AntiX-22 Released | Hacker News Reader

AntiX-22 Released

antixlinux.com

29 pointstodsacerdoti55 comments

What exactly is "AntiX"?

The byline of "anti-fascist" makes it seem like something more than just systemd-free. Anti-what? It still comes with X-server... or is systemd fascism now?

Along with the OS installation you get a collection of information and texts written by socialist thinkers, and other resources.

It's anti-capitalist, and it's been around since before systemd was a thing.

I think this is also a play of word with antique to emphasis it runs on old computers as well, a kind of contraction of what would be antique linux and it is not related with being anti X-server.

The distribution predate systemd so unrelated.

What is the point of a systemd-free distro?

Personally, I will never go back to writing startup scripts again.

Or what's the point of having another systemd-free Debian distro when there's already Devuan?

What's the point in having another systemd distro when there's already Red Hat Inc? /s

The point is these are companies like Red Hat and Suse that "naturally" compete. Free software communities working on Linux distributions would be better off to join their forces. Just my opinion, though, of course they are free to do what they want as I am free to express my opinion on the matter.

AntiX already works together with MX Linux. But to answer your point, cooperation is independent of distros.

The point is less mess & hassle freeness. And the ability to load it into RAM, and have it running from there, without effort, because it was made with that use-case in mind, among others.

$ uptime 07:21:39 up 128 days, 21:23, 3 users, load average: 0.38, 0.54, 0.60

The above is MX-Linux actually, but doesn't really matter, because they use the same framework, and the default image contains more stuff, while Antix is more 'spartan'.

What's with the uptime stats? Recently I had a systemd based server with two years of uptime. Nothing to be proud of, though, because obviously I missed to install a lot of kernel updates.

Yeah, got a point there. I just posted that to confirm the 'messlessness' :-)

As in having booted the image into ram, chosen a few menu-items via function keys, and having worked from there. Without having to edit any 'scripts', btw.

As desktop. While not having updated the kernel, it got updates for the layers above, though. Anyways, it just works for me.

(Shrug)

How many times a day/week/month do you have to setup services on your computers?

I tried artix (not antix) archlinux systemdless based distro mostly out of curiosity a few weeks ago as I wanted to repurpose an old computer. I was also curious of systemd's memory overhead as I've seen report of people running a base kde with little memory usage on slackware compared to other distros. Turns out that writing a service definition for runit is even less complicated than for systemd. It might not be as flexible though but I didn't reach the point when I needed those options yet.

So for now I am living happily without systemd in at least one computer at my home and my quality of life hasn't changed at all, it just remembers me it is different the few times I type systemctl or journalctl out of habit.

Been using NixOS for a while now. It's heavily systemd oriented, and it also makes adding and configuring systemd-based services and jobs a breeze. I find myself doing it multiple times a week.

Same here. I do not have any opinion towards systemd, but using it together with NixOS is really simple and hassle-free.

What I meant is that in most case, the service you need are already configure and come with the packages of the distro and the only thing you do is enabling and starting them.

Which is not more difficult with runit than systemd and it is probably the same for dinit or openrc.

I mean systemd is still great, it allow a regular unprivileged user to create services and timers without having admin access, which is really nice to launch automatically some podman containers for example. But this is a niche use case and mostly limited to dev/sysadmins.

How did the memory usage comparison pan out?

Hard to say immediately as I am running it with sddm + sway so it can be lightweight.

I can boot up another laptop and configure it to use sddm + sway to compare in a couple minutes.

The alternative to systemd is not startup scripts. There are smart service managers that do not try to take over your entire system. s6 is a good example.

I think the point is one less giant blob of technically open, but extremely obfuscated chunk of questionable usefulness on your system.

I'm not sure about you, but I've used many distros, with and without systemd, and never had to write a startup script. The package manager takes care of it (or I switch to a different distro.)

Healthy competition between modern init systems: runit, openrc, s6, systemd... This choice should be yours when you install a system.

