Brian Masinick
Thanks for writing back. Though antiX is certainly NOT for everyone, it is an excellent start for those who like to put things together their own way. Of course, Linux From Scratch may be the ultimate for “do it yourself” types, but it is by far the most work. Distributions like Gentoo and Arch also have ways to produce a highly customized distribution, but over the course of my own Linux journey I developed a familiarity and a preference for Debian-style packaging, and antiX became one of my staple complements to Debian, which I also keep handy.
Going back to the beginning of the history of this distribution, in the early 2000s a flurry of systems that could run live – straight from memory were created. Distributions like KNOPPIX, Kanotix, Feather Linux, PCLinuxOS and MEPIS emerged.
The last one, MEPIS, was based on Debian, started with a light window manager configuration for a year or two, then changed to a very efficient desktop implementation with KDE. Right around the time that it was branded “SimplyMEPIS”, with KDE and a clean implementation, work started on personal variations. One person, who used the ID anticapitalista, indicated that he had created a light variation based on that platform with a Fluxbox window manager. He called his work antiX and contacted Warren Woodford, requesting to release it as a light variant and this was warmly accepted.
Not long after this work emerged, I substituted IceWM for Fluxbox in my own variation and suggested to anticapitalista that this might be an easy to use alternative to Fluxbox for newbies who are not used to the conventions of Fluxbox and my suggestion was adopted. Many others have made similar suggestions, contributing either ideas or actual development effort, and today we have multiple window managers, and for those who REALLY want them, we have easy packaging solutions to add desktop environments and the packages and tools that many people ask for.
There are not too many communities that either permit, allow, or encourage people to create their own thing, and that is what ultimately led to the creation of four main offerings, each suitable for different starting points, all of which are flexible to modify as the community members prefer.
This approach isn’t for everyone, but it is for those who either have old equipment or for those who prefer to tinker and create their own personal system, tailored to suit their specific needs and interests. It is this area in which antiX excels. So if this is not the way you like to go, there are lots of ways to create something else, and antiX isn’t the only way to do it.
I definitely wish you well; I do hope you decide to experiment with antiX; perhaps it will “grow on you”. If not there are a lot of good alternatives out there these days, plenty of good free software and even some proprietary software that has improved over the years. I believe in choice, including the freedom of choice, and I hope you find and embrace whatever works best for your areas of interest.
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Brian Masinick
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