With the opening quarter of 2025, I’ve finally replaced my old favorite, EndeavourOS (where I used Xfce), with antiX (where I opted for IceWM) as my main operating system.
The motivation for me doing this was for setting up a minimal system that wasn't too heavy on the RAM usage for my old computer, which still uses a first-generation Intel Core i5 processor.
How did I come across antiX?
I had wandered around throughout the years, checking out the smallest Linux desktop distros I could load up in virt-manager without installing them. This way, I could test what might break my system.
The variety of tools included in the DSL ISO is impressive, and all of it is packaged under 1.1 GB. Even the default desktop configuration is good and looks nice.
During my use, I noticed that DSL was using ~300 MB of RAM for running a fully fledged desktop environment, which made me curious about it.
After using DSL for about a year in a virtual machine, I tried running it on bare metal. But, when I booted it on my computer with a live USB, I found out that most applications refused to open, even the terminal ones.
I knew that DSL was based on antiX. So, I thought, why don't I give antiX a try?
To my surprise, unlike DSL, every application on antiX worked perfectly. After testing it for a bit, I installed it on my computer's hard drive. The installation took around 3 minutes, which is remarkable considering the fact that hard drives can be slow during such tasks.
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Tip: Ventoy makes it easy to copy and paste multiple ISOs and boot different OSes from a single USB stick.
IceWM Customization
Although antiX comes with three different window managers, i.e., IceWM, JWM, and Fluxbox, we will mainly talk focus on its default window manager, IceWM.
The Control Centre is at the heart of all customization. The UI of the Control Centre looks weird, but it does its job.
antiX's App Select menu and IceWM's keys configuration file.
The layout of the default App Select application makes it difficult to work with. So, I configured rofi as my application search and launch utility.
I installed rofi with this command:
sudo apt install rofi
Then, I assigned a hotkey (Alt + F3) for the rofi command rofi -show run by editing the keys IceWM configuration file via the antiX Control Centre using Geany (refer to screenshot above).
To add a new menu, I just had to add a new entry in the menu config file:
To remove it, I just needed to comment it out of the config file.
Thunar running on antiX and the Preferred Applications setting in the Control Centre.
antiX comes with the ancient ROX-filer file manager, which I found difficult to use for navigating directories. So, I switched to Thunar by using the following command to install it:
sudo apt install thunar
And set it as the default file manager by going into antiX Control Centre ⇾ Preferred Applications ⇾ File Manager. The second screenshot above shows the steps involved.
antiX comes with two terminal emulators by default, RXVT and ROXTerm. The Alt key prefix doesn’t play nicely with ROXTerm, so I dropped it and stuck to RXVT.
There are two variants of RXVT, one that supports Unicode, rxvt-unicode (urxvt) and another that doesn’t, the classic RXVT. I use urxvt as my main terminal.
I prefer having some applications configured to run automatically on system startup. So, I configured that via the antiX Control Centre and edited the startup file. My setup automatically starts KDE Connect and Slimjet on system startup.
Why IceWM over Xfce?
You might be wondering, Why did I move away from Xfce? At its core, IceWM is just a window manager, while XFCE is a proper desktop environment. Irrespective of that, both provide a graphical interface to interact with a Linux system.
The strengths of IceWM are less RAM usage and easy configuration. There are a few downsides too, like its dated-looking user interface and limited customization potential, but it's fine with me.
During my usage, on idle, antiX with IceWM only took up around 200 MB of RAM, compared to EndeavourOS running Xfce that took around 1.1 GB of RAM in idle.
Moreover, the customization capability offered here is good. It is in the form of plain text files, which makes it easy to carry out version control and automate things quickly on a new fresh installation. Everything from the menu, toolbar, startup applications, and keyboard shortcuts can be configured via the plain text configuration files.
Closing Thoughts
Overall, I am quite satisfied with antiX. It is a small, fast, usable distro, with its ISO file being a mere 1.2 GB and installation being lightning fast. Not to mention, antiX is based on Debian, so you will have access to a large collection of software.
Switching to antiX cut my boot time and made my old PC more responsive. The interface may look dated, but it delivers speed—hope it does the same for you!
Author Info
Bhuwan Mishra is a Fullstack developer, with Python and Go as his tools of choice. He takes pride in building and securing web applications, APIs, and CI/CD pipelines, as well as tuning servers for optimal performance. He also has passion for working with Kubernetes.
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