Main thread in the antiX forum but I thought I'd post here as well (for those interested)
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
user: demo
passwd: demo
root passwd: root
A big thanks to _at_calciumsodium _at_masinick _at_ile from the antiX forum for testing & reporting bugs on the original 20250510 & 20250512 iso's.
A special thanks also to _at_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 & the new dialogbox GUI that I ported from runit & 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 & 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 & 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 & adapt to your taste
NOTE: Repo lines have changed from previous spin
#!/bin/bash
[ "$UID" -eq 0 ] || exec sudo bash "$0" "$_at_"
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
init-diversity_live-grub
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 _at_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 _at_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.
More to come…
Received on Sat May 31 2025 - 17:42:20 CEST