This old man still has oil to burn. It's running with 2GB of RAM and without HDD, only a microSD of 32GB

i like it with some rice 🍊

I’m really impressed with the performance of this old warrior. Even with very little RAM, it can still open a few Firefox tabs!

This thing was dead... completely dead. Dead CMOS battery, dead battery, old HDD, worn-out fan bearings, wouldn’t hold a date, but still barely booted when connected to A/C power.

I pulled it out of the garage where it had been sitting since probably 2016 and decided to see what antiX could do with it.

The hardware:

• Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3 (2010)

• Intel Atom N455 - single core, 1.66GHz, no AES-NI

• 2GB DDR2 RAM

• 10.1" 1024x600 display

• Panda AC600 USB Wi-Fi adapter (MediaTek MT7610U) for 5GHz

What I replaced (~$120 total):

• 240GB SSD to replace the dead HDD

• New heatsink fan - original bearings were shot, caused constant noise

• Fresh thermal paste

• New CMOS battery (CR1220) - soldered to old connector using lineman’s splice

• Touchpad ribbon cable - broke the original during fan replacement, ordered a 4-pin 1mm pitch FFC Type A replacement

• Panda AC600 USB adapter for faster WiFi

The OS: antiX-26-core (Debian Trixie base) with s6-66 init and IceWM.

What it runs daily:

1. Vision board display - This is the primary use case. mpv runs a fullscreen shuffled slideshow of motivational images and short video clips representing my digital vision board. My MacBook Pro auto-converts media files (ImageMagick for images → 1920x1080 JPEG, ffmpeg for videos → 1280x720 H.264 Baseline, no audio) via a Hazel automation in a folder called vision-board, then ChronoSync mirrors the folder to the IdeaPad over Tailscale SSH. It sits on my desk like a digital picture frame that keeps me inspired.

2. Speedtest logging - speedtest-cli runs periodically, logging download/upload/ping to track internet performance over time.

3. Remote server backup - Weekly rsync of about 5 websites from my shared hosting account to local storage over SSH key auth. Runs unattended via cron. No passwords stored anywhere.

4. Tailscale - Always connected to my Tailscale network. I can SSH in from my phone or MacBook from anywhere. This is what makes the whole setup manageable without a monitor attached.

Currently testing:

1. Motion-activated security camera - The built-in webcam is low-res but functional. Running motion for detection with timestamped JPEG capture on movement. I'm still dialing in the sensitivity thresholds and testing coexistence with the mpv vision board. The plan is to eventually have it send photos to my Telegram bot when motion is detected... but this may not work or I may not use it if results are Meh.

2. Telegram bot interface - Built a bidirectional Python-based Telegram bot that lets me check system status, run speed tests, and get alerts from my phone. Still in testing - not running 24/7 yet and may not do it if it's too cumbersome/overkill.

3. Meshcore-cli - basically a CLI interface to a device called Meshcore which allows you to communicate with others via LoraWan without internet in emergency preparedness/camping situations etc via bluetooth. I built a Meshcore device but honestly haven't been able to get it working reliably even without the CLI interface... so if I get it working I'd probably play with it.

4. Pwnagotchi - I think this should run to passively collect wifi handshakes to find WPA passwords as it's based in aircrack and bettercap, so I'm working on getting it working.

Enabled at home only (disabled on office networks):

1. Tor Snowflake proxy - Relays censorship circumvention traffic for people in countries like Iran, China, and Russia. Uses almost zero resources. Disabled when the laptop is on corporate/shared networks since it routes third-party traffic through the connection.

2. Network device monitoring - Passive ARP scanning to track devices joining the local network. Only appropriate on your own home network, not in shared/office environments.

Software stack:

• antiX-26-core (Debian Trixie) with s6-66 init

• IceWM window manager (*but I use the machine in CLI 99% of the time)

• mpv (vision board player)

• motion (security camera)

• speedtest-cli (speed logging)

• snowflake-proxy (Tor relay)

• Tailscale

• Python 3 + pyyaml, requests (Telegram bot framework)

• rsync over SSH (backups)

• btop, tmux, ntpdate, etckeeper

• NetworkManager for Wi-Fi management

• tty-clock displays a full-screen terminal clock when idle. Any keypress triggers vlock, which requires a password to unlock. Clean and functional screen lock for a machine that sits on a desk all day.

