antiX 26.1 was released on September 29. It is a maintenance release of antiX 26, built on Debian 13 “Trixie”, and keeps the distribution’s defining trait: it runs without systemd, libsystemd0, elogind, or libelogind0, using eudev in place of systemd’s udev.

Five init systems

antiX offers a choice of init system, more than any mainstream distribution:

Init	Notes
runit	The default
sysVinit	The classic
Dinit	Dependency-based supervision; see our Dinit explainer
s6-rc	Part of the s6 suite
s6-66	A higher-level frontend for s6

Our guide to process supervisors like s6 and runit explains how these differ.

Kernels and editions

• Core edition: Linux 5.10.256 LTS
• 64-bit Full edition: Linux 6.6.139 LTS

Both Full and Core editions come in 64-bit and 32-bit, which is increasingly rare. The default desktop is IceWM, with Fluxbox, JWM, and herbstluftwm available.

Note that both shipped kernels sit on long-standing LTS branches; the current 6.6 longterm release is 6.6.157, so apply kernel updates after installing.

Upgrading

Existing antiX 26 users do not need to reinstall. One known issue: Bluetooth mice may not be detected in some configurations.

Who it is for

antiX targets old and low-memory hardware: it runs comfortably on machines that modern desktops have left behind. Our which distro for beginners guide covers other lightweight options such as MX Linux, which is built in collaboration with the antiX project.