If you’re a first-time user of antiX — welcome!

Instead of a heavy common Desktop Environment, antiX uses window managers to control what the end-user can see and do. We hope these FAQs will give you a basic orientation to antiX and its window managers, and provide the means to explore further on your own.

antiX comes in three flavours. antiX comes as a full distro (c695MB), a base distro (c360MB) and a core distro (c135MB) all with a kernel that will boot "antique" PI, PII and K5/K6 AMD as well as the latest "modern" processors.

By default, antiX loads into a Rox-icewm desktop (antiX-base into a Rox-fluxbox desktop) with a few icons on the desktop. If you prefer not to have a Rox desktop, simply add noRox cheatcode at the boot menu screen. What you choose running live will automatically transfer if/when installed.

antiX is a very flexible linux distribution. You can run it live from a cd, live from a usb stick (with persistence ie changes are saved on reboot) as well as setting up a frugal-install from an internal or external hard drive. Of course, you can install to internal and external drives, sticks, cards etc. You can even run it live, add/remove applications, customize it, remaster it and then install. All your changes will carry over to install!

antiX is based on Debian Testing and comes with a custom 3.5.0-486 kernel. antiX also has its own custom scripts and repository to enhance user experience. antiX is a rolling release distro ie you should be able to keep your applications up to date by regularly upgrading. If you wish you can enable the Debian unstable repositories and live on the bleeding-edge! For those that prefer stability, use the wheezy repositories.

A further feature of antiX is that you can install kernels from a variety of sources including MEPIS, Debian, siduction, aptosid and liquorix. This is especially useful if you have a new box as newer hardware is more likely to be detected and work with newer kernels. anticapitalista recommends using a liquorix kernel for 686 processors.

antiX should run on most computers, ranging from 64MB old PII 266 systems with pre-configured 128MB swap to the latest powerful boxes.

antiX-core and antiX-base will run with 64MB RAM plus swap, but don’t expect miracles!

128MB RAM is the recommended minimum for antiX. 256MB RAM and above is preferred especially for antiX-full.

antiX-full needs a 2.5GB minimum hard disk size. antiX-base needs 1.5GB and antiX-core needs 0.5GB.

Most users will be happy to use antiX-full as it offers a full desktop experience on legacy and modern computers.

If you have a very old desktop/laptop with less than 256MB RAM (PI,PII, PIII or K5/6), or you want a desktop with "the bascis", it is probably best to use antiX-base.

If you want complete control over what applications to install and know the Debian system fairly well, then use antiX-core.

Choice! antiX tries to make it easy to boot on any hardware ranging from old boxes where booting with xvesa is needed to boxes with nvidia, radeon and intel drivers.

Simply by typing lang=my_MY e.g lang=fi_Fi for Finnish.

Either choose the no icons option in the menu, or type noRox at the boot menu screen.

Yes you can and if you decide to install during that live session, they will carry over to installation.

If you have less than 128MB RAM, it is best to use the cli-installer from the boot menu to install.

It is also a good idea to create a swap partition before installation.

At the moment, grub-legacy is much easier to edit than grub2 for those that need to edit the boot menu.lst

If users are happy with their present bootloader, grub-legacy, grub2 or whatever else, then it is best to install grub to the root partition or don’t install it at all and then make the necessary changes after installation.

If you are installing only antiX over another OS, or dual booting with windows, then install grub to the MBR. You may have to edit /boot/grub/menu.lst to correctly boot Windows.

Yes, in fact this is the best way to install your localised antiX.

You can set a variety of cheats. For example: lang=en kbd=us,gr tz=Europe/Athens wil give a US English desktop, a toggled Greek, English keyboard and the timezone set to Athens, Greece.

antiX suggests using the smxi tools. See smxi section.

Control Center-→Session-→Set auto-login You will need to reboot for changes to take effect.

Either via synaptic (for antiX-full) Control Center-→ System-→ Manage Packages-→ Settings-→ Repositories or edit individual files in /etc/apt/sources.d/ (for antiX-base and antiX-core)

Gufw is installed but not enabled. Open Control Center-→ Network-→ Manage Firewall

antiX-full comes with synaptic so searching for applications is easy. To search for applications in antiX-base and antiX-core use apt-cache search in a terminal.

For example: apt-cache search video player

antiX is set up using Debian Testing repositories by default. This allows users to keep their system up to date with regular upgrades. antiX recommends using apt-get update followed by apt-get dist-upgrade. Alternatively, use smxi.

You will need to install libdvdcss2 and maybe some codecs by enabling the deb-multimedia repository (see above how to do this) and then either search for libdvdcss2 in synaptic and then install or use the command line.

antiX strongly advises users not to keep the deb-multimedia repository enabled as there may be conflicts.

Six different window managers come installed and ready to use (4 in antiX-base):

All window managers can be run with or without the ROX Desktop environment that provides drag-and-drop functionality or the Conky system monitor that displays real-time information.

antiX also comes with wmii and dwm which support classic and tiling windows.

In IceWM:

You can switch from the default IceWM by right clicking anywhere on the desktop -→ Logout -→ Logout, which will take you back to the slim login box. Toggle F1 until you see the wmm of choice, then log in.

In Fluxbox:

You can switch from Fluxbox to IceWM by right clicking on the desktop -→Exit-→Log Out, which will return you to the slim login box, the default is for IceWM, simply login and your back to IceWM. F1 toggles the WM choices, other than IceWM and Fluxbox, you will not be able to login into one of these until you install those WMs. The metapackage installer will install a number of WMs.

In JWM:

You can switch from JWM by clicking on the menu -→ Logout -→ Logout, which will take you back to the slim login box. Toggle F1 until you see the wmm of choice, then log in.

antiX CC -→ Session -→ Edit Login Options.

In IceWM:

Right click on Desktop -→ Desktop-→ Settings-→ Conky on/off

In Fluxbox:

Right click on Desktop -→ Desktop -→ Conky on/off

In JWM:

Right click on Desktop -→ Desktop -→ Settings-→ Conky on/off

IceWM:

On the toolbar you will see an icon (red) that is the quit icon, with same choices as below. Also if you right click on the Desktop-→Logout there are several options including shutdown.

Fluxbox:

Right Click anywhere on the Desktop -→ Exit, which will present you with the choice to lock screen, hibernate, reboot, logout, suspend, or shut down.

JWM:

On the toolbar you will see an icon (red) that is the quit icon, with same choices as below. Also if you right click on the Desktop-→Logout there are several options including shutdown.

antiX2usb:

For those familiar with the option in Puppy for persistent home via live USB, liveCD or fromiso: welcome! antiX now has a similar feature called antiX2usb and it is found in Control Center-→ Disks. You can use fromiso live to install antiX to a USB stick via antiX2usb and you can choose to have a liveusb with persistence. You can do the same from a live cd/live usb or an installed system using an antiX, MEPIS or Debian iso file.

Metapackage-installer is located in Menu-→ Applications-→ Accessories-→ metapackage-installer You can install packages for Disk-Recovery, Graphics, Language, Network, Non-free, Office, Server, WindowManager. . . simply choose the package you want, and the installer will do the rest. (internet connection required)

LuckyBackup can be found in Control Center-→ Disks-→ Backup Your System or in Menu-→ Applications-→System Tools-→ luckyBackup