AEON is a fork of an extremely old version of Monero that I believe is the best to mine at the moment. I believe this because it has 21 times smaller network hashrate than Monero, uses a more lightweight hashing function, and experiences the occasional $1-3 million 24 hour trade volume. Currently, the community is working on a rebase effort, which will implement features of the newest version of Monero. I personally believe this will cause the price to rocket from $5-8 per coin to at least $15-20, but that's just speculation. This guide will bring you through the process of obtaining a wallet, compiling XMRig, and doing the actual mining.

Get A Wallet

Getting a functional AEON wallet is currently significantly harder than most cryptocurrencies. You could mine to an exchange like HitBTC or Bittrex, but I prefer setting up an actual wallet just to be safe. Beginners to the currency like Aeon Pocket because it's so simple and free as in freedom software, just be sure to write down your private seed.

Setting Up Mining Software

Microsoft Windows

1. Download XMRig

Download and unzip the latest win64 release from this page. Make a note of the location where you unzipped it, if you don't know what the location is, it's probably your Downloads folder.

2. Run XMRig

Search your applications for "Command Prompt" and open it. Type cd Downloads and you should hopefully be in the same directory as XMRig.exe. To check, see if XMRig.exe appears when you type "dir". If so, running xmrig.exe should work, and you may skip to the next section.

GNU/Linux (Ubuntu)

If you're using Linux I'm going to assume you know your way around a terminal. To clone and compile the software just run these commands:

sudo apt-get install git build-essential cmake libuv1-dev libmicrohttpd-dev
git clone https://github.com/xmrig/xmrig.git
cd xmrig
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make

You may now move to the config section.

Mac OS X

1. Install Homebrew

Homebrew is a Mac package management system, essentially this software enables you to easily install and update large amounts of software with one command. To install Homebrew open Terminal by pressing Command and Shift simultaneously, typing "Terminal", and pressing enter. Finally, you may actually install homebrew by typing the following command and pressing enter:

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

The installer will run for a couple of minutes. Should you get any password prompts type in your password and press enter.

2. Compile XMRig

Copy and paste the following text into your terminal. This may take a while depending on your setup, it's compiling the software from source.

brew install cmake libuv libmicrohttpd
git clone https://github.com/xmrig/xmrig.git
cd xmrig
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make

Congrats, if everything went well you should have a fully operational copy of XMRig running on your system. Try running ./xmrig, you should hopefully get an output similar to:
unable to open /Users/miles/Desktop/xmrig/build/config.json: no such file or directory. If so, you may now move to the next section.

Pick A Mining Pool

Check aeonpools.net for a list of pools. I personally prefer AEON Hash Vault, so that's what I'll be using for this tutorial.

Config File

1. Download Default Config

Download this config and put it in your XMRig working directory(if you don't know what this is, just save it in the XMRig folder that has been made). You're going to want to familiarize yourself with this config, it's how you can customize the features of XMRig.

2. Customize The Config

Because XMRig is configured for Monero by default we must change algo to cryptonight-light. I also changed donate-level to the minimum value, 1. This means that 1% of our time, 1 minute out of 100 minutes, will be donated to the developer of XMRig. I then switched url to AEON Hash Vault's server for low-end hardware, pool.aeon.hashvault.pro:3333.

Optional Set your username to the AEON address you'd like payments to be sent to. If you're using Hash Vault you may also want to set a password for the webpanel. Hash Vault requires you to use an email for it, so set your pass variable to x:[email protected]where "[email protected]" is your actual email address.

Here's what your config file should look something like:

{
    "algo": "cryptonight-lite",  // cryptonight (default) or cryptonight-lite
    "av": 0,                // algorithm variation, 0 auto select
    "background": false,    // true to run the miner in the background
    "colors": true,         // false to disable colored output    
    "cpu-affinity": null,   // set process affinity to CPU core(s), mask "0x3" for cores 0 and 1
    "cpu-priority": null,   // set process priority (0 idle, 2 normal to 5 highest)
    "donate-level": 1,      // donate level, mininum 1%
    "log-file": null,       // log all output to a file, example: "c:/some/path/xmrig.log"
    "max-cpu-usage": 75,    // maximum CPU usage for automatic mode, usually limiting factor is CPU cache not this option.  
    "print-time": 60,       // print hashrate report every N seconds
    "retries": 5,           // number of times to retry before switch to backup server
    "retry-pause": 5,       // time to pause between retries
    "safe": false,          // true to safe adjust threads and av settings for current CPU
    "syslog": false,        // use system log for output messages
    "threads": null,        // number of miner threads
    "pools": [
        {
            "url": "pool.aeon.hashvault.pro:3333", // URL of mining server
            "user": "Wmtd6DkpKEV84Pdx9mTFSsXx6K9VzzAttL8ofA9GuA7uhWjavaSYyGzazcPD1qtVxH1yk6Bn3QZWwJYdoAZJxNGm27JnPXk7b",                        // username for mining server
            "pass": "x:[email protected]",                       // password for mining server
            "keepalive": true,                 // send keepalived for prevent timeout (need pool support)
            "nicehash": false                  // enable nicehash/xmrig-proxy support
        }
    ],
    "api": {
        "port": 0,                             // port for the miner API https://github.com/xmrig/xmrig/wiki/API
        "access-token": null,                  // access token for API
        "worker-id": null                      // custom worker-id for API
    }
}

Start Mining!

You may now go back to your original terminal, type "xmrig.exe" on Windows or "./xmrig" on Mac/Linux. After a couple seconds, you should start getting nice messages like "accepted (1/0) diff 14580 (26 ms)" with pretty colors. If you get these you did it correctly. Now, open aeon.hashvault.pro and open the settings menu in the top right corner. Fill in your payment address with what useris set to and your password as your email. If all goes well you should see your live hashrate in the website header. You're now all setup, happy mining!

* I am not sponsored by AEON or Hash Vault, however I do have a small holding in AEON(around 4.8 coins) and I stand to profit from a price rise.