14 DAY TRIAL // On November 8, the antiX development team announced the immediate availability for download and testing of the first Beta build of the upcoming antiX MX 15 GNU/Linux distribution.
Based on the latest Debian GNU/Linux 8.2 (Jessie) operating system and dubbed Fusion, antiX MX 15 Beta 1 is powered by Liquorix Linux 4.2 kernel for the 64-bit edition, as well as two stable Linux 3.16 kernels from Debian on the 32-bit flavor.
The distribution is built around the lightweight Xfce 4.12 desktop environment and features up-to-date software, such as Mozilla Firefox 42.0, Mozilla Thunderbird 38.3, LibreOffice 4.3.3.2, VLC Media Player 2.2.1, and Clementine 1.2.3.
Additionally, the antiX developers managed to add initial support for UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) systems (only for the 64-bit edition), as well as to implement the MX-Tools package, which lets users install codecs, manage user accounts, and much more.
While still using the old-school SysVinit init system, antiX MX 15 Beta 1 now lets users employ the modern systemd init system, which will be available immediately after the installation.
"We are pleased to announce the first public beta of MX-15 (codename 'Fusion') based on the reliable and stable Debian Jessie (8.2) with extra enhancements from our packaging team. Just like MX-14, this release defaults to sysVinit," reads the announcement.
It includes two replacements for Adobe Flash Player
Among the included applications in this first Beta release of antiX MX 15, we can mention the Shotwell image viewer and organizer, Synaptic Package Manager, Asunder Audio-CD ripper and encoder, SMTube YouTube video browser, and HexChat IRC client.
Additionally, the Gufw firewall, gscan2pdf PDF document viewer, GIMP image editor, Broadcom Manager, Pepper Flash Player and Fresh Player Plugin as alternatives to Adobe Flash Player, and Bluetooth support were added.
You can download antiX MX 15 Beta 1 right now from Softpedia, but please try to keep in mind that it's a pre-release version, not suitable for deployment on production environments where stability is of the essence.