Just like you wouldn't want to have no choice for your desktop environment (why would anyone not want GNOME?), widgets, toolkits and libraries.

Choice, modularity and competition between subsystems and libraries is what makes Linux an open, innovative environment.

Right and every package will need to have init configs for all the systems. Are you high?

This is how it's already done on Devuan.

https://www.devuan.org/os/init-freedom

https://www.devuan.org/os/documentation/install-guides/chima... (older screenshot)

Both radical left and radical right hating systemd is an unexpected manifestation of horseshoe theory

Who even is "the radical left and right" hating systemd? It's two or three people screaming on the internet.

Do most of you posting here code in Linux? Or is it just your desktop of choice. I’ve been on macOS for many years. Probably 30+ and I’ve dabbled in so many Linux distros. I do want to set up a system again that is minimal and quick. Any recommendations? Cheers!

Void Linux is both minimal and quick. The base live image is <700MB. I've been using the same installation I've had for >5 years with no hiccups so it seem pretty stable for my use case too, although I only really use it for basic stuff like programming, browsing, reading books so ymmv.

Thanks for the recommendation, I’ll take a look at it. 5 years that’s great!

Run linux in a VM like VirtualBox first and find a linux distribution that you like. I would say try Endeavor OS (arch-related), Ubuntu, and Fedora linux and see if you like on of those to start. Warning, they will run a lot faster on real hardware but VirtualBox is a good place to start.

Arch is as minimal as you'd probably want a user system.

Debian if you care about stability and running it on anything, or a rolling release if you care about using latest releases of software. Arch is nice, access to the AUR is nice, too. You can also use Debian unstable or testing.

A lot is happening on desktop Linux right now, and I've found rolling release distros to be nice for that reason. Debian or Arch with KDE Plasma Desktop is a nice combination.

Regarding minimal installations, if you're new to Linux, I think you should try to use a popular Linux desktop distribution, Debian has several, there's Ubuntu, EndeavorOS for Arch, and others.

You can also boot live Linux instances from a flash drive and try things out before you install.

To answer your first question, I went from Linux to macOS back to Linux again.

Check this if you want to use macOS keybindings on Linux: https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto

I code on Linux, and I run Mac on my desktop.

For media playback, safe web browsing, and writing documents, I use the Mac.

For a sane coding environment and a workstation without non-consensual changes, I use the Linux VM. (Bonus: easy snapshots, including RAM state.)

Currently using a 7-year-old Mac and it's reasonably performant for my purposes.

The best of both worlds, IMO.

For distros, I recommend you spend a couple of hours trying several different ones (and several different VMs) until you find one which you like. Again, I avoid anything with a history of non-consensual changes, so Gnome and KDE are out, but there are plenty of other choices. Inside a VM, of course, lighter is better.

Why are there so many clueless idiots on HN? I'm reminded of the web pre 2k and post 2k. This thread is post 2k, full of half truths and trolling.

Someone should create the first Linux distro that doesn’t push any political agenda and strictly prioritizes code quality over agenda enforcement.

If you're vocally against an anti-fascist agenda, then that agenda is doing what it's supposed to: luring fascists out of hiding. Nothing is apolitical.

I only want to forget about politics at least when I’m using an operating system.

Political apathy is the one way street to an authoritarian society. Just have a look at Russia what political apathy has brought the Russians.

I’m just talking about when I’m using my distro of choice, not in general. Politics by definition is divisive and always thinking about it is destructive, I want to relax and stop thinking about stuff at least when I’m minding my own business using Linux and sharing stuff without caring about what other people’s opinions are.

You want a distribution more akin to status quo. Great, these are widely available. But to think that Arch Linux and Debian GNU/Linux and Fedora are all apolitical is nonsense; rather, their politics are not bothering you.

The only thing I got against all of this is the paradox of choice. Why so many different Linux distributions? Same in a large US grocery store. 20 brands of mayonaise, why? How can I tell the differences?

