Robin
Next readouts, this time from booting into s6-66.
– First observation: startup time to desktop is significantly longer than with runit, but finally this s6-66 init also reaches the desktop flawlessly out of the box. At first glance no obvious differences in usage once booted.
– Second observation: s6-66 uses significantly more RAM (~30 MiB) for just running the OS. Seems it starts lots of unnecessary services automatically. Unfortunately the Service manager in antiX control centre’s System section doesn’t launch nor work for this s6, so I’ll have to find out how to deactivate/activate them in this init manually.
– Third observation: Again, like already when booting into runit, the CPU is limited to 1 GHz instead of scaling up to 2,2 or 3 GHz, so everything works schnarchlangsam (sorry, no idea how properly to translate this idiom to English language. Maybe this works? “As slow as molasses in January”). As a temporary workaround I have set the governor from “schedutil” to “performance”, which nails the CPU frequency to 2,2 GHz. Again no stepping or floating, neither up nor down, no automatic scaledown to 1 GHz nor speed up to 3 GHz when needed. The Powernow K8 kernel module is loaded:
$ lsmod | grep powernow
powernow_k8 20480 0
$ sudo dmesg | grep -i powernow
[ 0.011715] ACPI: SSDT 0x0000000077EE9200 000115 (v01 PTLTD POWERNOW 00000001 LTP 00000001)
[ 255.346799] powernow_k8: fid 0xe (2200 MHz), vid 0xc
[ 255.346809] powernow_k8: fid 0xc (2000 MHz), vid 0xe
[ 255.346811] powernow_k8: fid 0xa (1800 MHz), vid 0x10
[ 255.346812] powernow_k8: fid 0x2 (1000 MHz), vid 0x12
[ 255.349827] powernow_k8: Found 1 AMD Sempron(tm) Processor LE-1250 (1 cpu cores) (version 2.20.00)From hardware side there are obviously supported (and recognised by antiX) the frequency steps “1000 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2000 MHz and 2200 MHz. But they are not applied automatically by the governor for some reason. And the 3 GHz boost step is completely missing, while inxi can see it: Speed (MHz): 1000 min/max: 1000/2200 base/boost: 2211/3000.
No error messages about power stepping in dmesg.
I can remember vaguely this CPU scaling has worked in former antiX versions properly on this very device. Would have opened an issue thread if not…)
_________________
And here you are, as promised, the memory and system data, taken immediately after system startup into s6-66 before any programs have been launched, from within a terminal window (same procedure like I had applied in runit above) :
$ sudo ps_mem.py
Private + Shared = RAM used Program
156.0 KiB + 26.5 KiB = 182.5 KiB seatd
228.0 KiB + 49.0 KiB = 277.0 KiB s6-ipcserverd (2)
304.0 KiB + 21.5 KiB = 325.5 KiB acpid
292.0 KiB + 59.5 KiB = 351.5 KiB cron
292.0 KiB + 89.5 KiB = 381.5 KiB dbus-launch
272.0 KiB + 213.5 KiB = 485.5 KiB startup
364.0 KiB + 126.5 KiB = 490.5 KiB alsactl
524.0 KiB + 27.5 KiB = 551.5 KiB 66-shutdownd
384.0 KiB + 192.5 KiB = 576.5 KiB udevil
452.0 KiB + 301.5 KiB = 753.5 KiB agetty (3)
400.0 KiB + 434.5 KiB = 834.5 KiB icewm-session
892.0 KiB + 12.5 KiB = 904.5 KiB mount.ntfs
