Any other AntiX fans?, /pimp Options

[TazFromOz]

All I can say is Wow! This archaic Portege has a new lease on life. Soo fast, literally about 10 times as fast as it was running Windows XP. About three times as fast as my beefy Win7 machine. Very slick looking, yet still light weight (uses about 40mb of ram), leaving plenty for the other light weight software it comes with. If you're looking for something to give an old machine a new lease on life, this is it. It detected everything out of the box (including 2 pdmcia cards, an old network stick, and my tethered android phone.

It is basically a skinnier version of Mepis (by the same people) designed to run on old hardware (hence the play on words in the name - Antix = Antiques). It only requires 128 meg of ram for a full install (it can run in 64 meg if it's tweaked, but there will be trade-offs) - but Pentium II - III old it has no trouble with. It is a rolling distribution, running the latest greatest kernal, but unlike other modern distros, it hasn't succumbed to bloat. Antix is Debian based, and has access to the full Debian repository (the biggest repository of all). The look of the default front end (IceWM) is slick and clean, and set out in a way that would make it easy and intuitive (even for Windows Users).

Highly recommended. Not sure how full featured it is for hackers and high end users, but if you want a computer that 'just works' I really recommend it.

This post has been edited by TazFromOz: Jan 22 2012, 08:08 PM

[iamthemaxx]

Never heard of it. Looks slick though.

[TinBane]

Cheers for the heads up! I'm going to check it out.

[Devilsmurf]

About to download it and dual boot with XP on a Dell Dimension 3100 with 1gb ram.

Looking forward to playing with it.

[TazFromOz]

About to download it and dual boot with XP on a Dell Dimension 3100 with 1gb ram.

Looking forward to playing with it.

:) - Look forward to getting your feedback. Should run pretty well with that much ram to play with. :)

[Devilsmurf]

Unfortunately my efforts have stalled for the moment, Telstra stuffing up my new connection + study commitments have slowed me down. Telstra issue was fixed today, day off tomorrow. Could be a chance to get it installed and have some fun tomorrow !

I want it to be a simple file server/downloader with external net administration (I'm not often at home to play with it ) so I'll be looking to see what I can do. Being relatively new to Linux I imagine I'll make a few errors along the way !

I did get a temporary install of Ubuntu 11.10 on the machine, but disappointed by how sluggish it was. Booted into an alternate desktop manager (fluxbox maybe ? ) and it was much better. Still keen to give antix a whirl though.

[Devilsmurf]

So, mostly happy with the distro, but having some strange issues.

Occasional freezes/major slowdowns, and constant crashes of Iceape. Perhaps it's a connected issue. I'm going to try and change browsers and see what happens.

Installed Deluge and getting mostly ok speeds, could be better though.

[Devilsmurf]

It seems I didn't set the swap parititon properly, perhaps that was the issue.

[nobody813]

May give it a go on my elderly Dell Latitude. Lubuntu is workable, but definitely not quick

[TazFromOz]

Hey Devilsmurf - I was having a few Iceape issues at first too. It didn't like certain security certificates. I did apt-get install iceape in terminal to update it to the newest version, and now it's all good.