CRUX 1.1 Released
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Nice, simple, clean, modern and optimized Distribution; much like Slackware but with even less packages.
Definetly worth a look, if you want to set up a compile (almost) everything box (GARNOME is your friend) or a highly specialized box (LinVDR).
dev0
I had never compiled a kernel before. Downloaded CRUX, followed their instructions. Everything went smoothly, I felt great. But if you don’t want to bother with that, don’t bother with CRUX. I also really liked the people on their mailing lists/chat rooms. Very friendly and helpful, even to a n00b like me, and even though they say in their docs that it’s not a n00b distro.
If you enjoy Crux then you will (most likly) like ArchLinux <www.archlinux.org>. I have used both but like Arch better. You should you whatever works the best for you.
jon
I don’t understand why anyone would create a distro that has little to no package management. It is completely useless.
These distros can’t do a single thing debian can not. Want to compile your apps? Fine, just don’t use apt. 99% you aren’t going to want to compile everything anyway.
@yerma
Well, if someone wants to compile everything from hand, it’s his problem. Crux or Arch linux are not going to be competition for Debian, but they are good distros to findout how dose things works. It’s just a hobby. Sure, it’s nice to use big, confortable car to go to work, but some will use VW Beatle instead. And im not understand “These distros can’t do a single thing debian can not.” point. I can say same with windows and debian. It’s free market, and people will use what they want.
ps, note: source based distros CAN be faster.
What I am saying is these distros offer nothing debian doesn’t have. If you want to compile all your apps like you would in this distro you can do that in debian too.
These distro’s offer exactly what Debian does not offer: up-to-dateness of packages (in the STABLE versions of the distro), and a non-complex packaging system.
Both CRUX and Arch are kept up-to-date continuously. You will find the latest versions of software in them. As for the non-complex packaging system, it means creating a package yourself is a _breeze_. It’s literally mostly creating a small textfile of about 10 lines of text.
Of course, there are other differences too, but i use CRUX for these…
Why make things complex when they can be made simple?
With CRUX things are simple and functional. Yes, there is no fancy package management with dependency checking. To me a good package system is one which main function is to simply keep track of installed files so that I can remove them easily if needed. Dependencies are listed in most CRUX packages (from http://crux.lugs.ch) but the simple package system (pkgutils) takes no notice of this. Simply check the dependency lists and install missing packages yourself – its that simple.
Most applications dont have a lot of dependencies so its quite easy to install things. Of course this can be a bit complicated with large projects with huge dependencies such as GNOME and KDE, but it is possible. There are unofficial scripts for these projects.
Have you ever looking in a .ebuild file? Oh my god – its not that easy to maintain. I would recommend to take a look in a CRUX Pkgfile instead – its simple and clean!
The unofficial ports (package build files) collection at crux.lugs.ch is pushing 700+ ports now. It includes the most popular ports. If there is a package missing, make it yourself or request it – its that simple.
As mentioned, CRUX is fast and very much up to date compared with most other distros. There is a release roughly every 3 months.
I would recommend this distribution to anyone (newbie or experienced). Its really that nice – try it out.