- This topic has 54 replies, 15 voices, and was last updated Mar 24-4:05 pm by Brian Masinick.
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anticapitalista
blur13
You have to get the pre-installs if you want “success”, defined as having a large userbase. I dont think that is the correct metric. Linux is a success in the sense that it is a collective endeavor driven by passion and freedom. There is no commercial motive. Linux is free, both as in freedom, but also free as in “free beer”. This is important. I can install linux on as many computers I want. I’m free to experiment. That is “success” in a sense that matters.
And if you want to expand the user base by making linux “easy to use” (whatever that means), then you are free to do so. There are distributions aimed for beginners. Elementary OS. The whole Ubuntu project. Not to mention all the gui scripts created by members of this forum to make antiX easier to use.
How fun would it be to contribute to antiX if every install required a licence that costs several hundred dollars? Not fun at all. Then a project you happily contribute to all of a sudden more seems like work. And then you want a wage.
Brian Masinick
@PPC and others
Is this better?
That’s clear and understandable to me, though I’m not the best target audience for this information, since I’ve been a user here since the beginning and at one time or another I’ve used almost every different type of image.
Please give anticapitalista feedback and suggestions. Thanks!
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Brian MasinickBrian Masinick
One thing I hope is never lost for this distribution and this community:
antiX started out as an incredibly light, lean, efficient distribution and it was an offshoot of the MEPIS project at the time.
I think a little bit of the infrastructure in the very early days may have been copied from that project, but since then it has been completely rewritten.
It’s ALWAYS been done in the name of independence, light, lean, clean, efficient behavior.
I don’t mind when we can create a few lightweight tools that somewhat simplify the experience for first time users, but I never want to see those goals override what this is all about. I’m pretty sure that anticapitalista wants lean behavior and I remember him saying that the first thing he’d do when installing any system with the convenient or fancy stuff would be to strip it out of his own system.
I think there are quite a few of us here who are willing to allow some tools to be added to our distribution repositories, but most of the veterans, myself included, use and try out the stuff mostly to help others out, to support and assist, but probably NOT to keep it, at least not on our main, every day system.
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Brian MasinickPPC
@PPC and others
Is this better?
Much better, yes!… but I think it still requires a few touches to make the info clearer to everyone- … I’ll try to download the code and change it, and upload it here! If you like my suggestions, then you can make further changes, making everything even simpler for newbies!
P.
@anticapitalista – still not ideal, but here is my suggestion…
Xunzi_23
Xunzi_23 wrote:
So, should we only show a few mirrors?
For the record.
That quote is incorrect.
I at no point suggested there should be fewer mirrors, just that experiences show it is very difficult
for new users to figure out what to download and why. Fixing that is in progress.Reading through the thread I think some posters are missing the point, the future will be defined by
present youth, kids corporations want to turn in to and keep as cash cows. Those who try turn to and
hopefully stay with the non commercial linux distros are for me VIP.
Best of the non commercial distros, the one I am using now. antiX customized.I get green screens, boot fails the breaking changes were introduced by IBM owned Red Hat, in early
posts the RH devs wrote the problems will fix themselves as users get new hardware and wayland drive
will do the rest. Callous ignorant boneheads.Distributions aimed for beginners, buntu has probably put more users off linux than any other distro
family I can think of.Better Mint, Manjaro, but there is no other distro I know of which is able to compete with antiX.
Unique toolset and base, a number of very engaged forward looking devs and forum members. The lead of
anticapitalista and his morals and beliefs. For all I am very thankful.Brian Masinick
I’m definitely NOT looking for any kind of “worldwide success”, and certainly NOT with antiX.
When the first initial software for antiX came out, I was both interested and excited,
because what I was looking at often, at that time, were distributions that were flexible and
efficient enough to run LIVE, yet flexible enough to install.Back then, even MEPIS could run live, so could PCLinuxOS, KNOPPIX, FeatherLinux, kanotix and a
few others.The antiX that arrived back then was lighter than all with the possible exception of FeatherLinux,
and it had a near perfect combination of efficiency and practicality, something it has maintained
all these years.Even our distribution isn’t as “light” as it once was, though the 32-bit users get a big break
compared to those of us who have mostly or only 64-bit systems.The OLD, small distributions could start up in those days with a footprint somewhere between 58
and 62 MB. I remember that because I was using antiX and experimenting with different window
managers.Back then the base IceWM actually came out with the smallest starting image of any of them WM,
though that is no longer the case. Yup, way back when, IceWM could start out maybe 1 MB lighter
than even Fluxbox, which actually surprised me. I think I was testing several of the OLD WM,
most of which had *box in their name, except for IceWM.fvwm was really light, too, but the enhanced version, fvwm-crystal, was bigger. However,
fvwm-crystal behaved like a cross between a window manager and a window manager decked out
with enough apps to behave more like a desktop environment.We still have fvwm-crystal available, for those of you looking for a more full-featured,
yet still surprisingly efficient arrangement.But the reason I’m writing this is to remind all of us that if we retain these small, efficient,
classic programs for as long as possible, we will be able to retain environments that are nearly
as compact and efficient as they were 10-15 years ago or even longer than that.--
Brian Masinickolsztyn
But the reason I’m writing this is to remind all of us that if we retain these small, efficient,
classic programs for as long as possible, we will be able to retain environments that are nearly
as compact and efficient as they were 10-15 years ago or even longer than that.Indeed… I want to add a special perspective to your statement:
Relatively taken, sticking with these most efficient WMs all along these years largely contributed to actually increase of edge of antiX vs. other distros, since other distros got memory bloated and inefficient at much quicker pace over that time.
