my two cents…There have been efforts along this line in the past, but as you have hinted, much of the earlier work gets “dated” or otherwise less relevant because of other “changes” and “improvements”, some of which are improvements, others of which are simply viewed that way by a few people.
What I do think you can accurately say is that there is a great overall improvement in the usability of the majority of software.
In the case of antiX software in particular, you have to understand that we make choices and compromises too. When we can add ease of use without “costing” too much in terms of overall resource consumption, we try to do it. But to be completely fair and honest, we are probably NOT #1 if usability is the key priority and development priority, simply because it is NOT our #1 priority. We do try to make things “reasonable” and we try to clearly explain them, and we do this both in the forum, in our videos that Dolphin Oracle so faithfully produces, and in the documents we write and make available. Where antiX is definitely a leader, and in my own mind, #1, is to create excellent tools and utilities that allow people to build very lean and nimble systems, but because of the flexibility and usability of our tools, our sibling distribution, MX Linux, aims for an even more usable system that is not as lean, but is definitely easier to use.
Between the MX Linux approach and the antiX approach, I believe that we have the older, less powerful hardware covered so that old systems still work well (best with antiX) and the new, and even 5-10 year old systems still work pretty well with MX Linux.
Oh yes, now MX Linux offers more choices too: default MX Linux uses the Xfce desktop environment, a fine compromise between moderate resource consumption and ease of use. For a slightly lighter footprint we have added MX Fluxbox recently, and the even more recent addition is an efficient, full-featured implementation of MX Linux KDE. I really think that our distribution covers as complete a spectrum of choices as a relatively small team can possibly implement and support. More help is always useful, so if you have skills in technical writing (documentation), tech support (helping people), development (Python, Javascript, software packaging) it all adds up and you are welcome to contribute to keep our efforts clean, up to date, efficient and relevant.
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Brian Masinick@masinick:
I appreciate your antiX and MX perspective and for these there is not much that can be blamed in comparison to the Linux world out there in general. Documentation mostly still valid for antiX and videos of d_o are outstanding. And I was not questioning usability of antiX. I do think it is excellent, considering the target user population, who must know what they are doing if they picked antiX in the first place…
In my opinion I voiced in my preceding post I was referring to general Linux information out there on the Web. Loaded with misinformation due to obsolescence of something written 15 or 20 years ago. And not being dated how a new user reading such authoritative article can tell it is incorrect as things changed in these 15 years dramatically?
So, going back to the topic of ‘Linux Wikipedia’, this would be great if information could be current, well written and marked with date…
Just my two cents…- This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by Brian Masinick.
Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_ParametersBrian Masinick
@olsztyn: Are there any areas where you feel that you have a sufficient amount of knowledge (maybe in one or two distinct areas)?
If so, updating or adding current information in those areas would be a great service to the Linux community.If you know any areas (1 or 2) that I might be still able to contribute to, I’d be able to update a few things, but I’ve devoted most of my attention to simply helping out here at one of my very favorite distributions (this one and MX Linux). Jerry, Adrian, Dolphin Oracle, and a few others, do a great job with MX – they were around even way back with the MEPIS distribution, so I feel my efforts are better served right here. I would be glad to edit a few pieces if you could locate and point out what needs updating. If we each took 1, 2, 3 areas, or even one of them, getting it going again would be a great service. Let me know what you specifically see that is out of date, and if either of us can acquire access to update it, I think doing more than just commenting would be our own service to the community.
My coding skills are dated, but my historical understanding and general knowledge is decent, just not “cutting edge”; I know more of the classic tools than the latest fancy stuff.
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Brian Masinick
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