Slackware-alike CRUX 1.3 was released (ISO image is 194 MB). Changes: USB 2.0 support added; USB storage support added; modules for most network cards added; new packages: opt/expat 1.95.7, opt/firebird 0.7, opt/fontconfig 2.2.1; removed packages: opt/mozilla (replaced by opt/firebird).
CRUX 1.3 Released
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Eugenia Loli
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It is optimised for i686 but can it also run on i385 processors too?
Or did they optimise it strictly for i686 only processors.
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194MB ISO, I wish more distro’s were like this.
Oops! I mean’t i386
It’s probably i686 or above only. It does boot pretty quick also, it’s very simple distro.
It may be slackware-alike as mentioned above, but it’s a very minimal distro. Lots of hand configuring of hardware. It might be possible to add hotplug to simplify things. The package management is very simple as well, although i believe you can add an apt-get type of manager to it. For a newbie, I’d recommend printing out the 16 page manual or write it to floppy or cd. I definitely needed it.
For daily use, i prefered the Arch distro instead which is also 686 optimized. Arch also requires a bit of tweaking, but not as much IMHO. Either is a good learning experience, particularly Crux. I’d like to see some benchmarks on boot and app load times. Subjectively Arch (crux based) feels faster in daily use than the rpm distros. I’d like to compile everything from source, but so many flags to choose from -O2, -O3, Os, and many more. I’ll leave it to the distro designers to pick which tweaks are best.
As what I have gathered from the handbook, NLS is disabled at compile time.
Does this mean I can’t even run it in LANG=en_US.UTF-8 nor in LANG=de_AT.UTF-8, I have to run it in LANG=C?
Yeah. Remember, though, you can install gettext later on. If you use Gnome, then you’ll need to do it anyways, and you’ll have a nice internationalized desktop.
For those of you who think less is more, this distro is about perfect. Stable, fast and always up to date. It rocks!
If you have probs with disable-nls try archlinux.org and you will get more powerful desktop.
Exactly how is arch more powerful?
It is optimized for i686 BUT you can pick up a i585 iso at one of the contributors to the forums probably in a week or so. I can’t remember the ftp address offhand, but it will be very easy to find in the Crux forums and I think Crux even has a link to it in the downloads area.
Crux btw is VERY streamlined and cruft-free. It is a great system for experienced linux admins who also have experience with bsd-style init scripts and ports. It has also gained quite a following for all these reasons.
Crux runs on PowerPC as well. Check the main site for the iso.