932.0 KiB + 61.0 KiB = 993.0 KiB s6-svscan (2)
800.0 KiB + 349.5 KiB = 1.1 MiB devmon
1.1 MiB + 97.0 KiB = 1.2 MiB s6-fdholderd (2)
844.0 KiB + 351.5 KiB = 1.2 MiB desktop-session
1.0 MiB + 529.5 KiB = 1.5 MiB dbus-daemon (3)
1.0 MiB + 689.5 KiB = 1.6 MiB at-spi-bus-launcher
1.8 MiB + 267.5 KiB = 2.1 MiB s6-log (15)
1.4 MiB + 721.5 KiB = 2.1 MiB pipewire-pulse
2.2 MiB + 273.5 KiB = 2.5 MiB bluetoothd
2.3 MiB + 368.5 KiB = 2.7 MiB bash
2.0 MiB + 712.5 KiB = 2.7 MiB conky
944.0 KiB + 1.8 MiB = 2.8 MiB sudo (2)
2.7 MiB + 277.5 KiB = 3.0 MiB udevd
2.8 MiB + 463.5 KiB = 3.3 MiB cupsd
2.1 MiB + 1.3 MiB = 3.4 MiB sshd
3.0 MiB + 360.5 KiB = 3.4 MiB wpa_supplicant
3.6 MiB + 444.5 KiB = 4.0 MiB connmand
1.4 MiB + 2.7 MiB = 4.1 MiB dhcpcd (5)
3.2 MiB + 1.2 MiB = 4.4 MiB pipewire
2.4 MiB + 2.2 MiB = 4.6 MiB fbxkb
5.1 MiB + 21.5 KiB = 5.1 MiB haveged
4.5 MiB + 732.5 KiB = 5.2 MiB s6-supervise (37)
4.3 MiB + 1.5 MiB = 5.8 MiB slimski
5.7 MiB + 2.4 MiB = 8.2 MiB icewm
5.1 MiB + 3.8 MiB = 9.0 MiB volumeicon
8.1 MiB + 1.6 MiB = 9.8 MiB wireplumber
10.0 MiB + 4.3 MiB = 14.4 MiB roxterm
9.6 MiB + 6.0 MiB = 15.6 MiB zzzfm
57.3 MiB + 3.3 MiB = 60.6 MiB Xorg
---------------------------------
192.2 MiB
=================================$ sudo inxi -zv8 --za --zv
System:
Kernel: 6.6.101-antix.1-amd64-smp arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc
v: 12.2.0 clocksource: hpet avail: acpi_pm parameters: lang=de_DE quiet
disable=lxF init=/sbin/init-s6-66
Desktop: IceWM v: 3.9.0 tools: avail: slock,xlock dm: slimski v: 1.5.0
Distro: antiX-25-beta1_x64-full Stephen Kapos 4 November 2025 base: Debian
GNU/Linux 13 (trixie)
Machine:
Type: Desktop Mobo: FOXCONN model: M61PMV v: FAB 1.1 serial: <filter>
uuid: <filter> BIOS: Phoenix v: P07 date: 07/28/2009
Battery:
Message: No system battery data found. Is one present?
Memory:
System RAM: total: 2 GiB available: 1.81 GiB used: 398.3 MiB (21.5%)
Array-1: capacity: 4 GiB slots: 2 modules: 2 EC: 64-bit ECC
max-module-size: 2 GiB
Device-1: A0 info: single-bank type: DDR2 detail: N/A size: 1024 MiB
speed: 2048 MT/s volts: N/A width (bits): data: 64 total: 64
manufacturer: AD00000000000000 part-no: N/A serial: <filter>
Device-2: A1 info: single-bank type: DDR2 detail: N/A size: 1024 MiB
speed: 2048 MT/s volts: N/A width (bits): data: 64 total: 64
manufacturer: AD00000000000000 part-no: N/A serial: <filter>
PCI Slots:
Slot: 1 type: PCI status: available length: long volts: 5.0 bus-ID: N/A
Slot: 2 type: PCI status: available length: long volts: 5.0 bus-ID: N/A
Slot: 0 type: PCIe status: unknown length: long volts: 5.0 bus-ID: N/A
Slot: 0 type: PCIe status: unknown length: long volts: 5.0 bus-ID: N/A
CPU:
Info: model: AMD Sempron LE-1250 socket: 940 (AMD Sempron(tm) Processor
LE-1250) note: check bits: 64 type: UP arch: K8 level: v1 built: 2005-08
process: AMD 65nm family: 0xF (15) model-id: 0x7F (127) stepping: 2
microcode: N/A
Topology: cpus: 1x dies: 1 clusters: 1 cores: 1 smt: <unsupported> cache:
L1: 128 KiB desc: d-1x64 KiB; i-1x64 KiB L2: 512 KiB desc: 1x512 KiB
Speed (MHz): 1000 min/max: 1000/2200 base/boost: 2211/3000 scaling:
driver: powernow-k8 governor: schedutil volts: 1.2 V ext-clock: 201 MHz
core: 1: 1000 bogomips: 4420
Flags: 3dnow 3dnowext 3dnowprefetch apic clflush cmov cpuid cr8_legacy
cx16 cx8 de extapic extd_apicid fpu fxsr fxsr_opt lahf_lm lm mca mce mmx
mmxext msr mtrr nopl nx pae pat pge pni pse pse36 rdtscp rep_good sep sse
sse2 syscall tsc vme vmmcall
Vulnerabilities: <filter>
Graphics:
Device-1: NVIDIA C61 [GeForce 6150SE nForce 430] vendor: Foxconn
driver: nouveau v: kernel non-free: series: 304.xx
status: legacy (EOL~2017-09-xx) last: release: 304.137 kernel: 4.13
xorg: 1.19 arch: Curie process: 90-130nm built: 2003-2013 ports:
active: VGA-1 empty: none bus-ID: 00:0d.0 chip-ID: 10de:03d0
class-ID: 0300
Display: server: X.Org v: 21.1.16 driver: X: loaded: nouveau
unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa alternate: nv dri: swrast gpu: nouveau
display-ID: :0.0 screens: 1
Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1152x864 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 304x228mm (11.97x8.98")
s-diag: 380mm (14.96")
Monitor-1: VGA-1 model: Belinea/Maxdata 0x1b6c serial: <filter>
built: 1998 res: mode: 1152x864 hz: 75 scale: 100% (1) dpi: 91 gamma: 1.83
chroma: red: x: 0.643 y: 0.329 green: x: 0.271 y: 0.604 blue: x: 0.141
y: 0.063 white: x: 0.278 y: 0.310 size: 320x240mm (12.6x9.45")
diag: 400mm (15.7") ratio: 4:3 modes: 1280x1024, 1152x864, 1024x768,
800x600, 640x480, 640x400
API: EGL v: 1.5 hw: drv: nvidia nouveau platforms: device: 0 egl: 1.4
drv: nouveau device: 1 drv: swrast gbm: egl: 1.4 drv: nouveau surfaceless:
egl: 1.4 drv: nouveau x11: drv: swrast inactive: wayland
API: OpenGL v: 4.5 compat-v: 2.1 vendor: mesa v: 25.0.7-2 glx-v: 1.4
direct-render: yes renderer: llvmpipe (LLVM 19.1.7 128 bits)
device-ID: ffffffff:ffffffff memory: 1.77 GiB unified: yes
Info: Tools: api: eglinfo,glxinfo x11: xdriinfo, xdpyinfo, xprop, xrandr
Audio:
Device-1: NVIDIA MCP61 High Definition Audio vendor: Foxconn
driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 00:05.0 chip-ID: 10de:03f0
class-ID: 0403
API: ALSA v: k6.6.101-antix.1-amd64-smp status: kernel-api with: apulse
type: pulse-emulator tools: alsactl,alsamixer,amixer
Server-1: PipeWire v: 1.4.2 status: n/a (root, process) with:
1: pipewire-pulse status: active 2: wireplumber status: active
3: pipewire-alsa type: plugin 4: pw-jack type: plugin
tools: pw-cat,pw-cli,wpctl
Network:
Device-1: NVIDIA MCP61 Ethernet vendor: Foxconn type: network bridge
driver: forcedeth v: kernel port: ec00 bus-ID: 00:07.0 chip-ID: 10de:03ef
class-ID: 0680
IF: eth0 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
IP v4: <filter> scope: global broadcast: <filter>
IP v4: <filter> type: secondary dynamic noprefixroute scope: global
broadcast: <filter>
IP v6: <filter> type: temporary dynamic scope: global
IP v6: <filter> type: dynamic mngtmpaddr noprefixroute scope: global
IP v6: <filter> type: temporary dynamic scope: global
IP v6: <filter> type: dynamic mngtmpaddr noprefixroute scope: global
IP v6: <filter> scope: link
Info: services: sshd,wpa_supplicant
WAN IP: <filter>
Bluetooth:
Message: No bluetooth data found.
