I've bought an old netbook, Atom 1,66 Gh 1 GB RAM DD2, no internal HD, 800 x 480 display. AntiX was the only distro that made it run smoothly! Thanks for the video, it inspired me to test antix on this machine
@@NotoriousNastyNas TinyCore did work, but it was a little to advanced for me since it was my first time using linux. I'm still using antiX, maybe today it would be different if I get to use TinyCore
@@scavanger1000 Windows 10 legit made my mechanical hard drive obsolete. I literally rushed out and bought a fricking SSD just to have a usable computer, it got to a point at which it just wasn't bearable anymore. I don't regret it, SSDs are great, but there's a saying that goes "if your OS runs slow on your HDD, you don't need a new drive, you need a new operating system". Wish I had switched to Linux earlier.
@@michelvosje umm, no. Linux does that too, what extra fluff does windows need to store? Does Linux run slow because it's taking up less ram? We know Linux runs faster, that means it's storing things in ram too, just that it does not have to store, candy crush, useless xbox related things, the spyware daemon in the background etc. Also, the OS is supposed to kill stuff if it is under load, does windows free up that 5 gb?
I was actually going to use this distro on my main machine but Debian repositories are a bit annoying. Now I'm using Artix runit w/ IceWM and it is very comfortable. Love antiX and it is what inspired me to start using IceWM in the first place. It is a very clean distro.
@@ps5hasnogames55 I understand your concerns. And realistically there are other alternatives so why not pick up something not dipping their nose into politics. But I will say my 1.9 GHz laptop did not mind whatsoever.
On older hw I tried in the past puppy Linux (before the forks) and both slitaz and slax working, now in recent time I have rasbian and had batocera Linux on old laptops. I keep hearing about antix so I checked this. Great video.
Nice overview! I love any mention of MX Linux and AntiX - those projects really can bring new life to old devices :) It would've been great if you could show the snapshot tool - that imo is truly an awesome functionality that would be helpful especially novices.
Awesome, Downloading this right now to test it out. I have plenty of ram and cpu, but I really appreciate a snappy system and this looks super interesting. Thanks for sharing a deeper look!
AntiX is awesome, but I tried Q4OS Trinity and it worked very well also (Pentium DualCore 3gb) giving a more integrated desktop exeprience. KDE3 apps are still very good ;-)
This is the first time I've seen any Marxist influence in the FOSS world. I really thought it'd be all over the FOSS movement. I'm not endorsing any particular ideology, but you gotta admit, FOSS has some socialist undertones. It's free software in which anyone can contribute, and everyone that works on it has part ownership. It's got a VERY anti-corporate aura around it, one that somehow rivals that of the old school 'worker's rights'-type socialists. It's really amazing that the FOSS movement hasn't been high-jacked by political interests already.
@@proctoscopefilms Yeah, I usually say "controversial" and keep it at that. But I agree with you about Marxist influences in the open source ideaology. The idea that software should be free and open to everyone goes along with the idea of food, medicine, education, and housing should be free and open to everyone. But unfortunately the alt-right movement has wrapped it's tendrils around the FOSS community.
I'm so happy you did this video!! I have had a love hate relationship with this distro but I truly believe it wasn't the distro,cit was me. Actually I really love it especially the rox filer. It's so underrated and feature rich!!😀
Yes, icewm is very cool and fast. Nice to see it in action again, used it decades ago on a 80486 computer. Have to install it again, it was the fastest window manager i ever had even sometimes faster than blackbox, fluxbox etc.
@@AlejandroRodolfoMendez I don't know. Kernel etc. is much bigger nowadays. I used to run Debian Potato with icewm on an i486DX2/66, must have been around year 2002. With the old packages it definitely should run but antiX is up to date, more secure and especially lightweight for old machines. Just try it. P.S. But websites and browsers got bigger too, I doubt TH-cam will run on i486, maybe via VLC. But Abiword, Gnumeric, MP3 etc. should work just fine.
Nice timing, last few days my wife family member old laptop from 2010 (i believe its netbook), tried Xubuntu, run great but very laggy and RAM usage easily full. Till i found this video, will try today. Thanks and sub!
@@GottaBeNoah not at least on the kind of hardware that I use. On idle shows me 1 % of cpu usage in a core 2 duo t7200 with 4 gb of ram (only 3gb are usable, and the system on idle uses 200-300 gb) and a budget 120 gb ssd.
@@diegomillan2806 I hate the settings application do you know how to install a better settings application like kde or gnome settings? Because for a noob it's hard to configure this os with outdated software that lacks functionality I need
I have the same T60 laptop as a daily driver, and thinking about trying out a Linux version on it in the future. Are you still satisfied with antix on your laptop? An other comment here mentioned unusually high idle power consumption on his laptop with this distro (higher than it had with any other linux distributions), have you experienced any similar issue? Also I have Win 8.1 currently on my T60 laptop, and I undervolt the CPU with a program to make it run cooler (the improvement is quite significant). Are there tools on Linux (especially for this antix distro) for cpu undervolting?
@@kosztaz87 if you have a t60p thinkpad (with a amd firegl graphics) maybe the best option out of the box is manjaro. The gpu works better. Right now im using manjaro kde because and actualization breaks my gpu and i have to fix the "no UMS in radeon modules" message with a kernel change, which is something that as a newbie to linux you dont want to treat inmediatly, because you are learning the basics. For Undervolting i really dont know, i usually dont have thermal problems with a good thermal paste, but i read some threads on thinkwiki forum who explains everything about undervolt in linux. Let me search it and i put the links right here.
@@diegomillan2806 Yeah doing those things would be definitely above my skill level, so will rather look into manjaro. Although I have a modified Thinkpad too (a so called "Frankenpad", it's a T61 motherboard with the Nvidia NVS140m gpu in a 15 inch T60 body), would antix work better with the Nvidia gpu in that machine?
