We are proud to announce the second major antiX init-diversity spin created by ProwlerGR.
In their own words.
I am proud to announce the release of my antiX-23.2 – init-diversity – 2025 remaster edition which includes 6 inits (sysvinit – s6-rc – s6-66 – OpenRC – dinit – runit).
Download link: antiX-23.2_init-diversity_2025-remaster-edition
x64 in filename denotes 64-bit,
x86 in filename denotes 32-bit (i386)
user: demo
passwd: demo
root passwd: root
A big thanks to calciumsodium, masinick, and ile for testing and reporting bugs on the original 20250510 and 20250512 iso’s.
All iso’s from 20250514 onwards have all critical bugs addressed and any iso after this version may have a few different versions of software installed.
A special thanks also to eric from Obarun for providing guidance about getting 66 properly working on antiX, which in my humble opinion is the pinnacle of this respin.
From a users point of view, you will not notice much of a difference from the original spin apart from the presence of dinit and the new dialogbox GUI that I ported from runit and s6-rc – but from a developers/maintainers point of view the leap is very huge:
This release is much more than just another respin as it includes a lot personal work from myself to port various packages and scripts from upstream and other distro’s.
I must mention that a lot of effort has been put to create a turnkey solution in terms of packaging the various services to handle dependencies and create the proper scripts to enable/start them.
To install from a clean antiX-23.2_x64-full.iso or antiX-23.2_386-full.iso you can use the following script and adapt to your taste
(NOTE: Repo lines have changed from previous spin)
#!/bin/bash
[ "$UID" -eq 0 ] || exec sudo bash "$0" "$@"
echo "adding ProwlerGr init-diversity repo"
wget http://init-diversity.duckdns.org:8080/--gpg-key/init-diversity-repo.gpg -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/init-diversity-repo.gpg
echo "deb http://init-diversity.duckdns.org:8080/ init-diversity antix
deb-src http://init-diversity.duckdns.org:8080/ init-diversity antix" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/init-diversity.list
echo "renaming runit (if it exists) for a safe upgrade"
if [ -e /sbin/runit ]; then mv /sbin/runit /sbin/runit-bak; fi
sudo apt update && sudo apt -y dist-upgrade
echo "adding sysvinit related packages"
sudo apt -y install sysvinit-init-diversity
echo "adding s6-rc related packages"
sudo apt -y install s6-rc-init-diversity s6-rc-service-connmand s6-rc-service-slimski s6-rc-dialogbox-manager
echo "adding s6-66 related packages"
sudo apt -y install s6-66-init-diversity 66-service-connmand 66-service-slimski
echo "adding dinit related packages"
sudo apt -y install dinit-init-diversity dinit-service-connmand dinit-service-slimski dinit-dialogbox-manager
echo "adding openrc related packages"
sudo apt -y install openrc-init-diversity
echo "adding development packages for compiling software from ProwlerGr repos"
sudo apt -y install build-essential git-buildpackage dh-exec lintian libexecline-dev libglib2.0-dev po4a lowdown dh-runit libaudit-dev libcap-dev libpam0g-dev meson dh-sysuser doc-base libdbus-1-dev libcryptsetup-dev libblkid-dev libmount-dev libfdisk-dev libpolkit-gobject-1-dev libfido2-dev antix23-desktop-files iso-template-init-diversity
echo "restoring runit (if it was renamed to runit-bak)"
if [ -e /sbin/runit-bak ]; then mv /sbin/runit-bak /sbin/runit; fi
echo "adding runit related packages - this is best to be done last"
sudo apt -y install runit-init-diversity runit-service-boot-module runit-service-connmand runit-service-slimski runit-service-dbus runit-service-udevd runit-service-manager
Changelog:
Sysvinit:
– Bumped to 3.14-4 (backported from Trixie)
– A new metapackage sysvinit-init-diversity has been introduced to allow sysvinit to be installed alongside other inits
OpenRC
– Bumped to 0.56-1 (backported from Trixie) & modified dependencies to remove conflicts with sysv-rc
– A new metapackage “openrc-init-diversity” has been introduced to allow OpenRC to be installed alongside other inits.
