Systemd free MX19?

[manyroads]

I've got antiX running on an old 24" iMac & (with my custom Openbox setup) it is barely distinguishable from my MX setup. There are likely some tools that one has that the other doesn't, though I don't really know as I have hardly ever used any of them.

MX & antiX are both very good Linux distros (with good friendly community) & they don't use systemd (which is important to me, & it is why I use them).

I agree 100% @handy. To that end, I'll publish some early work on an antiX base with Openbox & xfce4 (icewm, fluxbox, jwm, herbstluftwm all removed). My 'feeble attempt' will be announced here.

I appreciate that a lot of folks worry. I'll simply see if what I produce is anything anyone wants to use and repair from all the mistakes I make.

[figueroa]

I agree 100% @handy. To that end, I'll publish some early work on an antiX base with Openbox & xfce4 (icewm, fluxbox, jwm, herbstluftwm all removed). My 'feeble attempt' will be announced here.

I've had thoughts in that direction. I'm curious about your objective. Why Openbox? xfce4 doesn't need it. I've also thought along the lines of something similar but with lxde. I've been using lxde as my main desktop for possibly eight years. I'll find your work interesting.

[manyroads]

I agree 100% @handy. To that end, I'll publish some early work on an antiX base with Openbox & xfce4 (icewm, fluxbox, jwm, herbstluftwm all removed). My 'feeble attempt' will be announced here.

I've had thoughts in that direction. I'm curious about your objective. Why Openbox? xfce4 doesn't need it. I've also thought along the lines of something similar but with lxde. I've been using lxde as my main desktop for possibly eight years. I'll find your work interesting.

@figueroa I guess because I like OB and I also like the idea antiX has of allowing multi DE choices. I'm a fan of LXQt never used LXDE. Perhaps we can share our work. I'll have some rough proof of concept materials Tuesday or Wednesday this week wit icewm, fluxbox, herstluftwm, jwm, stripped and both xfce4 & ob functional. I have xfdesktop running the desktop on both xfce4 & OB (it is also very capable of doing that for the other wm's on antiX; you may have seen my proof of concept posts here and on the antiX forum).

One of the biggest tasks is in cleaning up the menus. I can make OB and xfce look very native but I want to preserve the excellence of antiX tools and make them easily accessible; right now they are not. I have the same problem with OB on MX. Both desktops are 'pretty slim'. I have to do tuning but naked xfce4 runs at about 400M right now and OB is running under 300MB. When that is compared to PeppermintOS which is touted as thin, my hacks are thinner by about 20%. I'll run a test with LXQt to see what that does.

I, also, have to untangle the desktops such that users aren't disturbed by overlaps "of efficiency".

[figueroa]

I, also, have to untangle the desktops such that users aren't disturbed by overlaps "of efficiency".

We're off-topic, aren't we? I'll be following along because your project is interesting, but I won't have anything directly to share. I'll provide feedback as I'm able. Otherwise, I'm well satisfied with MX (and antiX) as it is, which right now after running all day is idling about 343M while not doing anything. I use LXDE on my main desktop (Gentoo) because I like it. I'm not starved for RAM. I don't want my desktop to be entertaining, but rather low maintenance. I haven't tried, or even been interested in LXQT. Where I do system administration, I find my users prefer XFCE which makes me happy. Years ago I added LXDE to my main desktop system, used it along side XFCE for a while, and eventually found that I was always logging into LXDE.

I'm pretty sure I could use antiX as my main desktop with IceWM and SpaceFM and not make any changes. Most of my real work is done in the terminal. The main reason for the GUI is so I can run multiple concurrent terminals.

[nematocyst]

systemd? not for me. Been running Devuan for 2 years and like it fine. But I've been poking around looking at MX. Well this issue settles it for me. Until it's clear to me I can run w/out systemd, then I can't justify the time to even consider it. Popularity? Look at Chrome/Chromium as a similar issue with the coming manifest v3. Sure they have the biggest browser share, but it's going to tank when that gets implemented as ublock users scatter elsewhere and explain why to their friends. Same with systemd and MX.

[mxer]

..... Most of my real work is done in the terminal. The main reason for the GUI is so I can run multiple concurrent terminals.

You might like to take a look at tmux or screen, both are multiplexers & allow you to run many programs from the same terminal, no GUI needed.

[rasat]

Its seems Devuan was/is also discussing about finding a solution after systemd-shim non-support. Currently Devuan is using jessie and stretch. Please, check if I'm correct.
https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=2419

[mx-2018]

Strange thought:-
If MX19 is made without the systemd-init option, it will be very similar to Devuan .
And if it is made without the sysv-init option, some people might prefer Devuan .

P.S. I have tried out Devuan live and it works quite well even without its 245 updates!

I tried Devuan and found it very limiting compared to MX-18. For example, it won't let me do this command:

Code: Select all

timedatectl set-local-rtc 1 --adjust-system-clock

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Currently Devuan is using jessie and stretch. Please, check if I'm correct.

The current release version of Devuan is ASCII, based on stretch, but their development branches are beowulf & ceres, which are based on buster & sid.

I was running beowulf briefly and it works very well indeed, they have now removed libsystemd0 and the Debian developers have adopted their version of elogind:

https://packages.debian.org/buster/elogind

Their graphical desktop will run X under the normal user if startx is used, unlike MX or antiX which runs X under the root user.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

it won't let me do this command:

Code: Select all

timedatectl set-local-rtc 1 --adjust-system-clock

The timedatectl(1) command is part of systemd so that's not surprising.

This would have worked:

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# hwclock --systohc --localtime

Or just change the last line in /etc/adjtime from UTC to LOCAL.

But note the warning in the man page:

maintaining the RTC in the local timezone is not fully supported and will create various problems with time zone changes and daylight saving adjustments. If at all possible, keep the RTC in UTC mode.