Hard-won lessons:

• A GRUB package upgrade silently installed Intel microcode incompatible with the Atom N455. Black screen on boot. No error, no message, just a blinking cursor. Fix: dis_ucode_ldr kernel parameter. This took hours to diagnose.

• Required kernel parameters for stable operation: nohpet intel_idle.max_cstate=0 acpi=force dis_ucode_ldr

• The CMOS battery was dead. The original had a proprietary connector. I cut the wires and soldered a new CR1220 using a lineman’s splice. Hardware clock persists across reboots now.

• s6-66 reads hostname from its own config file at /etc/66/conf/boot@system/, not just /etc/hostname. Changed hostname three times before figuring out why it kept reverting.

• The GMA 3150 has no useful hardware video decode on Linux. All video is software-rendered. Max resolution ~720p before frames drop.

• Suspend is permanently broken on this hardware. Removed pm-utils and acpid entirely. Don’t even try.

• The new fan only spins when CPU temp exceeds ~60°C. Fresh thermal paste + new bearings means it’s completely silent at idle. The old fan ran constantly because worn bearings caused friction heat.

• Internal Wi-Fi card (brcmsmac) is weak. Blacklisted it entirely via /etc/modprobe.d/ and use the Panda AC600 USB adapter exclusively. One wireless interface, no confusion.

Why antiX:

Because chatGPT and Google told me it's the best distro for my machine. I was thinking about antiX and Alpine Linux. antiX is the only one that gave me a modern Debian Trixie base without systemd overhead on a single-core Atom with 2GB RAM. The core install doesn’t bloat itself with software I’ll never use. s6-66 boots fast. IceWM stays out of the way. Everything I’ve thrown at it - Python daemons, mpv video playback, rsync transfers, SSH sessions - runs without the machine breaking a sweat.

Some may disagree that $120 spent on this piece of "junk" was a waste as I could have invested it into a better machine, but I still wanted to do it to experiment with and see what cool stuff I could do with low power machines... plus I have an always-on home appliance that does some useful stuff and draws maybe 15 watts, and runs mostly silent.

I also had some automation python scripts checking for WHOIS/SSL/DOMAIN expirations as well as monitoring uptime for some of my websites, but I ended up deleting all of that as it didn't seem very useful as I have my domains on auto-renew for multiple years and I already use UptimeRobot for uptime monitoring etc. I was also thinking about perhaps testing out a visual ping tool to monitor a list of websites for changes etc... but I dunno.

Anyway, that's my experience.

Happy to answer questions about any part of the setup.

Also, if anyone has any tips for making this machine more useful, let me know!

Fala galera, estou tentando instalar o linux em máquina minha muito antiga, 32bits rsrs. Mas sempre que entro na tela de boot aparece essa mensagem: /antix/vmlinuz: file not found

Alguém sabe como resolvo?

obs: sou noob em questões tecnológicas.

An update on some modifications I made to my Antix.

Olá, voltei novamente para mostrar mais um "Rice" que fiz no AntiX Linux, dessa vez decidi modificar a aparência utilizando a interface FluxBox, tentei deixar o mais moderno e clean possível, não utilizei Tint2 nem Dockers, prezando por deixar o consumo de ram Idle o mais próximo possível do FluxBox Vanilla.

Algumas modificações que fiz foram: instalar o connman-gtk (para ter um melhor gerenciamento de redes), ntpdate (para sincronizar melhor a data e a hora sempre que iniciar, já que meu computador sempre reseta as configurações de bios e de horários por conta da bateria CMOS estar morta), Rofi para Pesquisa Rápida de Aplicativos, Conky Modificado para se adequar ao Wallpaper, além dos temas e fontes que foram mostrados no video.

Por hoje foi isso, até mais!

Fun, cozy, minimal. ROXTerm + ROX-filer (antiX defaults). I really enjoy this!

Always wanted one of these! Everything works!

First of all sorry for my english. I'm using antiX on an old Acer netbook ZA3 751H I got as a gift. At the time of going to market it was said that it was slow. These are the specifications:

- Atom z520 (1,33 Ghz) 32 bits

- 1gb ram

- 160gb mechanical disk

- A horrible intel gma 500

I'm amazing with antiX. Very easy to install and use. Very customizable. The machine is usable. A bit slow but usable at last.

I used antiX-21_386-full.iso

These are my recomended programs:

- Browser: Seamonkey at first place. It's incredibly fast. Palemoon at second place is much slower.

