14 DAY TRIAL // Straight from Thessaloniki, Greece, the developers of the antiX GNU/Linux operating system announced this past weekend two new releases of the distribution, the first point release of antiX 15 and the first Alpha build of the upcoming antiX 16.
According to the release notes published on the project's website, it would appear that the developers don't want to have anything to do with the next-generation systemd init system every other GNU/Linux operating system out there adopts these days.
And it looks like, for the upcoming antiX 16 release of the distribution, they've implemented the SysVinit init system, so users won't find any systemd related packages, such as libsystemd0 or udev-systemd.
"These are for experienced users only. The ISOs are labelled as Alpha. Basically, it is antiX-core plus X.Org (needed to keep it free from systemd)," developers explain. "eudev replaces udev. It even installs a systemd-free Xfce and KDE."
What's new in antiX 16 Alpha 1
Looking deeper under the hood of the first Alpha build of the antiX 16 operating system, we can notice that it comes with a custom Linux 4.3 kernel. However, the Linux 4.3 branch had just reached end of life (EOL) a couple of days ago, so the antiX devs will have to eventually upgrade the kernel packages to Linux 4.4 LTS (Long Term Support).
Among other new packages added in antiX 16 Alpha 1, we can notice the GCC (GNU Compiler Collection) 5, X.Org 7.7 display server, XTerm terminal emulator, eLinks web browser. Also worth mentioning are irssi IRC client, rsync remote sync utility, Ceni and DHClient for network connections, the smxi/inxi scripts, as well as the antiX Live remaster and persistence scripts.
antiX 16 Alpha 1 is available for download right now via our website as 64-bit and 32-bit ISO images for early adopters. From the same location, you can also download the new antiX 15.1 stable release, which includes the latest security and bugfixes released since the unveiling of antiX 15. However, existing antiX 15 users don't need to download the new ISOs.