Another good lighweight albeit slightly heavier linux distro (not by much) is VOID Linux in particular the MUSL varient. I have it on my laptop which is newer but basically bottom of the barrel from like 2018. It's great and only uses around 300mb of ram on boot.
Void is really light, I’ve got it lighter than antiX, with DWM, void idles around 90MB. But void is also ‘void’ of packages. So, antiX is better because of that alone.
@@tylerdean980 what is void missing? I have basically everything I need setup (although I configure and install nvim and zsh with nix) there's a few proprietary packages you can't install on musl but can be installed on glibc with xbps-src Pretty much the only thing I couldn't get from the official repo was lua-language-server but thankfully that was in nixpkgs
@@cockatoofan Honestly, now that they've moved away from LibreSSL maybe it's better than it used to be. But I wasn't able to get a package for my Broadcom driver, even after enabling the non free repo. And if I remember right, they only have like 20k packages in the repos, right? If I'm accurate, that's less than half of what a debian system would get you.
AntiX and IceWM is definitely one of the lightest desktop distros, but I found the last 32-bit version of Linux Mint Xfce to be a much better experience overall, after following a performance tuning guide I found online. IceWM was a great DE 20 years ago when I was running it on a laptop with Libranet Linux, but it feels very archaic these days. Most DEs today at least have a searchable app menu/launcher, even Xfce and LXDE.
it's a matter of workflow. you can integrate all those functions into icewm, it's very powerful. also, i don't get why you would use a 32 bit os on a 64 bit machine
@@francescovolpini 64-bit distros use about twice the RAM just for the base desktop. Really old laptops have max RAM limits from 256MB to 1GB. Even Xfce uses around 350MB on a 64-bit OS. About 180MB on a 32-bit version of the same OS. With such limited RAM there isn’t an advantage to going 64-bit. And then of course the actual laptop I was messing with had a single core 32-bit CPU. So…
Do you remember the name of the guide? I am on Antix which works smoother than mint xfce, but it is such an ugly and messy OS, even with customization.
I've still got my first usb 1.0 flash drive - 128 mb - and it's still functioning. It's not in regular use, I just plug it in every couple of years to see if it's still alive. One of the small Puppy linux distros is probably your best bet with your old laptop. They're suprisingly workable.
Ghost BSB isn't a bad offering and I like Nomad BSD too, but neither as quick or low resource as AntiX. Q4OS and Mabox good calls too Again quicker than Ghost BSD in *my* experience
One of the most lightweight Linux distros. The people who say this. Don't know what they're talking about most of the time. One of the best lightweight Linux distributions is Oasis Linux. It has the most lightweight window manager (Velox because it's based on swc which is 40x as light as icewm). It uses about 50 megs of disk space. Which is ofcourse lower than 3.5G. And the RAM usage is about 20 megs of RAM. It is barely usable as a daily-driver because it uses musl. Which barely works if you want to use something that isn't lightweight (Pipewire, pulseaudio, etc.).
this distro looks very nice, and performance is great (my laptop can play 4k youtube videos without dropped frames which on other distros it cant) but i did some testing and something does not add up on a i5 4200u laptop with the battery pulled out, kwyboard light off, screen to minimul, fans off, it pulls ~17w on idle, fresh boot, measured with a socket power meter the same laptop would pull ~8-10w on idle with pretty much any other heavier distros like mint, zorin, elementary, feren, some of which hover around 2gb idle ram usage i don't know where this is coming from, maybe cpu scheduler, maybe it avtivated the nvidia gpu by itself, can anyone else measure the power usage and make some comparisons to other distros?
It might have a "maximum performance when on AC" mode activated or perhaps just has a really bad built in cpu frequency controller. If you install powertop (sudo apt install powertop) then you will be able to see a detailed list of what things are using power and how much. Might be worth trying out auto-cpufreq, it will automatically control the cpu frequency to save battery better (when off ac power) than the distro usually will, my computer now idles at 800mhz most of the time on battery and has definitely improved battery life.
it is. its still in beta but its totally usable. ive been rocking antix (installed gnome btw) on my gaming pc full time (ryzen 5 5600x & rtx 3060ti) for a few weeks now, its super fast and by far the fastest and smoothest distro ive used for gaming and for general use. its basically a preconfigured debian minus all the bullcrap and systemd. i use openrc and everything just simply works.
@@spaceguybobit takes time for them to remove all the bullcrap like systemd etc each time there is a new release plus they need to do alot of other stuff to the distro... however, they ought to remove the political stuff from the distro and they shouldnt be afraid to offer installation of the propietary drivers
Antix isn't the most user friendly, if you're coming from a Windows background,(personal experience) It's great in many ways, but not necessarily intuitive, like trying to cut and paste, from one folder to another. If there is a way to do that, then please inform me. Also, from running Antix, as a live USB on my Windows system, I can't seem to mount the Windows drive. I'm open to learning.
Modern Windows doesn't completely shut down so locks the partition to prevent damage. Doing a full Windows shut down by pressing WINKEY+R and typing: shutdown -s -t 00 and hitting enter should leave the partition accessible. I've seen another solution mentioned which may have involved changing a setting in the bios but this method works fine for me.
having the marxists internet archive default in the bookmarks would be a reason for me install. but i'm a happy arch user who just reads their literature
kinda late 4 a comment on this vid, but thanks anyways man!! u helped me a lot with your review, i´m installing it (right now) in my old potato laptop (acer aspire3) wich i still love even when it´s spec´s are reaaaaally low for nowadays
I use antix19. 4 on a old desktop pc having intel pentium J2900, integrated graphics, 120 HDD & 2G DDR3 RAM. It really works like magic. The only problem is I am noob in linux and I can't seem to find a better way to change the way ot looks but Manjaro wallpapers do look great with Antix IceWM theming. Seriously it works better than linux mint on my Laptop with much better config than my desktop pc. If someone knows how to make it look better, please share..