I have been with antiX just about only 5-6 years, so no comparison with your 10-15 years but I have to say I see only dexterous strategy all along. In continuation of this strategy antiX 23 looks even better than ever, with modular approach to various extra optional features, but continuing simplicity and reliability of core system.- This reply was modified 1 month, 3 weeks ago by olsztyn.
Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_ParametersBrian Masinick
@olsztyn: you are so right.
Twenty years ago MEPIS was able to run efficiently with KDE. Though the KDE Plasma has improved their efficiency recently, they’re not even close to the efficiency of Fluxbox, IceWM, and JWM, all of them available when antiX arrived.
PCLinuxOS was also in that group. While it remains a solid distribution and it’s possible to run it with window managers, again antiX excels in lean efficiency.
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Brian MasinickRE:
-I’m definitely NOT looking for any kind of “worldwide success”, and certainly NOT with antiX.-
no comment…Good job others see the need to look forwards and towards the needs of users while keeping core
values in mind.For that I am very glad anticapitalista has the lead. And for his views and admirable integrity.
We have 2023, a world where poverty is growing, in great part emanating from US turbo capitalism and
war mongering. For profit and dreams of further world domination. Pootin is power drunk and bent on hell.
China being forced in a direction of self preservation and possibly open agression.I see People around the world needing to make the best possible use of older hardware to keep them in work
help with kids education, be part of the community.Part of the antiX community if they share a mindset and values I can accept I do my best to help them on the way.
Not for myself, not for trying to be important, not harping on past glory and not regarding the distro as a
personal plaything.@anticapitalista – I noticed that you accepted most of my suggestions about antiX’s download page (except some details and the formats I choose to call attention to key terms like 32/64 bits and sysV/runit, the iso’s names, etc), but I noticed a small typo:
Manual Download links.Should end with a “:”, not a “.”, because the links are below that line and introduced by it. By the way- all the edits I performed on the downloads page were in the excellent SeaMonkey web suite, I know near to 0 about HTML!
This is a tiny step into making antiX a bit less of a mystery to download…
P.
- This reply was modified 1 month, 3 weeks ago by PPC.
- This reply was modified 1 month, 3 weeks ago by Brian Masinick. Reason: typos and grammar
Brian Masinick
Even though https://www.seamonkey-project.org/ doesn’t have every possible feature found in Firefox or Chrome, it’s one of the better moderate sized Web browser even now, and it does have config flags you can set to get many pages to behave in a similar way to Firefox. SeaMonkey 2.53.15 is the current release. As you noted, it’s not ONLY a browser; it descends from Netscape and Mozilla, as you can see if you read the page cited above. The description in the reference above says: “Web-browser, advanced e-mail, newsgroup and feed client, IRC chat, and HTML editing made simple—all your Internet needs in one application.”
Enough said.
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Brian Masinick@anticapitalista – re-reading the download page, I realized that the “Manual Download links:” section mixes the first few lines that are about Manual downloads but also a huge ammount of info about how to burn the iso to an usb stick, etc. Ideally, this should be divided into:
“How to create a bootable pen-drive with an antiX .iso” (followed by the text of the current ‘Manual Download links’ section, except the what are currently the first 2 sentences)
(extra suggestion: include here a call of attention to the default user and password and root and password in the Live Iso, just to hammer it down into newbies skulls)and then
“Manual Download links:
Below is a list of worldwide mirrors available for downloading the antiX ISO images. Downloading from a mirror might be faster and more reliable.”
(followed by the list of download servers)
caprea
Thanks PPC, the download page looks very clear and simple now.That should prevent any procrastination.
@anticapitalista, there’s one minor issue with the download page.The Signature verification of the ISO described if you scroll down to the bottom does not work.
A way that works is described here.
https://www.antixforum.com/forums/topic/antix-22_386-verify-signature-failure-by-newbie/#post-96812
Could this be changed?
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