antiX - a lite-Mepis6.5

Does it have the user account login like mepis, ie demo - demo?

Oh.. I get a file not found on rc3 when I try to download with d4x

Hi eadwine,

Yes user and root passwords are the same as Mepis6.5.

antiXrc3.iso is there and downloads. Maybe the problem is with
d4x. (never used it or even heard of it).

Try trusty wget in a console, as user of course, and after logging into the site:

wget -c http://tomlinux.ca/testing/antiXrc3.iso

anticapitalista

Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.

How do I log in through that?

d4x works like a charm, this is the first time it does not. Could be the password issue.

*smacks forehead* It's downloading.

I DO have to ADD the password and such LOL

enjoy antiX eadwine.

Comments appreciated.

anticapitalista

Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.

That will be tomorrow at the earliest, been a tough day

Hope you get lots of testers!

I'm *really* glad you're making this available, anticapitalista. It fills an important gap in Mepis development right now. Thanks for the effort.

Now I gotta find a way to get it (I'm on dial-up).

One point to clarify:

Have you worked any magic to make a "live" session work pretty much as a regular install would? Or do I have to do an actual install to see what antiX could do on an older box with low RAM?

--Malanrich

Anticapitalista, way to go! I am not going to lie and tell you I will certainly be using it, since I am a sucker for full fledged KDE. But I DO see that Linux is about choice, and you have made a very important contribution to Linux in general and MEPIS specifically, by creating antiX and thus allowing more users to enjoy a distro to their taste with the MEPIS goodies in place.

You're a king!

Newbie or not Newbie, there's always a question

From my tests the live session works pretty much like the install one (just like MEPIS, since it's a MEPIS remaster)

--
Check out MEPIS Wiki: www.mepis.org/docs

Well no magic I'm afraid from me, just the "Magic of Mepis TM". The livecd is fairly fast, but installed is much faster even more so on old boxes. When I say old boxes, some people have tested with CPU 333 and 96RAM and it boots and works. My tests have been through Virtualbox and even with RAM set at 64MB and there being some swap available (another 128MB) it worked pretty well in the main. Using 96 RAM with no swap is ok, 80 RAM is bearable, 64without swap very painful. Less than 64RAM probably will not get past the login screen (though this is probably due to having an image at xdm).

You raise a very good point Malanrich that I need help in addressing ie various cheat codes at boot for very old boxes like DSL, Knoppix, sidux has. But this is for the future and with the help of anyone out there with the knowledge of how to do that.

I see antiX (and stibbs' SaxenOS based on Mepis6.5) as the beginning of more direct community input to the Mepis project. From what Warren has emailed to me, he feels the same. What we need is some sort of 'developers' corner to thrash out ideas, implement them and make Mepis a distro for all sorts of users and hardware.

anticapitalista

Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.

snipped the compliments....

I hope not! lol

anticapitalista

Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.

For all I care you're a queen.... just keep on rocking!

Newbie or not Newbie, there's always a question

Thanks for the stats, anti-c.

I would think a *lot* of users with old boxes would give up if the live session crapped out.

So here are a couple more stupid noob questions: Cheat codes are for launching a live session on an old box, right? If so, is there a way to install without first booting a "live" session at all? And if so, I wonder if some kind of opening boot menu could simply alert new users to the option of installing directly, without booting a live session (pointing out that the actual install could very well run fine despite a bad "live" session).

Interesting. Would you say the live session works like a regular install pretty much *regardless* of the level of resources (I mean, within reason)?

I'm wondering whether you'd expect anything different from a lower-power system...

Malanrich,

Your questions about boot cheat codes are not stupid noob ones, in fact are pretty complex to utilise and at the moment I don't know how to do it with antiX and it is not available with Mepis6.5 as far as I am aware.
I think one problem is that the Mepis installer needs to be run in X, which obviously ups the RAM requirement. If there was a way to run minstall without X, we will have solved the Gordian-Knot problem!
From testing minstall appears to use about 45MB RAM.

Anyhow, give it a go and let me know the result. As I posted earlier, this is the beginning of the (anti) campaign not the end.

anticapitalista

Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.

I like it a lot! After seeing and appreciating it on Live CD, I installed it (in 9 minutes, love how it jumps from 79% to 99%) as the only OS on a 7-yr old Dell laptop with 600 Mhz processor and 256MB RAM.

But when I rebooted w/o the CD, it was unable to find the default kernel. Tried reinstalling, same result. Have you seen this before?

You have to choose the third option in the grub menu, the one that gives the mepis kernel version.

added: If that doesn't work, try antiXrc2. There wasa report of antiXrc3 having problems with grub.

anticapitalista

Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.

Since the old laptop's up-down arrows no longer work, I guess I will have to be satisfied with the Live CD for now.