My guy adress how the pollitical undertones are not the main focus on the video, but every one took that and threw it out the window. I hate the internet some times :^ )
Nice video! Just let you know that this RAM consumption can be a bit misleading. First, you're running in a VM and that usually means less RAM usage by definition. Also, because this distro is using a really old kernel (from 2016!), not only it uses less RAM but it won't work properly on new machines. So... what about lightweight distros that run new kernel/packages and also has a small ISO size? Porteus, maybe? :)
Thanks for the video, I wanted a lightweight system that can run on the dual boot for the minimum storage possible. It seems that AntiX is what I need.
Yes, sometimes if the system has memory available, then it simply uses that instead of "releasing" the one in use. The idea is that if you return to your previous work, you don't need to waste time waiting for everything to reload from the drive. And if the system get's short on ram, then it start to release the space used by those older things first. That's why the exact same distro can use differents amount of ram in different computers.
Is there any sense in installing AntiX on a decent modern PC? I mean, being lightweight is great, but what are cons of this choice over, let's say, original debian?
I had that exactly netbook, I use mint on it, cuz it was the first that I had on a pen drive . Works fine now I can even do python graphs on it. But I am kinda digging this one, might change
Yes great video. I put antix on a very old laptop (architechture 32 bits, 532 RAM) and it's very fast. My only draw back (till now) is that it's not very intuitive. For instance I can't figure out how to set up my internet connexion. I look at the official forum and the only answer I found is to open Connman tray and fill the fields (not those exact terms but you got the point). But those fields are not very 'user friendly' in my opinion
i wanted to install it on an old laptop but unfortunately i cant connect to any wifi i tried it on multiple devices but the conman app doesnt show me any wifi connections is there someone with a similiar problem?
Under maintenance go to network assistant. Then go to the Linux drivers section and if you know your broadcam driver load it and unblock it. If you don't just load and unblock them all and you should be fine
@@ps5hasnogames55 antiX doesn't "force" it on you. It's just a few bookmarks which can be easily removed. I don't know why ppl have to act like triggered snowflakes when a distro comes with a bunch of bookmarks. It's not the end of the world. Whatever happened to "Deal with it"...
@@knight_kazul not just a few bookmarks. proudly written all over their website and forums too and clearly guides the philosphy of the people who make and use the distro. so no thanks. i'll stick to distros that focus on making a distro, not on politics.
@@ps5hasnogames55 Sounds like you care more about their political stance than the product they offer. I don't really care but in my opinion that is a really, shall we say, inefficient way of looking at the world. Just saying. And it's not "all over" their website, they only mention it in the header and that's it. Would you like the distro better if they were fascistic instead?
Does it support running PiHole or PiVPN? I do not know if these depend on systemd... (And yes, I want to install these services on a X86_amd64 computer I have laying around, not a RasPi.)
Your ideology has gotten millions of people killed. But you would never admit that, would you? Only what's on the surface level. Antifa is a terrorist organization.
How does it do with CPU? KDE is supposed to be lighter than XFCE on RAM these days, but it's unusable on my HP Mini. It can boot into the desktop, but loading anything would cause it to get stuck. But you can actually get stuff done with any XFCE distro (Mint, Zorin OS Lite, Linux Lite) on this same HP Mini, even though it supposedly uses more RAM. I have Lubuntu on it right now but can't tell whether AntiX would run faster because the only comparison being made is RAM.
Does the antix/IceWM distro come with 'ethtool'? Just looking to do a quick mac address change and installing linux, even on a vm, takes a while and gigs of space. Hoping just a bare live cd that can do ethtool.
Tried this, but CubLinux is still my fav light distro, not supported anymore but still my go-to light on resources based on Ubuntu 14.0.1. Way more bare ones though.
Fair point. It would be interesting to see resource usage on abtiX with Lxqt DE installed. Prefer antiX with Debian base and none of the snap software steerings.
That is true. Linux Mint: Mate edition is also user-friendly for Windows converts and older hardware (only older versions of Linux Mint support 32-bit though).
Seemed very interesting, but when i tried to boot it and it went well until it got stuck with the cursor in the middle and a pitch black background. Had to reset the laptop and I can't get it to work at all. Any tips? This distro looks like it can give life to a few outdated laptops lying around. Alternatively, I hope you can do a showcase on Dietpi for PC, looks very promising especially for lightweight distros.
@@Winnetou17 I do, how do I get new drivers if I'm stuck in that screen? It also has integrated graphics so I don't see why it would opt for the nvidia if it doesn't work.
@@ps5hasnogames55 ?? you have one vid on your channel... And you self-id, as a Marxist.... Come out of the closet and admit, you use anti-X as your daily driver.... LOL
@@ps5hasnogames55 Poor dear, yes, stay away from this distro! Especially those bookmarks! It might turn you into a person who reads and thinks, if you're not careful. It takes stern resolve to remain properly ignorant.
IIRC, it does. You could either install an extra program, that works with geoclue so it does it according to your location. Or use the already onboard one, that you can simple turn on/off or set timers. Though you have to look for it, I found it "by accident"
If antiX in just debian, what's the point? When I started on Debian 20 years ago I used to install a barebones minimal install, reboot and install X, WMs, and applications on top of that, and there's my lean distro. If a modern kernel feels slow, you may do better with an older smaller kernel. I run an old computer, and running modern software is getting challenging, even with a minimal Debian install. Firefox and Chromium are particularly painful, but SeaMonkey and Pale moon to the rescue. Overall, it's just a matter of app selection, choosing light weight programs over bloated alternatives. Getting rid of SystemD also markedly improved system responsiveness. If I were to leave Debian, or I'd opt for freebsd or derivatives, or perhaps a similar Linux such as Slack, or the few BSD inspired Linux distros around that have simplicity in mind and better HW support due to the Linux kernel, and keep on top of newer developments such as Wayland, since Linux is the place most development occurs.
