Zephix

Reader supplied reviews for Zephix Average rating 9.0 from 6 review(s) Please select a rating in the range of 1-10. Please write at least a few sentences about the distribution while limiting your review to 4080 characters. What are your thoughts on Zephix? Please include a few pros and a few cons, along with your overall impression of the operating system. Our FAQ page has tips on writing a good mini-review. Version: -- 876 Rating:    -- 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 out of 10 Your review (minimum 250 words): Past reviews - sort by: DateVotes Version: 8 Rating: 9 Date: 2025-09-06 Votes: 0 The actual reason I used it was to try i3 for Debian without going into too much trouble. It was fast and easy to install or use since it stays on the usb key. I was kinda also looking into getting Tails but I'm not particularly into the anonymity, tor side. I just wanted to try a portable distro. It's not persistent and dont have a huge Library but it kinda makes sense. There's a way to make it persistent on the website but i was kinda lazy to do it. Planning on keeping that os on my key to hop to it from time to time on my work windows 10 laptop. I wish there was vim keyboard based browser like Vieb etc on it, i easily managed to install it through Firefox but without the persistence it was kinda useless since ot wasn't there the next time. To be honest it had the minimal feeling i was expecting, thanks to the green and black wallpaper and the terminal. The default terminal is kitty, not really a fav but guess it's enough. It has a huge potential and to be honest i installed on my key this morning so it's kinda a warm review from a guy not especially into Linux, my last attempt on other distro had network issues but i didn't got it there. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 8 Rating: 8 Date: 2025-08-21 Votes: 2 I really like the concept of Zephix as a Debian-based live system with i3. The idea of including heavy applications like GIMP is brilliant—those are a pain to install on the fly every time you just want to use them. That said, i3 is tricky to configure in a way that feels like a proper graphical environment rather than just a multi-terminal setup. Even though it already has a keyboard layout switcher, a network icon, and a volume control, it’s still missing a lot of essentials. There are no preconfigured shortcuts for the basics—a file manager, a graphical text editor, or even a web browser. The themes aren’t unified, so graphical apps end up looking inconsistent. And the default application launcher (dmenu) is only practical if you already know what’s installed; it doesn’t help a newcomer exploring a preconfigured system. I had to run 'ls /usr/share/applications' in a terminal to figure out what GUI apps were available. Pros: - Lightweight - Comes with big, useful apps preinstalled Cons: - Feels too raw to be a ready-to-use live environment - Keep up the development—I won’t judge too harshly. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 8 Rating: 10 Date: 2025-08-19 Votes: 1 Zephix was surely built with speed and efficiency in mind, booting in seconds and delivering a consistently responsive experience, thanks to the ultra-lightweight i3 window manager and the solid Debian base. It surely comes preloaded with a well-curated selection of software that covers essential everyday tasks without burdening the system with unnecessary bloat ;) For someone like me who is obsessed with speed and performance, seeking a lightweight and fast live Linux OS to carry on a USB stick, it is the ideal choice. I can also use it as a rescue tool for any crashed machines since it runs totally from USB without needing to be installed. Thanks to the Zephix Team for a job well done! Was this review helpful? Yes No See all 6 reader reviews of Zephix...