Hungarian translation of antiX Linux and MX Linux (2023)

The MX Linux and antiX Linux distributions are small and fast distros, that can be used on older computers too. I found them, while repairing some laptops, as written here about my HP 6720s on which, I installed the 32bits version.

An antiX can be used as a Live USB system, but you can set up persistence. That keeps all your changes by writing back to the USB. You can even install programs. There is an option called remastering, which makes your changes into the root file system of the Live USB. Then there is an option to make a so called Frugal Install, that installs the system as an ISO image to your hard drive (to one file basically). And there is also normal install, which is usual with any Linux distro.

Besides all that, antiX does not contain systemd, so that saves a lot on resources. And it is directly connected to Debian Repositories, so eveything will work that does not need systemd, or was rebuilt systemd-free by antiX team.

It was very cool, that I was using the USB with persistence, and remastering, and when the SSD arrived for the laptop, I installed from the USB. This kept all users, installed software, settings, etc. Thumbs up for what the developers!

That Core2Duo Lenovo from 2008 works very well with 32 bits version of antiX Linux. It received a brand new Hungarian keyboard from AliExpress, because the old was with stickers and many special letters were not visible (e.g. Alt-Gr combinations like # @). It needed a new fan, new battery and an SSD.

Hungarian translation of antiX Linux

That's a whole other story. Imagine that words like remastering, frugal install, or persistence do not yet exist in your language's general computer terminology, because they are rarely used. In most cases tech guys simply keep the English word. So I had hard time making a translation, which is better understandable for non-English speakers than if it was the English word with an explanation.

I came up with these solutions, with help from the Hungarian free software community:

• PERSISTENCE: Adatmegőrzés
• REMASTER: Lemezképbe rögzítés
• FRUGAL INSTALL: Lemezképként telepítés

The operating system translation includes boot managers, installer, menus, setup programs, programs for Live USB and persistence related stuff.

GRUB boot menu

cli-aptix, that's a very interesting command line based package installer

MX Linux Hungarian translation

I didn't try MX, but as I can see it's in the very same Transifex project. And many tools are shared between them. Unfortunately they are separately maintained, so translation must be copied over - but Transfiex Translation Memory feature helps to copy them or keep the same terminology.

IceWM Hungarian translation

Since this is the default Window Manager in these distros, I've updated the translation too. However it was not much behind. That is maintained here:

https://l10n.opensuse.org/projects/icewm/

(You'll need some kind of central OpenSuSe account.)

antiX Contributions repo

There is a separated localization repo for "contribs" on Transifex. That was 100% machine translated. The result for Hungarian language is devastating. And I have hard time fixing that. This is worse than if it was not translated at all. So for now, I gave up that.

Any help is welcome! :-)

Track translation changes with Trasifex

Since that is a paid feature, I do the following: Using their "tx" command line tool, I clone the repo, commit to a local Git repo. So that when I update it, I can see the changes. Get TX client:

• https://developers.transifex.com/docs/cli
• https://github.com/transifex/cli/releases/latest

To fetch the Transifex stuff to your PC:

mkdir tx-antix-main
cd tx-antix-main
tx add remote --file-filter 'translations/<project_slug>.<resource_slug>/<lang>.<ext>' https://www.transifex.com/anticapitalista/antix-development/dashboard/
tx pull -l hu

Or the contribs repo:

mkdir tx-antix-contribs
cd tx-antix-contribs
tx add remote --file-filter 'translations/<project_slug>.<resource_slug>/<lang>.<ext>' https://www.transifex.com/antix-linux-community-contributions/antix-contribs/dashboard/
tx pull -l hu

How to update your copy:

Repeat the "tx pull" command above to just update already downloaded files.
Repeat the "tx add" command to update .tx/config with newly created resource files and then do the "txt pull".

Always commit to your Git.

To see changes (brief):

git diff -U0 | egrep -v "(^.\\s*<location|^@@)"

Links

• https://antixlinux.com/
• https://www.antixforum.com/
• And a forum post about what other programs to translate

ps: I totally do not relate to the loud political views of the antiX main developer - I just don't care. I use it for LINUX.