I don't know if it was just my timing but when I tried to load up this distro (antiX 21 I believe is what I grabbed) the theme was very old looking and not really anything of what was shown here (could be the version I had/have which if it is please let me know). I tried antiX 21 base and full. (looking around i am seeing it might be a version thing, between antiX19 and 21)
I wouldn't call geany a "text editor" it's more of a programmers IDE like Notepad++. It's actually extrememly powerful. It's along the lines of Microsoft's VisualCode, but less features.
Can you make the windows open in the same place every time - a bit like a tiling WM? For example: If I resize app windows and open them in a certain order on Xfce, then they are in the same place every time I use my PC.
Can any1 help me i installed all linuxs but all lagged some freezed i hve dell inspiron 15 and want to use it for coding Requirment : chrome+vscode or any + discord
I've had a rough time getting antiX to boot up. xD I think these ultralight distro's hate me. Hardware detection issues are very common. I wish they would work, as I could get some decent headroom, with their levity.
you might want to do a proper check on your HDD. The Live USB runs on the stick and RAM of the PC. If it is slow / unresponsive after installing on the HDD it's either a HDD issue or a controller issue. Check with the folks on the MX Linux (area AntiX) forum or on the AntiX forum itself. Providing the necessary info these guys and gals are lightning fast to help.
I've bought an old netbook, Atom 1,66 Gh 1 GB RAM DD2, no internal HD, 800 x 480 display. AntiX was the only distro that made it run smoothly! Thanks for the video, it inspired me to test antix on this machine
I have a similar one and I tried both batocera Linux, and rasbian so far and they work fine. Probably lakka would run too.
TinyCore should also work fine
Not even puppy Linux could help?
@@NotoriousNastyNas TinyCore did work, but it was a little to advanced for me since it was my first time using linux. I'm still using antiX, maybe today it would be different if I get to use TinyCore
@@MrGamelover23 Puppy Linux didn't even get to boot. This netbook has some quirks, not even slax linux managed to run fine.
You like: so with open browser and system running it's about 430mb of ram, not so bad.....
While me on win11, running only system - 5.5gb of ram xD
With 100% disk usage
@@scavanger1000 Windows 10 legit made my mechanical hard drive obsolete. I literally rushed out and bought a fricking SSD just to have a usable computer, it got to a point at which it just wasn't bearable anymore. I don't regret it, SSDs are great, but there's a saying that goes "if your OS runs slow on your HDD, you don't need a new drive, you need a new operating system". Wish I had switched to Linux earlier.
@@archetype6351 same
If I'm correct windows reserves memory a lot for performance reasons. So it's not wasted. It's reserved or cashed memory.
@@michelvosje umm, no. Linux does that too, what extra fluff does windows need to store? Does Linux run slow because it's taking up less ram? We know Linux runs faster, that means it's storing things in ram too, just that it does not have to store, candy crush, useless xbox related things, the spyware daemon in the background etc.
Also, the OS is supposed to kill stuff if it is under load, does windows free up that 5 gb?
I was actually going to use this distro on my main machine but Debian repositories are a bit annoying. Now I'm using Artix runit w/ IceWM and it is very comfortable. Love antiX and it is what inspired me to start using IceWM in the first place. It is a very clean distro.
it's run by SJWs
@@ps5hasnogames55 I understand your concerns. And realistically there are other alternatives so why not pick up something not dipping their nose into politics. But I will say my 1.9 GHz laptop did not mind whatsoever.
@@blossomcherrypink isnt antix the distro that is Arch without System D? btw, does it have AUR? also is it lighter than arch?
@@blossomcherrypink wait isn't fascism like super bad?
@@somewhathappy5610 yea, definitely, but so is politicizing everything. It’s divisive and it’s always about me vs you, us vs them.
Neofetch has an antix logo but you need to manually set it in the config otherwise it displays Debian
antix is a marxist authoritarian anti-freedom distro so no thanks
@@ps5hasnogames55 antix is a what?
@@jhny0 same question
@@ps5hasnogames55 why? …because? What is your best alternative, and why, please?
@@btsr2553 alpine, devuan, void linux all far superior
On older hw I tried in the past puppy Linux (before the forks) and both slitaz and slax working, now in recent time I have rasbian and had batocera Linux on old laptops. I keep hearing about antix so I checked this. Great video.
Nice overview! I love any mention of MX Linux and AntiX - those projects really can bring new life to old devices :)
It would've been great if you could show the snapshot tool - that imo is truly an awesome functionality that would be helpful especially novices.
Proudly anti-fascist "antiX Magic"
You know that you deal with a bunch of moronic commies.
Awesome, Downloading this right now to test it out. I have plenty of ram and cpu, but I really appreciate a snappy system and this looks super interesting. Thanks for sharing a deeper look!
AntiX is awesome, but I tried Q4OS Trinity and it worked very well also (Pentium DualCore 3gb) giving a more integrated desktop exeprience. KDE3 apps are still very good ;-)
This is the first time I've seen any Marxist influence in the FOSS world. I really thought it'd be all over the FOSS movement. I'm not endorsing any particular ideology, but you gotta admit, FOSS has some socialist undertones. It's free software in which anyone can contribute, and everyone that works on it has part ownership. It's got a VERY anti-corporate aura around it, one that somehow rivals that of the old school 'worker's rights'-type socialists. It's really amazing that the FOSS movement hasn't been high-jacked by political interests already.
RMS is super leftist, almost to the point of parody
so
@@tylerdean980 I didn't know that, thank you! RMS is a very... interesting character lmao
@@proctoscopefilms Yeah, I usually say "controversial" and keep it at that. But I agree with you about Marxist influences in the open source ideaology. The idea that software should be free and open to everyone goes along with the idea of food, medicine, education, and housing should be free and open to everyone. But unfortunately the alt-right movement has wrapped it's tendrils around the FOSS community.
Funnily enough the communist countries probably have some of the least access or even even outright discouragement of FOSS
On the brief note of Antix and Mx sharing tools, it is because they're part of the same project, Antix is literally the X in MX.
