Linux never ceases to amaze me - particularly the light-weight distros aimed for low powered PCs! There are so many options and depending on your need and suitability you can pick and choose which one to use. Plus, it brings your old machine back to life without compromising on the security and with the state-of-the-art applications! You can't ever think of that with any other operating system, for sure.
I came across the latest release of AntiX in distrowatch. I have never used AntiX before and thought of trying it in VirtualBox. And surely I am amazed with what I saw.
I downloaded the 694 MB ISO from Sourceforge site. For a light-weight Linux, the ISO seemed a bit bulky initially. The boot up was really fast and I was greeted with a window giving me option of booting with Icewm or Fluxbox. Since both are lightweight desktop managers, I decided to go with Icewm.
Applications
Application-wise, AntiX 12 is the richest among the light-weight Linux distros I have seen. A very catchy desktop with a good collection of essential apps like LibreOffice suite, MPaint, Gtkam digital camera browser, Iceweasel, bit-torrent, Dillo, Links 2, Pidgin chat, GParted, MPlayer, webcam (guvcview), GDebi package installer, etc. to name a few. Flash support is out-of-the-box. However, a few of the preferred apps may be missing but you can download them from synaptic package manager. It is based on MEPIS and Debian testing and you can get the advantage of Debian repos with AntiX.
CPU and RAM usage
Before I used AntiX, I thought Puppy uses the lowest RAM/CPU. But, it seems like AntiX is the King here. Fluxbox uses 1% CPU & 65MB RAM whereas with IceWM, 2% & 71 MB, with no other app, except conky, running!
Overall
Honestly, I really liked AntiX. If you have a old computer lying, Intel/AMD x-86 compatible, you can try AntiX to check if it works for you. Potentially, it is equipped enough to give the flavor of a fully functional and complete OS! In fact, it is the most complete light-weight OS I have ever used. Kudos to the developers.
A slideshow of the screenshots that I uploaded in Picasa is presented below.
I came across the latest release of AntiX in distrowatch. I have never used AntiX before and thought of trying it in VirtualBox. And surely I am amazed with what I saw.
I downloaded the 694 MB ISO from Sourceforge site. For a light-weight Linux, the ISO seemed a bit bulky initially. The boot up was really fast and I was greeted with a window giving me option of booting with Icewm or Fluxbox. Since both are lightweight desktop managers, I decided to go with Icewm.
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| From AntiX 12 RC2 |
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| From AntiX 12 RC2 |
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| From AntiX 12 RC2 |
Application-wise, AntiX 12 is the richest among the light-weight Linux distros I have seen. A very catchy desktop with a good collection of essential apps like LibreOffice suite, MPaint, Gtkam digital camera browser, Iceweasel, bit-torrent, Dillo, Links 2, Pidgin chat, GParted, MPlayer, webcam (guvcview), GDebi package installer, etc. to name a few. Flash support is out-of-the-box. However, a few of the preferred apps may be missing but you can download them from synaptic package manager. It is based on MEPIS and Debian testing and you can get the advantage of Debian repos with AntiX.
 |
| From AntiX 12 RC2 |
Before I used AntiX, I thought Puppy uses the lowest RAM/CPU. But, it seems like AntiX is the King here. Fluxbox uses 1% CPU & 65MB RAM whereas with IceWM, 2% & 71 MB, with no other app, except conky, running!
Overall
Honestly, I really liked AntiX. If you have a old computer lying, Intel/AMD x-86 compatible, you can try AntiX to check if it works for you. Potentially, it is equipped enough to give the flavor of a fully functional and complete OS! In fact, it is the most complete light-weight OS I have ever used. Kudos to the developers.
A slideshow of the screenshots that I uploaded in Picasa is presented below.
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