Logical:
Message: No logical block device data found.
RAID:
Message: No RAID data found.
Drives:
Local Storage: total: 58.72 GiB used: 2.85 GiB (4.9%)
ID-1: /dev/sda maj-min: 8:0 vendor: SanDisk model: 3SYSTEM USB FLASH
size: 125 MiB block-size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B type: USB rev: 1.1
spd: 12 Mb/s lanes: 1 mode: 1.1 tech: SSD serial: <filter> fw-rev: 1.00
scheme: MBR
SMART Message: Unknown USB bridge. Flash drive/Unsupported enclosure?
ID-2: /dev/sdb maj-min: 8:16 model: N/A size: 58.59 GiB block-size:
physical: 512 B logical: 512 B type: USB rev: 2.1 spd: 480 Mb/s lanes: 1
mode: 2.0 tech: N/A serial: <filter> fw-rev: 3.00 scheme: MBR
SMART Message: Unknown USB bridge. Flash drive/Unsupported enclosure?
Optical-1: /dev/sr0 vendor: HL-DT-ST model: DVD-RAM GSA-H55L rev: 1.03
dev-links: cdrom,cdrw,dvd,dvdrw
Features: speed: 48 multisession: yes audio: yes dvd: yes
rw: cd-r,cd-rw,dvd-r,dvd-ram state: running
Partition:
ID-1: /live/boot-dev raw-size: 29.25 GiB size: 28.71 GiB (98.18%)
used: 2.84 GiB (9.9%) fs: ext4 block-size: 4096 B dev: /dev/sdb1
maj-min: 8:17 label: <filter> uuid: <filter>
ID-2: /media/ANTIX-UEFI raw-size: 49 MiB size: 48.2 MiB (98.43%)
used: 12.4 MiB (25.6%) fs: vfat block-size: 512 B dev: /dev/sdb2
maj-min: 8:18 label: <filter> uuid: <filter>
ID-3: /media/demo/Data raw-size: 33 MiB size: 33 MiB (99.99%)
used: 2.5 MiB (7.5%) fs: ntfs block-size: 4096 B dev: /dev/sda1 maj-min: 8:1
label: <filter> uuid: <filter>
Swap:
Alert: No swap data was found.
Unmounted:
Message: No unmounted partitions found.