I'm so happy you did this video!! I have had a love hate relationship with this distro but I truly believe it wasn't the distro,cit was me. Actually I really love it especially the rox filer. It's so underrated and feature rich!!😀
I run it but like Ice-Space
Really would want to see it on a really old system. Push it to the limit
Yes, icewm is very cool and fast. Nice to see it in action again, used it decades ago on a 80486 computer. Have to install it again, it was the fastest window manager i ever had even sometimes faster than blackbox, fluxbox etc.
What requirements has? Maybe I could try on a old 486 or a pentium
@@AlejandroRodolfoMendez I don't know. Kernel etc. is much bigger nowadays. I used to run Debian Potato with icewm on an i486DX2/66, must have been around year 2002. With the old packages it definitely should run but antiX is up to date, more secure and especially lightweight for old machines. Just try it. P.S. But websites and browsers got bigger too, I doubt TH-cam will run on i486, maybe via VLC. But Abiword, Gnumeric, MP3 etc. should work just fine.
Do you use the sysVinit or runit? I need the easy to use, less glitchy one.
Nice timing, last few days my wife family member old laptop from 2010 (i believe its netbook),
tried Xubuntu, run great but very laggy and RAM usage easily full. Till i found this video, will try today. Thanks and sub!
This distro is great for newer computers as well. On my mini PCs it runs great!! 😀
I use antix as a daily driver with a t60p thinkpad maxed out. It’s really great to have a system with such low ram usage.
@@GottaBeNoah not at least on the kind of hardware that I use. On idle shows me 1 % of cpu usage in a core 2 duo t7200 with 4 gb of ram (only 3gb are usable, and the system on idle uses 200-300 gb) and a budget 120 gb ssd.
@@diegomillan2806 I hate the settings application do you know how to install a better settings application like kde or gnome settings? Because for a noob it's hard to configure this os with outdated software that lacks functionality I need
I have the same T60 laptop as a daily driver, and thinking about trying out a Linux version on it in the future. Are you still satisfied with antix on your laptop? An other comment here mentioned unusually high idle power consumption on his laptop with this distro (higher than it had with any other linux distributions), have you experienced any similar issue?
Also I have Win 8.1 currently on my T60 laptop, and I undervolt the CPU with a program to make it run cooler (the improvement is quite significant). Are there tools on Linux (especially for this antix distro) for cpu undervolting?
@@kosztaz87 if you have a t60p thinkpad (with a amd firegl graphics) maybe the best option out of the box is manjaro. The gpu works better. Right now im using manjaro kde because and actualization breaks my gpu and i have to fix the "no UMS in radeon modules" message with a kernel change, which is something that as a newbie to linux you dont want to treat inmediatly, because you are learning the basics.
For Undervolting i really dont know, i usually dont have thermal problems with a good thermal paste, but i read some threads on thinkwiki forum who explains everything about undervolt in linux. Let me search it and i put the links right here.
@@diegomillan2806 Yeah doing those things would be definitely above my skill level, so will rather look into manjaro.
Although I have a modified Thinkpad too (a so called "Frankenpad", it's a T61 motherboard with the Nvidia NVS140m gpu in a 15 inch T60 body), would antix work better with the Nvidia gpu in that machine?
Thank you, sir! Great distro to reanimate my old laptop. So it wont be trash.
I can also recommend SliTaz Linux for old PCs. It's super-small and relatively easy to use!
was that project dead at a point or am I tripping?
I often use antix on older hardware. It runs really really well
too bad it's run by SJWs otherwise i'd use it
@@ps5hasnogames55 hm didnt know that. But what other alternatives are there that are systemd free and lightweight?
@@tj71520 void linux
@@ps5hasnogames55 cool, I will give it a whirl
@@kreuner11 not politics, lack of security updates in antix is the main reason .. it turns out they are slow to make security updates
Another good lighweight albeit slightly heavier linux distro (not by much) is VOID Linux in particular the MUSL varient. I have it on my laptop which is newer but basically bottom of the barrel from like 2018. It's great and only uses around 300mb of ram on boot.
It'd be neat if musl worked with systemd.
Not a problem for void I guess.
void is superior simply because it doesn't pride itself on being run by SJWs
Void is really light, I’ve got it lighter than antiX, with DWM, void idles around 90MB. But void is also ‘void’ of packages. So, antiX is better because of that alone.
@@tylerdean980 what is void missing? I have basically everything I need setup (although I configure and install nvim and zsh with nix) there's a few proprietary packages you can't install on musl but can be installed on glibc with xbps-src
Pretty much the only thing I couldn't get from the official repo was lua-language-server but thankfully that was in nixpkgs
@@cockatoofan Honestly, now that they've moved away from LibreSSL maybe it's better than it used to be. But I wasn't able to get a package for my Broadcom driver, even after enabling the non free repo. And if I remember right, they only have like 20k packages in the repos, right? If I'm accurate, that's less than half of what a debian system would get you.
AntiX and IceWM is definitely one of the lightest desktop distros, but I found the last 32-bit version of Linux Mint Xfce to be a much better experience overall, after following a performance tuning guide I found online. IceWM was a great DE 20 years ago when I was running it on a laptop with Libranet Linux, but it feels very archaic these days. Most DEs today at least have a searchable app menu/launcher, even Xfce and LXDE.
it's a matter of workflow. you can integrate all those functions into icewm, it's very powerful. also, i don't get why you would use a 32 bit os on a 64 bit machine
@@francescovolpini 64-bit distros use about twice the RAM just for the base desktop. Really old laptops have max RAM limits from 256MB to 1GB. Even Xfce uses around 350MB on a 64-bit OS. About 180MB on a 32-bit version of the same OS. With such limited RAM there isn’t an advantage to going 64-bit. And then of course the actual laptop I was messing with had a single core 32-bit CPU. So…
@@RedBearAKum. No. My xfce runs over a GB
Do you remember the name of the guide? I am on Antix which works smoother than mint xfce, but it is such an ugly and messy OS, even with customization.
