Submitted by TriedIT reviews CRUX 2.3, and concludes: “CRUX 2.3 is simple, but not from a user standpoint. It does require a lot of manual installation and configuration. It also doesn’t come with a bunch of pre-installed software either. But the distribution is meant for experienced users, after all. It is definitely simple from a system standpoint, however. There’s no complex hardware auto-detection, or heavy weight desktop environments, 3D desktops or proprietary video card drivers. The package system is also pretty simple, but includes source-based package installation. There are no fancy GUI configuration utilities (or even console-based ones).”
Installing and using Crux may help you understand linux better.
To me, LFS seemed tedious, with hundreds of programs to compile. Crux forces you to work with a detail – but not that much.
A basic Crux installation is also very lightweight.
“Installing and using Crux may help you understand linux better.”
Remembers me a bit of Slackware Linux many years ago. 🙂
Basics and fundamental knowledge are a must-know for system engineers, system programmers and even for system administrators, or at least they should be. The truth is somewhat different: More and more system administrators turn out as click’n’drool guys who do not know the basics, and so they fail in correcting even simple problems. I’ve seen examples from life regarding this situation…
Personally, I think CRUX is a very good learning project, but it might not fit the Joe Q. Sixpack and Jane Average user class. But it does not claim to do so, in this case I see no problem. CRUX might even be a good educational project to be used in schools where advanced applied computer science is taught.
To repeat: Basics are universal. If you know them in one Linux, you know them in Solaris, IRIX or BSD. And in some (few?) cases, you don’t get around them.
More and more system administrators turn out as click’n’drool guys who do not know the basics
You mean kinda guys who say things like . . .
Please set your computer clock to 1996….
“More and more system administrators turn out as click’n’drool guys who do not know the basics
You mean kinda guys who say things like . . .
Please set your computer clock to 1996…. “
I won’t answer to this, but maybe the clock needs to be set back to 1970 for real computer basics. 🙂
I’ve talked to system administrators (and people who call theirselves “professional system technicans”) who entered the world of computers with some “Windows XP Home” and now thought they could administer a 50+ client network running Solaris or Linux. They didn’t find the “Explorer” and wanted to reboot the server in order to increase operation speed. One even tried to install “Windows” on a Solaris machine because “at home it works better”… these strange people should be set (or at least sent?) back to 1996 to learn what’s administration about. I’m talking about professional administration explicitely, not about using CD burning tools for the average home user.
Please set your computer clock to 1996….
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Crux is quite simple for the user. But you are talking about a different type of user.
Some of us prefer to edit the configuration files and scripts by hand. In a distribution like Crux, that is quite easy to do because the system is designed to be understood at that level. The same goes for creating packages: the package description files are so simple that they are beautiful. They are also easy to construct. That means that it is almost as easy to create a package for other people to use as it is to build the software using configure; make; make install directly.
The way that packages are shared is refreshing too. In most distributions they are smushed together in one giant repository. In Crux they are separated by user. It is usually easy to find a user who shares a similar philosophy to you, so you can get packages with build options that you like.