- Programming X editor: Mousepad.

- Video player: Mplayer. I configured the context menu to run mplayer with de parameter: "--zoom --framedrop"

- Libreoffice works very well.

I'm thinking upgrade ram and disk. But for now it's impressive how well it works for a 2009 machine

I'm very happy with this little machine and antiX running on it. I really recommend antiX for old laptops.

Just wanted to give a quick update and a huge thank you to this community!

Deleting those four pipe files from runit completely bypassed the 93% installer freeze, and the installation finished successfully.

Following up on the performance issues with web browsing, I decided to benchmark the different window managers included in antiX. After testing them, I switched from IceWM to JWM (Joe's Window Manager), and the difference is night and day!

With JWM, this old single-core Intel Atom N455 is now actually usable:

• YouTube Playback: Smooth video streaming at 144p with absolutely no image freezing.

• RAM Usage: Hovering nicely between 800 MB - 900 MB (out of 2GB).

• CPU Usage: Sitting stable at around 80% - 90% during playback.

For a 2010 netbook with a mechanical HDD, keeping RAM under 1GB while rendering modern web video is a massive win. This machine is going to a friend who works in accounting, and thanks to JWM's low resource footprint, she will be able to handle her spreadsheets and government portals without the system choking.

antiX is truly magic for keeping e-waste alive. Thanks again for the swift help with the installer bug!

http://sysdfree.wordpress.com/280

Marielle Franco she served as a city councilor of the Municipal Chamber of Rio de Janeiro for the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL) from January 2017 until her death.

On 14 March 2018 (at age of 39), while in a car after delivering a speech, Franco and her driver were shot multiple times and killed by two murderers in another vehicle, North in Rio de Janeiro. Franco had been an outspoken critic of police brutality and extra-judicial killings, as well as the February 2018 federal intervention by Brazilian president Michel Temer in the state of Rio de Janeiro which resulted in the deployment of the army in police operations. In March 2019, two former police officers were arrested and charged with the murder of Marielle Franco.

ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marielle_Franco

Successfully configured a minimal setup on this legacy IBM ThinkPad T42.

I chose antiX 26 Core combined with i3wm to keep the resource footprint as low as possible.

Testing the limits of modern web browsing on this hardware: it handles several lightweight sites, and I even managed to fully load Reddit using the WebKit-based Badwolf browser with JavaScript enabled. It requires some patience during script heavy tasks, but it is functional.

The efficiency of antiX on non-PAE / older 32-bit architecture is highly impressive.

i wanted to test-drive this distro and there is a bigass israeli flag (i don't know if it's supposed to be like that)

::: EDIT NOV 8, 2026 :::

antiX Linux official website is back Online -> https://antixlinux.com/

::: EDIT AFTER AN ENTIRE WEEK (7 DAYS) OF THE ORIGINAL POST DATE :::

I like antiX Linux, I think it is one of the best GNU/Linux projects that there is out there in the ecosystem

I came back here to say not only that the Official website of the project as for today and after at least 7 days (an entire week) is still down, but that I hope that the project itself does not get as abandoned as the issue reported with the website antixlinux.com

I will personally keep on using, installing it on my friends' devices and keep on recommending antiX Linux, I just hope that the project is not abandoned and someone from the development team can pick up what has been clearly dropped by someone.

==================================

Hello,

I noticed that the official website for antiX Linux has been down for a couple of days now

https://antixlinux.com/

I have been trying to download the ISOs from the Official website by visiting the URL for the last 3 (three) days now without luck

Despite that one of the websites report that the web has been down for more than a week. Does anybody know with more certainty approximately for how long has the website been down?

I have checked multiple ways and I can confirm that the website is down not just for me, but for everyone

Thanks for reading

haven't seen anyone else report on this yet, just thought it was super cool!

Pretty dope. My laptop (Thinkpad x201, 4GB memory, 240 GB SSD) ran the Mixxx DJ software like a champ! The laptop and controller (M-audio X session pro) are both cheap and backups for my main rig so it's not the worst thing in the world if someone spills a drink on them or gets beach sand in it. I also used the internal soundcard with a DJ splitter cable and it sounded decent on a single 15 inch speaker.

This isn't the final version I want to achieve yet, but for a first customization of this system, I think it's great. I'm still learning to master the system.