I've found a very old computer with 256mb of ram on the streets about a year ago. I might try to install this Linux distro on it just for fun
might be a tad too heavy for 256, have a look at tiny core or some of the smaller puppy linux versions
I've still got my first usb 1.0 flash drive - 128 mb - and it's still functioning. It's not in regular use, I just plug it in every couple of years to see if it's still alive.
One of the small Puppy linux distros is probably your best bet with your old laptop. They're suprisingly workable.
GhostBSD is also very very light yet has a Mate hat. I usually put that on clients low end laptops. Also Solus is a very clean and fast production.
Ghost BSB isn't a bad offering and I like Nomad BSD too, but neither as quick or low resource as AntiX. Q4OS and Mabox good calls too Again quicker than Ghost BSD in *my* experience
Bohdi has been my go to for old tech but I like this I’m gonna try it. Thanks for the vid.
thanks so very much i didnt know what version to download but after watching your great video iam ok,thanks again
Thank you for the review!
The distro has nice and useful features! I'll think about installing it on old computers.
One of the most lightweight Linux distros. The people who say this. Don't know what they're talking about most of the time. One of the best lightweight Linux distributions is Oasis Linux. It has the most lightweight window manager (Velox because it's based on swc which is 40x as light as icewm). It uses about 50 megs of disk space. Which is ofcourse lower than 3.5G. And the RAM usage is about 20 megs of RAM. It is barely usable as a daily-driver because it uses musl. Which barely works if you want to use something that isn't lightweight (Pipewire, pulseaudio, etc.).
And at least Oasis linux not made by Antifa commies, I think.
I really love your channel man keep it up
This is a super review. Thank you!!!
Yeay! Was looking forward to your deeper dive. Tq.
this distro looks very nice, and performance is great (my laptop can play 4k youtube videos without dropped frames which on other distros it cant) but i did some testing and something does not add up
on a i5 4200u laptop with the battery pulled out, kwyboard light off, screen to minimul, fans off, it pulls
~17w on idle, fresh boot, measured with a socket power meter
the same laptop would pull ~8-10w on idle with pretty much any other heavier distros like mint, zorin, elementary, feren, some of which hover around 2gb idle ram usage
i don't know where this is coming from, maybe cpu scheduler, maybe it avtivated the nvidia gpu by itself,
can anyone else measure the power usage and make some comparisons to other distros?
It might have a "maximum performance when on AC" mode activated or perhaps just has a really bad built in cpu frequency controller.
If you install powertop (sudo apt install powertop) then you will be able to see a detailed list of what things are using power and how much.
Might be worth trying out auto-cpufreq, it will automatically control the cpu frequency to save battery better (when off ac power) than the distro usually will, my computer now idles at 800mhz most of the time on battery and has definitely improved battery life.
Look for a power manager and set it to power saving mode
Or turn off max performance on AC
In surprised antix hasn't been updated yet.
it is. its still in beta but its totally usable. ive been rocking antix (installed gnome btw) on my gaming pc full time (ryzen 5 5600x & rtx 3060ti) for a few weeks now, its super fast and by far the fastest and smoothest distro ive used for gaming and for general use. its basically a preconfigured debian minus all the bullcrap and systemd. i use openrc and everything just simply works.
@@nabildanial00 uh. Well I guess. Really any distro would work for you. My 2010 core 2(intergated graphics) it works pretty well
It has been useable for several years at this point, Ive used it since 2017
@@tj71520 I'm not saying it's unusable just not updated yet to debian 11.
@@spaceguybobit takes time for them to remove all the bullcrap like systemd etc each time there is a new release plus they need to do alot of other stuff to the distro... however, they ought to remove the political stuff from the distro and they shouldnt be afraid to offer installation of the propietary drivers
Antix isn't the most user friendly, if you're coming from a Windows background,(personal experience) It's great in many ways, but not necessarily intuitive, like trying to cut and paste, from one folder to another. If there is a way to do that, then please inform me. Also, from running Antix, as a live USB on my Windows system, I can't seem to mount the Windows drive. I'm open to learning.
Sounds like a SpaceFM issue, try updating it or install other file managers like Thunar or Nemo. Hope it helps. :]
Modern Windows doesn't completely shut down so locks the partition to prevent damage. Doing a full Windows shut down by pressing WINKEY+R and typing:
shutdown -s -t 00
and hitting enter should leave the partition accessible. I've seen another solution mentioned which may have involved changing a setting in the bios but this method works fine for me.
@@mj-x4416 Thanks, I figured that part out. I found a shut down script that handles that nicely.
1) to cut and paste (move) , use terminal `mv`.
2) sudo mount NAME/ID PATH_to_mount
@@godfather7339 You're right, You absolutely right.
But The way you explain it, will just make any beginner afraid to use Linux.
having the marxists internet archive default in the bookmarks would be a reason for me install. but i'm a happy arch user who just reads their literature
Thanks this is what I been looking for perfect
kinda late 4 a comment on this vid, but thanks anyways man!! u helped me a lot with your review, i´m installing it (right now) in my old potato laptop (acer aspire3) wich i still love even when it´s spec´s are reaaaaally low for nowadays
I am so glad it was born in my country!
Appreciate your videos ! Have you ever tried out NixOS? It seems like an interesting take on Linux and would be curious about your thoughts
I‘m trying out guix right now, which should be similar... definitely intriguing but also a bit too rich for the average person o think.
@@florianfelix8295 a bit rich as in learning curve?
And here I am using 1.5 gigs on boot. I need to clean my install bloody hell
on box-look there are good themes to customize IceWM
Maestro
nice bookmarx
Every time I try to install, I get an error saying grub wasn't installed correctly!
I use antix19. 4 on a old desktop pc having intel pentium J2900, integrated graphics, 120 HDD & 2G DDR3 RAM. It really works like magic. The only problem is I am noob in linux and I can't seem to find a better way to change the way ot looks but Manjaro wallpapers do look great with Antix IceWM theming. Seriously it works better than linux mint on my Laptop with much better config than my desktop pc. If someone knows how to make it look better, please share..
