14 DAY TRIAL // The first point release of the Debian-based antiX 17 "Heather Heyer" operating system series arrived this past weekend with a new kernel patched against the Meltdown and Spectre security flaws, as well as the latest software versions.
antiX 17.1 (Heather Heyer) is now available, powered by the Linux 4.9.87 LTS kernel patched against the Meltdown and Spectre security vulnerabilities unearthed in January 2018 and discovered to put billions of devices at risk of attacks. This protects new antiX installations against these type of attacks.
Based on the latest Debian GNU/Linux 9.4 "Stretch" operating system, antiX 17.1 comes with up-to-date packages from its software repositories, including the LibreOffice 5.2.7 office suite and Mozilla Firefox 52.7.1 ESR web browser. Additionally, this release comes with eudev 3.5 and latest xf86-video-sisimedia-antix release.
"This is primarily an upgrade of antiX-17 with a new Meltdown/Spectre patched kernel and a few new applications for users to enjoy. As usual we offer the following completely systemd-free flavours for both 32 and 64 bit architecture," reads the release announcement.
Here's what's new in antix 17.1
Among the new features introduced in the antiX 17.1 release, we can mention that the repo-manager GUI tool for setting up the default software repositories and live-usb-maker-gui-antix Live ISO creator were ported from sister project antiX MX Linux, and the antix-viewer utility was ported from mx-viewer as a simple URL viewer.
Other than that, antiX 17.1 comes with the elogind non-systemd init system by default in both the Base and Full flavors, and there are various localization improvements, including support for new languages like Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia. You can download antix 17.1 for 64-bit and 32-bit PCs right now.