– Another metapackage “openrc-init” has been introduced for those who wish to use OpenRC as the sole or default init on their system (or don’t care for other inits).
Dinit:
– Bumped to 0.19.4 (built from upstream)
– A new metapackage “dinit-init-diversity” has been introduced to allow dinit to be installed alongside other inits.
– A new metapackage “dinit-init” has been introduced for those who wish to use dinit as the sole or default init on their system (or don’t care for other inits).
– A new GUI “Dinit-Dialogbox-Manager” has been developed based on dialogbox (similar to the runit-service-manager)
– A few sample services have been packaged in a manner to handle service & package dependencies.
s6-66:
– Bumped to 66 version 0.8.0.2 (built from upstream) – This is an upgrade & incompatible to the previous 0.7.0.0 version which was present in last years spin
– A new metapackage “s6-66-init-diversity” has been introduced to allow s6-66 to be installed alongside other inits.
– Metapackage “s6-66-init” is available for those who wish to use s6-66 as the sole or default init on their system (or don’t care for other inits).
– Numerous services have been packaged in a manner to handle service dependencies – package dependencies & compilations automatically with updated maintainer scripts.
s6-rc:
– Bumped to newer versions of skalibs – execline – s6 – s6-rc – s6-linux-init – s6-linux-utils – s6-portable-utils.
– A new metapackage “s6-rc-init-diversity” has been introduced to allow s6-rc to be installed alongside other inits.
– Metapackage “s6-rc-init” is available for those who wish to use s6-rc as the sole or default init on their system (or don’t care for other inits).
– The whole ecosystem has been reconfigured & therefore incompatible with last years version due to the following reasons:
– A new optimised boot-module has been created which has dropped the majority of the previous bash scripts (from sysvinit) that were present in last years spin.
– Everything now is mostly execline (which is lean & mean to steal @anticapitalista’s line)
– The s6-db-reload script has been ported from Artix & is available to handle database compilations.
– Numerous services have been packaged in a manner to handle service dependenies – package dependencies & compilations automatically with assistance of the above tool
– The s6-rc-dialogbox-manager (former s6-rc-service-manager) has been reconfigured to utilise the same tool for compilations
Runit:
– Bumped to 2.2.0-3 (backported from Trixie)
– A new metapackage “runit-init-diversity” has been introduced to allow runit to be installed alongside other inits.
– The already available “runit-init” is there for those who wish to use runit as the sole or default init on their system (or don’t care for other inits).
– A new boot module has been created allowing for runit to be run pure without reliance on sysvinit folders or scripts
– A few services have been packaged in a manner to handle service & package dependencies.
A couple of notes on runit:
I understand the packaged services weren’t necessary for antiX as @anticapitalista already includes the service files in packages.
However antiX has chosen to use post-install scripts to forcibly remove sysvinit scripts – which is very bad for a multi init system & also breaks the dpkg/apt database.
In other words if you have runit installed & you do an upgrade on a package (eg slimski as an example), the post-install script will remove the sysvinit script if it detects /sbin/runit, so you won’t be able to enable slimski for sysvinit or OpenRC.
As a workaround one should rename /sbin/runit to eg /sbin/runit-bak, do the apt upgrade or apt install & then reinstate /sbin/runit to maintain the full multi-init system.
The packaging format I have provided is my humble suggestion to the antiX developers for future runit service packaging which includes sysvinit blockers instead of removing sysvinit scripts.
Refer to post-176918 about sysv blockers under /etc/runit/override-sysv.d
These runit-service packaged scripts (with their blockers) can be either be absorbed by the main packages – or – neater to be kept separate & added as dependencies to the main packages.
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