At 10:10 you can see how to install a new desktop environment. Go with xfce or MATE if you want to keep the lightness of the system.
Great video, very informative!
Poland?, thumb up:)
I will be trying this on a potato machine that can barely type a Google Doc
Fingers crossed that it works well
Can you do a video on Tiny Core OS? It's the most mimimal you can get. The smallest iso is like 12 or 16mb
antix is more functional lol, bc debian bruh
@@rbs9227 more usuable, but also more bloat. Would be interesting to see how far you can go to remove bloat (which is basically what TinyCoreOS does)
@@Cookiekeks so what do you define as 'bloat'? Things YOU don't need but someone else might?
@@antiX1917 in this case I just meant everything that isn't necessary for an OS to run
@@Cookiekeks So in that case, try antiX-net or antiX-core.
Next up, Puppy! :)
Awful.
Informative Bro
Lubuntub is also a good option but this looks good too
My guy adress how the pollitical undertones are not the main focus on the video, but every one took that and threw it out the window. I hate the internet some times :^ )
Nice video! Just let you know that this RAM consumption can be a bit misleading. First, you're running in a VM and that usually means less RAM usage by definition. Also, because this distro is using a really old kernel (from 2016!), not only it uses less RAM but it won't work properly on new machines. So... what about lightweight distros that run new kernel/packages and also has a small ISO size? Porteus, maybe? :)
He tried it on his old laptop on the other video and it seemed to consume even less ram than on this vn
Arch.
Thanks for the video, I wanted a lightweight system that can run on the dual boot for the minimum storage possible. It seems that AntiX is what I need.
Installed it today. This thing run below 100MB...Now i'll rice it
Maybe unrelated, but does your (anyone reading this) RAM usage increases the more you use it?
Only if you got more stuff running on it or in the background.
Yes, sometimes if the system has memory available, then it simply uses that instead of "releasing" the one in use. The idea is that if you return to your previous work, you don't need to waste time waiting for everything to reload from the drive. And if the system get's short on ram, then it start to release the space used by those older things first.
That's why the exact same distro can use differents amount of ram in different computers.
Is there any sense in installing AntiX on a decent modern PC? I mean, being lightweight is great, but what are cons of this choice over, let's say, original debian?
I have used Antix and it is a great distro. Great video.
I had that exactly netbook, I use mint on it, cuz it was the first that I had on a pen drive . Works fine now I can even do python graphs on it.
But I am kinda digging this one, might change
Yes great video. I put antix on a very old laptop (architechture 32 bits, 532 RAM) and it's very fast. My only draw back (till now) is that it's not very intuitive. For instance I can't figure out how to set up my internet connexion. I look at the official forum and the only answer I found is to open Connman tray and fill the fields (not those exact terms but you got the point). But those fields are not very 'user friendly' in my opinion
Do you use the sysVinit or runit? I need the easy to use, less glitchy one.
My 12 y/o tower runs AntiX and it works reasonable for a 12 year old PC.
Play Wot BLITZ on antiX on my old notebook)
Nice work OS 5/5
Can we appreciate that the installer already copies the files while you are going through the config?
Good review.
I tried installing this distro but it wanted me to redistribute my cores.
amazing disto..loved that ..better than linux mint ..by far ! bye bye linux mint ! thanks for the video
Could a Windows user install this and use it just for browsing, youtube vids? I have an old laptop that even Zorin lite just hangs up on.
Yeah you could use it for browsing and TH-cam vids just don't do anything too difficult on the system
i wanted to install it on an old laptop but unfortunately i cant connect to any wifi
i tried it on multiple devices but the conman app doesnt show me any wifi connections
is there someone with a similiar problem?
Under maintenance go to network assistant. Then go to the Linux drivers section and if you know your broadcam driver load it and unblock it. If you don't just load and unblock them all and you should be fine
@@20thCY thanks a lot!
Cool, if I can find the time, I'd like to try the base ISO :)
Another lightweight distro would be Alpine Linux.
and it doesn't try to force marxist propaganda on you
@@ps5hasnogames55 antiX doesn't "force" it on you. It's just a few bookmarks which can be easily removed. I don't know why ppl have to act like triggered snowflakes when a distro comes with a bunch of bookmarks. It's not the end of the world.
Whatever happened to "Deal with it"...
@@knight_kazul not just a few bookmarks. proudly written all over their website and forums too and clearly guides the philosphy of the people who make and use the distro. so no thanks. i'll stick to distros that focus on making a distro, not on politics.
@@ps5hasnogames55 Sounds like you care more about their political stance than the product they offer. I don't really care but in my opinion that is a really, shall we say, inefficient way of looking at the world. Just saying.
And it's not "all over" their website, they only mention it in the header and that's it.
Would you like the distro better if they were fascistic instead?
@@knight_kazul no, I would like it better if it didn't have any political BS anywhere.
Does it support running PiHole or PiVPN? I do not know if these depend on systemd... (And yes, I want to install these services on a X86_amd64 computer I have laying around, not a RasPi.)
Second that, great question
This cool but what had are you using?
What Desktop Environment does this run? Looks really nice ^^
Icewm ,probably with no desktop environment
Rox - IxeWM You can change WMs on the fly within antiX I run it on USB3 srick with Fedora my nain install.
Nice to hear you support anti-facism! Open-source software is really big among a lot of us on the left.
Your ideology has gotten millions of people killed. But you would never admit that, would you? Only what's on the surface level. Antifa is a terrorist organization.
@@christophermcevoy6866 what? Hahahaha
@@christophermcevoy6866 Last time I checked it was fascists who killed millions of people. But you don't really care about facts, do you?
@@ratatatuff kind of both really, if I remember correctly the OG antifa was pro USSR
@@My_Old_YT_Account You don't remember correctly ...
