antiX

Reader supplied reviews for antiX Average rating 8.3 from 125 review(s) Please specify which version of the distribtion you are reviewing. Please select a rating in the range of 1-10. Please write at least a few sentences about the distribution while limiting your review to 4080 characters. What are your thoughts on antiX? Please include a few pros and a few cons, along with your overall impression of the operating system. Our FAQ page has tips on writing a good mini-review. Version: -- 23.2222119.517.516.31513.212118.5 Rating:    -- 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 out of 10 Your review (minimum 250 words): Past reviews - sort by: DateVotes Version: 23.2 Rating: 9 Date: 2025-06-01 Votes: 8 I've installed antiX on two old laptops, one from 2004 and one from 2009, both with the full antiX suite. Obviously the one from 2009 runs better, where the 2004 laptop could not properly load firefox, since it had only 256 MB RAM available. Perhaps it would run better with a lighter version of antiX, I haven't tried that yet. On my 2009 laptop with 3 GB of RAM I was able to run firefox alright, and even play the linux game 0 A.D. without much problem - though with minimum graphics settings, in order to run somewhat smooth. As another review pointed out, I also had a bit of trouble trying to get the audio to work. It wasn't that important for me, so I didn't look into it too much, but if that is of importance for the user, then that might possible be an issue. I was able to connect to the internet and update the system, the updater is relatively easy to use. Of course with a system like this, that is very lightweight, it can come across as a bit clunky. But that's just the way it is, if it's going to work on really old computers. antiX has a lot of different desktop environments, and the full version is packed(!) with applications/programs. I haven't even looked into everything yet, there's plenty of stuff to work with. The main thing is, I now have up to date systems on my old computers, something Microsoft/Apple does not provide, including Linux distros aimed for newer hardware. To me antiX is really meant for bringing life to old computers, something that is good for the environment by reducing e-waste, and the economy of the user. One could of course use antiX on new hardware, but it doesn't really shine against distros focused on modern hardware. But it is lightweight nonetheless. My impression is that It's not really meant to be run as a daily driver, but as an additional system on an old computer, that could be very useful if your main modern computer goes haywire, or if you need some simple work done while your main computer is busy. I'll give it a 9 of 10 rating, as it's not really a distro I'd recommend as a beginner distro for someone coming to linux, but for it's use it's pretty good. The version I'm using is 23.1 but it's not an available option in the review, so I chose to dispay it as 23.2. Apparently the updated 23.1 is pretty close to 23.2. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 23.2 Rating: 9 Date: 2025-05-30 Votes: 3 I have been distro hopping for a while now, trying to find an OS that does not take an unacceptable period of time to boot. My hardware is old, I have a low spec laptop and desktop, relative to the state of today's hardware. Now both of these devices boot as fast a house cat running away from the sound of a vacuum cleaner. I was also reluctant to try the default zzz-IceWM desktop environment, with no justifiable reason, having never tried it. I was surprised and pleased to discover that the user-land performance is outstanding. It is like it knows what I want to do next, almost before I do. It took me years to discover what the root cause of the slow boot performance was. With the help of some A.I. chat bot research I recently performed, I became educated about the basic differences of service and system managers; that being systemd vs. runit, dinit, and openRC. I elected to install the version that utilizes runit. The only minor problem I have experienced so far is the package manager. Both of my devices are on a bare metal OS defaults install. One has no problem downloading and installing packages. The other throws http 404 errors when attempting to connect to the repositories. I am uncertain why this is happening. For my everyday computer needs, it is unlikely that I will use a distribution that utilizes systemd in the future, unless I have to. The boot up time performance that is gained from not using a distro with systemd is superior. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 23.2 Rating: 1 Date: 2025-05-26 Votes: 0 I was genuinely excited to try antiX Linux on my older laptop, drawn by its reputation as a lightweight, systemd-free distribution that breathes new life into aging hardware. The installation process was surprisingly smooth, and I was immediately impressed by its snappy performance and minimal resource usage right out of the box. The default desktop environment, while not the most modern-looking, was perfectly functional and highly responsive, which was exactly what I was hoping for. Unfortunately, my enthusiasm was quickly dampened by a critical issue: a complete lack of audio output. Despite the system otherwise running flawlessly, no sound would play. Not system notifications, not media files, nothing. I spent a considerable amount of time troubleshooting: diving into alsamixer, checking for muted channels, ensuring the correct sound card was selected (or attempting to), scouring the antiX forums and wider Debian-based support channels for solutions, and trying various configuration tweaks. It's a real shame because, in every other respect, antiX seemed like an ideal fit for this machine. Was this review helpful? Yes No See all 125 reader reviews of antiX...