USB:
Hub-1: 1-0:1 info: full speed or root hub ports: 10 rev: 2.0
speed: 480 Mb/s (57.2 MiB/s) lanes: 1 mode: 2.0 chip-ID: 1d6b:0002
class-ID: 0900
Device-1: 1-7:3 info: USB Disk 20 type: mass storage driver: usb-storage
interfaces: 1 rev: 2.1 speed: 480 Mb/s (57.2 MiB/s) lanes: 1 mode: 2.0
power: 100mA chip-ID: 346d:5678 class-ID: 0806 serial: <filter>
Hub-2: 2-0:1 info: full speed or root hub ports: 10 rev: 1.1
speed: 12 Mb/s (1.4 MiB/s) lanes: 1 mode: 1.1 chip-ID: 1d6b:0001
class-ID: 0900
Device-1: 2-5:2 info: JMTek LLC. Transcend Flash disk type: mass storage
driver: usb-storage interfaces: 1 rev: 1.1 speed: 12 Mb/s (1.4 MiB/s)
lanes: 1 mode: 1.1 power: 100mA chip-ID: 0c76:0005 class-ID: 0806
Sensors:
System Temperatures: cpu: 4294939.3 C mobo: N/A
Fan Speeds (rpm): N/A
Repos:
Packages: pm: dpkg pkgs: 1956 libs: 937 tools: apt,apt-get,aptitude,synaptic
Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/antix.list
1: deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/antix-archive-keyring.gpg] http://ftp.halifax.rwth-aachen.de/mxlinux/packages/antix/trixie trixie main nonfree nosystemd
Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian-stable-updates.list
1: deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ trixie-updates main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.list
1: deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ trixie main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
2: deb http://security.debian.org/ trixie-security main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/librewolf.list
No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/liquorix.list
Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/trixie-backports.list
1: deb http://deb.debian.org/debian trixie-backports main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
Processes:
CPU top: 5 of 184
1: cpu: 4.4% command: Xorg pid: 2801 mem: 69.2 MiB (3.7%)
2: cpu: 4.3% command: sudo pid: 3851 mem: 6.41 MiB (0.3%)
3: cpu: 3.0% command: zzzfm pid: 3266 mem: 32.9 MiB (1.7%)
4: cpu: 1.4% command: icewm pid: 3100 mem: 18.7 MiB (1.0%)
5: cpu: 1.2% command: roxterm pid: 3698 mem: 30.3 MiB (1.6%)
Memory top: 5 of 184
1: mem: 69.2 MiB (3.7%) command: Xorg pid: 2801 cpu: 4.4%
2: mem: 32.9 MiB (1.7%) command: zzzfm pid: 3266 cpu: 3.0%
3: mem: 30.3 MiB (1.6%) command: roxterm pid: 3698 cpu: 1.2%
4: mem: 24.7 MiB (1.3%) command: volumeicon pid: 3464 cpu: 0.2%
5: mem: 18.7 MiB (1.0%) command: icewm pid: 3100 cpu: 1.4%
Info:
Processes: 184 Power: uptime: 2m states: freeze,mem,disk suspend: deep
avail: s2idle wakeups: 0 hibernate: platform avail: shutdown, reboot,
suspend, test_resume image: 728.3 MiB Init: s6 v: N/A runlevel: Strange...
Cannot detect Live/Frugal init... Will try to execute runlevel using
bysybox... executing runlevel command... tool: service
Compilers: gcc: 14.2.0 Shell: Sudo (sudo) v: 1.9.16p2 default: Bash
v: 5.2.37 running-in: roxterm inxi: 3.3.39
Please note: inxi has an issue here:
Init: s6 v: N/A runlevel: Strange…
Cannot detect Live/Frugal init… Will try to execute runlevel using
bysybox… executing runlevel command… tool: service
__________________
P.S.:
Funny part. S6 is commonly understood in Germany by many people as the Anglicism “Safer Sex“, since the number 6 (spelled “Sechs”) is exactly pronounced like the word “Sex”. This is even amplified in S6-66, which strongly reminds people of the (purposeful chosen) phone numbers of sex hotlines, constantly communicated in TV commercials (something like “66 66 66 – Give it to me, babe! Call me now!”). And if I recollect correctly, there was in the 1980ies even a governmental campaign launched by the health ministry, for propagating safer sex on “S6” stickers, in context of first AIDS wave reaching the country. Not sure whether the author of S6 was aware of this connotation of the abbreviation he has chosen, or whether he possibly played with this on purpose… This issue with this init system naming is most likely not present in English language, since here 6 is pronounced “six”, not “sex”.
To be clear: No need for changing the name. There are already lots of “S6” S-Bahn lines in many German cities, in which you’ll get perfectly normally transported, no extra service 🙂 Just wanted to make you English speaking people aware of the slippery connotation which exists here for us.
Windows is like a submarine. Open a window and serious problems will start.