Buen video
How does it do with CPU?
KDE is supposed to be lighter than XFCE on RAM these days, but it's unusable on my HP Mini. It can boot into the desktop, but loading anything would cause it to get stuck. But you can actually get stuff done with any XFCE distro (Mint, Zorin OS Lite, Linux Lite) on this same HP Mini, even though it supposedly uses more RAM. I have Lubuntu on it right now but can't tell whether AntiX would run faster because the only comparison being made is RAM.
4:59 because antix and mx are same teams
LET'S GOOOOOO
Does the antix/IceWM distro come with 'ethtool'? Just looking to do a quick mac address change and installing linux, even on a vm, takes a while and gigs of space. Hoping just a bare live cd that can do ethtool.
best honeypot distro out there. show it to all your college tutors and classmates!
What do you mean?
Tried this, but CubLinux is still my fav light distro, not supported anymore but still my go-to light on resources based on Ubuntu 14.0.1. Way more bare ones though.
thanks for another informative video; how do I have different wallpaper on each workspace? thanks again
If you come from windows , for old computers Lubuntu is more user friendly
Fair point. It would be interesting to see resource usage on abtiX with Lxqt DE installed. Prefer antiX with Debian base and none of the snap software steerings.
That is true. Linux Mint: Mate edition is also user-friendly for Windows converts and older hardware (only older versions of Linux Mint support 32-bit though).
@@barriewood9336 I'll stick with lubuntu. I don't want to use a distro made by Antifa.
Thanks for this video... Trying to bring an Emachines E442-v133 back to life, any other suggestions?
Seemed very interesting, but when i tried to boot it and it went well until it got stuck with the cursor in the middle and a pitch black background. Had to reset the laptop and I can't get it to work at all. Any tips? This distro looks like it can give life to a few outdated laptops lying around. Alternatively, I hope you can do a showcase on Dietpi for PC, looks very promising especially for lightweight distros.
I can't really tell, but do you have an NVidia GPU ? And if yes, have you installed its required drivers ?
@@Winnetou17 I do, how do I get new drivers if I'm stuck in that screen? It also has integrated graphics so I don't see why it would opt for the nvidia if it doesn't work.
Cuz has a single core, +Hyper-thread.... Got it on U-tube with Puppy-Linux. Is antiX lighter than puppy?
use alpine or void or devuan not this marxist propaganda antix shit
@@ps5hasnogames55 ?? you have one vid on your channel... And you self-id, as a Marxist.... Come out of the closet and admit, you use anti-X as your daily driver.... LOL
@@ps5hasnogames55 Poor dear, yes, stay away from this distro! Especially those bookmarks! It might turn you into a person who reads and thinks, if you're not careful. It takes stern resolve to remain properly ignorant.
@@nycbearff Lol, refusing SJW indoctrination is "ignorant"
Does it come with night light default setting
IIRC, it does. You could either install an extra program, that works with geoclue so it does it according to your location. Or use the already onboard one, that you can simple turn on/off or set timers.
Though you have to look for it, I found it "by accident"
If antiX in just debian, what's the point? When I started on Debian 20 years ago I used to install a barebones minimal install, reboot and install X, WMs, and applications on top of that, and there's my lean distro.
If a modern kernel feels slow, you may do better with an older smaller kernel.
I run an old computer, and running modern software is getting challenging, even with a minimal Debian install. Firefox and Chromium are particularly painful, but SeaMonkey and Pale moon to the rescue.
Overall, it's just a matter of app selection, choosing light weight programs over bloated alternatives.
Getting rid of SystemD also markedly improved system responsiveness.
If I were to leave Debian, or I'd opt for freebsd or derivatives, or perhaps a similar Linux such as Slack, or the few BSD inspired Linux distros around that have simplicity in mind and better HW support due to the Linux kernel, and keep on top of newer developments such as Wayland, since Linux is the place most development occurs.
AntiX are ethically suspect, despite their label its obvious those types love the jackboot as long as it is on their side.
I don't know if it was just my timing but when I tried to load up this distro (antiX 21 I believe is what I grabbed) the theme was very old looking and not really anything of what was shown here (could be the version I had/have which if it is please let me know). I tried antiX 21 base and full. (looking around i am seeing it might be a version thing, between antiX19 and 21)
yes, for some strange reason antix 21 has an ugly and old theming xd...
I wouldn't call geany a "text editor" it's more of a programmers IDE like Notepad++. It's actually extrememly powerful. It's along the lines of Microsoft's VisualCode, but less features.
What version of Antix is this? This doesn't look like the latest version?
Is there any advantage of using IceWM over, say Fluxbox? IceWM is not a wm that one sees often bundled with distros
Wow it's cool AntiX Linux is laptop
I installed Debian with IceWM instead
Can you make the windows open in the same place every time - a bit like a tiling WM? For example: If I resize app windows and open them in a certain order on Xfce, then they are in the same place every time I use my PC.
performance is good but design is not
file manager soo bad
Rox is quite rich in settings. Right click on an empty space in folder and tune it.
Can any1 help me i installed all linuxs but all lagged some freezed i hve dell inspiron 15 and want to use it for coding
Requirment : chrome+vscode or any + discord
I've had a rough time getting antiX to boot up. xD I think these ultralight distro's hate me. Hardware detection issues are very common. I wish they would work, as I could get some decent headroom, with their levity.
Even though Antix performed just fine on a USB stick, when I installed it to HDD it was slooooooooooow idk what i did wrong or what 64 bit machine
you might want to do a proper check on your HDD. The Live USB runs on the stick and RAM of the PC. If it is slow / unresponsive after installing on the HDD it's either a HDD issue or a controller issue.
Check with the folks on the MX Linux (area AntiX) forum or on the AntiX forum itself. Providing the necessary info these guys and gals are lightning fast to help.
Thanks for this video !
How can you access to your Google-Drive account if you use AntiX ? There is no gnome-online-account ...
Thanks for your help !