Hi rokytnji,

Thanks for setting me straight on that, and you are correct, I need to get some experience with antiX. Which one would you suggest, antiX proper or MX? I need it to run on a variety of scenarios, from minimum VM installs to heavy headless servers to fully featured graphical desktops. I would also like it if I could install it on ARM SBCs like the Raspberry Pis to run Kodi on my media center. I also use ZFS extensively and would therefore like to use the standard support which the ZFSOnLinux folks have put out and maintain for plain Debian: https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/zfs-linux

Thanks is advance for your advice.

Cheers,
--
Durval.

I was excited for devuan when it was first announced. Years later, they still haven't had a true release. I'm over them. If I want systemd free (I don't care overmuch either way honestly), I'll go with AntiX as others have said. Had MULTIPLE stable releases in the years Devuan has did next to nothing. IMO, Devuan is just another milepost that has long since run down, and isn't worth the time it takes to go to their site to download.

@durval
I use the 'base' AntiX, it's got enough in it, to do most things, that most folks want to do.

Saying that, 'full' isn't much bigger, & has a load more programs readily available - give them both a try, they fit on a CD, size wise.

Or you could try MIYO or Refracta.

Thanks fatmac. I will try base antiX (lowercase 'a', right?) in a VM here and see how it works.

Cheers,
--
Durval.

or S T A R ...

The antiX distribution provides three primary installation alternatives: antiX Core, antiX Base, and antiX Full.

If you are interested in antiX, as long as you do not mind whether you install most of the software yourself, the antiX Core allows you the most flexibility.

The antiX Base gives you a modest window manager and packaging capability, but still allows you a LOT of freedom to install what you want.

If you install antiX Full you get a lightweight, full-featured system with a couple of different window managers included in the packaging. That introduces the likelihood that you may not use everything provided and you may still want something different, but it's still moderately sized and an excellent option.

But there's more. The MX distribution is now an antiX derivative, which is amusing to me, because antiX was once a "spin-off" of it's original parent, SimplyMEPIS, but has increasingly become it's own distinct system and infrastructure, based more on Debian and it's own collection of tools than in dependency on MEPIS. So it's interesting that when the KDE-based SimplyMEPIS ceased to be developed, the MEPIS Lover's Community worked with one of their members, anticapitalista, to create an XFCE-based system (instead of a KDE-based system) so that it'd be a bit lighter for aging systems. The result is MX, and we've had MX-14, MX-15, and MX-16 released. These can also be used in place of Debian to create an alternative to a systemd based init system.

Hello Masinick,

Thanks for the long and thoughtful response. I still haven't installed antiX nor MX (too much going on in "Real Life" ;-) right now...) so the points you make arrive at a very opportune time. More below:

Two questions:
1) So the difference between Base and Full is the number of Window Managers and other packages installed? In other words, if I install antiX Base and then ann (apt-get install) the missing packages, what I get is exactly antiX Full? Or are there other differences?

2) Is the opposite also true, and all the way? That is, if I take antiX Full and then remove all the packages it has that antiX Core doesn't, do I end up with antiX Core exactly? Or would there be other differences?

Interesting bit of history. From googling and reading around, I got the impression that MEPIS development in general has ceased or is at least very minimal nowadays, and that MX was the way it was going forward, and that it seemed to be developed in annual "releases", which is perfectly fine with me (IMHO doing a reinstall or a major upgrade on a Linux system any more frequently than that is completely crazy).

So, two more questions regarding MX and antiX:
1) Is the difference between MX and antiX Full just XFCE vs the other window managers and maybe other adde packages, in a similar fashion? That is, if I get antiX Full and remove the extra packages and/or add the missing ones, do I end up with something exactly like MX? Or are there other differences?

Cheers,
--
Durval.

MX repos are enabled by default in MX linux.

In AntiX they are commented out and enabled when one wants something from MX developers.
Then we comment them out so as to not screw with

All I can say is hands on experience beats the heck out of forum replies.
Since a VM is involved here. Nothing lost but time in my estimation.

Nothing beats personal experience.

Hi Rokitnji,

I fully agree with you: I will do my own evaluation no matter what.

My idea is just to get as much as possible info on the lay of the land before jumping on it.

Thanks,
--
Durval.

fyi: I loved Devuan's 'step-by-step' install(er) (tho I glitched a couple things)

Since we're talking about non-devuan-based nosystemd distros in a thread about devuan-based nosystemd distros, we should not fail to mention TRIOS GNU/Linux, which is a debian-based system that uses openrc.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/ope...esrbija-trios/

And there's also Adam Borowski's repository of nosystemd packages here -
http://angband.pl/debian/

For those who say that Devuan has not delivered, I say you need to look closer. Devuan delivered a rock-solid and stable distribution over a year ago. However there are still some loose ends, and those loose ends are things that people notice up front, such as the installer still being in beta due to a few issues. Beta1 only did netinstall, beta2 won't detect your wireless and install the non-free firmware during installation, and neither of the betas will install the Devuan desktop theme. If those issues are show-stoppers for you, I can tell you three ways to install devuan without using the beta installer. And you'll even get the theme with one of those methods.

How many packages have the Devuan devs modified or created? There are still some packages that haven't been purged of their dependency on libsystemd0. The one that comes to mind is gvfs-daemons. Without that, you can't have a trash icon on your desktop and you won't get a pop-up icon when you plug in a removable drive. Those things didn't exist when I started using linux, and I've been doing fine without them for the past year.

I think there are still these loose ends because there's only a small number of devuan developers, and I'm pretty sure they're all sysadmins with day jobs. Add to that the fact that Devuan is working perfectly for them (and me) and I guess there hasn't been a lot of motivation to get the last things fixed.

Progress has been slow, but it continues. I liken it to losing weight - the slower the pounds (or kilos) go away, the more likely they are to stay away.

2 members found this post helpful.

devuan rocks, thank you for your efforts on working on FREE SOFTWARE !!
I am sure that Richard S. would like it.

1 members found this post helpful.

I'm afraid that Stallman has no opinion on this matter... so no sense in dragging him into it.

http://www.networkworld.com/article/...-and-more.html

And another mythbuster for you (straight from the horse's mouth no less):

https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html

Anything released under one of Stallman's copyleft licenses is ok with him, POSIX compliance or 'UNIX philosophy' doesn't even come into it.

(same goes for Torvalds: http://www.itwire.com/business-it-ne...ons-on-systemd)

It's developed by Red Hat employees, Red Hat being one of the biggest code and funding contributors to GNU/Linux. gnome, arguably the most popular desktop environment is heavily invested in it and Ubuntu, the most well known desktop Linux distribution has adopted it - as has it's parent Debian.

Realistically, it's here to stay and a few distributions avoiding it to give the user choice is still a good thing, but all of the fanboi behaviour has gotten boring. Slackware is a solid Linux distribution and a great way to avoid systemd without all of the hot air spouted by the systemd opposition types.

2 members found this post helpful.

In my personal experience Devuan is rock solid on all machines.

1 members found this post helpful.

Did you know Debian just released 9.x as their most stable distribution?