Nice work over there.

Try this Jerry.
From the livecd, open rox-filer as root (aterm type sux then password), navigate to mnt/hda(this is probably where antiX got installed)/boot/grub
Open menu.lst and remove the first 2 boot options.
Save and see if you can boot from hd.

anticapitalista

Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.

Should have thought of that myself...

BTW: does the default choice in GRUB work for everybody else, or does everybody have to arrow down? If the latter, I would suggest making the functional option the default.

The latter is the case and the problem is that i don't know why it happens and how to fix it.

anticapitalista

Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.

Straight from Warren:

"Some software, for example os-prober, only recognizes kernels that have
specific entries in menu.lst, for example the 3rd entry in the usual MEPIS
menu.lst.

The Debian kernel installation script does something special if the vmlinuz
and vmlinuz.old symlinks exist. When a new kernel is installed, it
automatically becomes vmlinuz and the previous vmlinuz becomes vmlinuz.old.
So if a new kernel, for example the desktop-smp kernel, is installed, then in
the menu.lst it is automatically the newer kernel and the previous newer
kernel becomes the older kernel. This was a simple way to allow users to add
new kernels without having to edit the menu.lst every time. I used the
mechanism that Debian already provided."

Hope this clarifies the issue.

Ko Bros

@anti: the problem is, nothing is being written to the hard disk! hda1, where the installer says it is writing, is empty after installation. Tried multiple installations and multiple methods to check that.

I had MEPISLite on there, so I know the disk is OK, and the installer seems to be doing its thing all right, but nothing is there when I reboot. Have other people been able to install from this iso?

Jerry

I just installed antiXrc3 to hard drive without problems using custom and grub into MBR.

Strange behaviour. Maybe you will need to set up your partitions using gparted within minstall first, or externally, then install antiX.

Someone did have problems installing antiXrc3, but rc2 installed fine.

antiXrc4 will be uploaded tonight.

anticapitalista

Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.

RC3 installed fine in VMWare using "auto-install using entire partition" option. (in VMWare I chose IDE drive, for SATA I think there's a need for installing with initrd option)

Everything seems to work fine except for that /boot/vmlinuz link that's not created and therefore the GRUB menu doesn't work right.

--
Check out MEPIS Wiki: www.mepis.org/docs

antiXrc4 now available from the same site.

Fixed some minor bugs, upgraded to newest Mepis utilities, svg support added and extra themes for rox-filer now work, mpd and ncmpmc client added for music as well as moc (not in menu).

Install went fine on my box, same problem with grub menu. You have to choose option 3 in list.

Enjoy.

For those on less than 64MB RAM, the chances are that antiX will not get past the building Ramdisk stage. For some reason, a lot of ram is needed for this. If anyone has any idea why this is so or if it can be reduced and how, please let me know. (I compare with sidux that shows only 3MB being used to build livecd mode, with aufs)

anticapitalista

Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.

Bug fixed (Thanks Adrian - the most obvious things are the hardest to see)

Patches will be available very soon:

If you download antiXrc4.iso all you need to do to fix the grub menu issue is download patch_rc4-rc5.delta. See wiki for xdelta instructions.
There will also be a delta patch available for those with antiXrc3.iso - patch_rc3-rc5.delta.

Edit:

Until the site admin moves the file to its correct location,
for the impatient the rc4-rc5 delta patch is available here:
http://www.gigasize.com/get.php/-1100216013/patch_rc4-rc5.delta
and follow instructions.
After typing in the code, press download, and then when it times out, press download again.

Added:

Patches now available at topcat's site.

antiXrc5 is in the process of being uploaded.

This will be the last rc. If anyone has suggestions what else to include/remove please post.

anticapitalista

Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.

RC5 installed and working on my laptop. Will test today.

One thing I noticed: after I used Network Assistant to enable eth0, net speeds recorded on the desktop remained 0 both directions. Are those static (set during boot) and not dynamic?

Thanks for a nice OS for this old box.

Jerry

The app that records system info on desktop is called conky. You can edit the hidden conkyrc file in home directory to point it at your actual eth. It should be eth0 default.

Have fun with antiX. There is a lot of nice and cool things to try.

anticapitalista

Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.

It is reading the right interface, just recording 0's, even after reboot. Will work on it some more.

Installed Thunderbird, ran update-menus, rebooted--T'bird still not on rt-cl menu. How is that menu populated?

I'll stop, I promise. ;-D

Will be using this daily for my early morning web check while the coffee is brewing...

J

You'll have to add it manually, or use fluxconf. There is an auto-update feature, but it will mess up the other settings.

Simply, open menu file (it is in the menu, under fluxbox) and add the following under the net section:

[exec] (Thunderbird) {thunderbird}

anticapitalista

Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.