According to Arch Linux's wiki: [1] "Arch is a pragmatic distribution rather than an ideological one. The principles here are only useful guidelines. Ultimately, design decisions are made on a case-by-case basis through developer consensus. Evidence-based technical analysis and debate are what matter, not politics or popular opinion." I don't know about Fedora or Debian since I don't use them but for sure they don't have "anti $IDEOLOGY" on their homepage right after the distro's name.

And for reference, I'm not bothered by anti fascism since I'm not fascist, I just don't even want to think about fascism, socialism, communism, capitalism or politics in general when I'm minding my own business in Linux. I don't care at all about the the person I am collaborating with or the person who has written the software I am using's belief about politics. I couldn't care less that dwm, st or suckless in general is composed by neo-nazists (if that's true).

I simply don't want to be reminded of politics existence when I'm using Linux.

[1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Arch_Linux section 1.3

They're political, just not explicit. You're confusing political with ideological. And, even then, ideological is just following some -ism. Which are everywhere, apparent or not.

Personally, I'm not interested in a Linux distribution which is expressive about being 'anti-fascism', but I am very glad they declare they are. Its a sure notion (red flag) that I don't want to get involved.

And a distribution, by its very nature, is making choices. Which default for X or Y, which package manager, which kernel, which licenses, etc etc.

As software developed by neonazis: personally, if I'd know that to be true, I'd be wary of such software. YMMV.

Honestly I have never experienced anything political officially from the Arch Linux team and I have been using it for five years. They have always been pretty pragmatic as they say, and technical choices are not political in the sense we are talking about (or could be in some cases like licenses, but Arch Linux lets you do pretty much whatever you want).

Oh shaddap. Too many Reddit people here lately. You have no fucking what you're talking about. Stupid troll and I hate that I let myself be triggered by your stupid trolling

If you believe someone is trolling you should flag the post instead of reply to them or call them troll or flaming them. That's not done here on HN, see the guidelines.

I'm using Arch and Ubuntu, and I can't remember when either reminded me of anything political

This is part of the reason why I use arch and not antix or other political distros.

The quote I always think about in such cases is from Bruce Perens in a movie Revolution OS who described the Open Source Definition rule about non-discrimination as: "There is no discrimination against people or groups. The example I usually use is, you can’t stop an abortion clinic or an anti-abortion activist from using the software." This is not an apolitical statement, it just says that ones judgement shouldn't influence who can use free software.

What specifically is that agenda?

And do you think there are any other plausible reasons for someone to avoid using a political distro? I can think of several, so jumping straight to Godwin's Law and accusing people of being fascists might be a bit premature.

I think the anti-fascist agenda is consent.

Consensual changes to the system, consensual package installation, consensual inclusion of various system pieces, etc.

What does that mean in practical terms? For example, they didn't get my consent when removing systemd from Debian Bullseye.

To be fair I don't use AntiX so I wouldn't expect them to ask my permission- do they poll users or something? Or is it more of a "my way or the highway" style of consent? Or are there technical differences comparwd to other systemd-less diestros, eg different ways of handling consent when installing things via apt?

You get to choose whether to install systemd on your system or not, something you do not get with others.

There are many more consent-related things which appeal to me in FOSS, and influence my choices in what I install:

The choice to upgrade or not upgrade my packages.

The choice to be reminded to upgrade my packages or not.

The choice to not have any UI changes without asking for them.

In Mac and Windows land, none of these choices are available without surgery. In FOSS land, it depends on which distribution you choose. Some behave, some don't.

Are you against the "pro-life" agenda?

No one is falling for that. Antifa is a fashion statement disguised as a "super radical" political movement (that just happens to align with all the global capitalist elites on every issue). Keep buying your H&M revolutionary t-shirts comrade

Arch and Manjaro?

They both seem to have “Code of Conduct”s which can be used to ban contributors who have the wrong opinion on gender politics. They’ll interpret the belief that transgender men aren’t real women as “violence”. No thanks! I rather not use a distros that would kick out a capable talented developer for their personal beliefs.

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