ROCK Linux 2.0.1 has been released. 2.0.1 is a maintenance release from the
2.0 stable tree
updating security and many packages (KDE, GNOME, Linux, dietlibc and many more). It is now easier to compile ROCK on other distributions
like SuSE or Red Hat, the tools ROCK Net and ROCK Plug have been improved and there are fixes for various architectures. For details, read the
release notes.
Anyone here using it? Any thoughts about it? It says Rock Linux is a distribution build kit. So how easy is it to give a package list, give some custom configuration files, build it all with some compilerflags, and make a nice bootable iso of it?
Easy. Maybe just try it 😉
I’ve tried it a few times. It’s more of a ‘meta’ linux, i.e. a build-system for a Linux distribution. I’ve heard that some of the important Gentoo ideas come from ROCK, but it never acheived the market-presence and fan-following that Gentoo has.
Which is a shame, because the build-system is just about as powerful, but is a lot easier to read and understand. And the main idea is to build an install-system from it, as opposed to install with it directly.
I rather like the way it uses the common tendency of developers to make ‘./configure’ look for what’s installed (libraries, etc) and use that as a basis for what features to compile in, compared with Gentoo’s ‘USE’ flags.
I also quite like how the meta-builder is configured with a Dialog-like system, reminisiscent of DebConf and Linux 2.4’s ‘make menuconfig’ as it makes it easier to understand how it all fits together when you’re just starting with it.
It makes a fantastic embedded-system builder, because the meta-build part is *not* self-hosted, but the installation system *is*.