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I have to agree, as I was just about to say the same thing. Infact, rather than installing Fedora Core on my current server system, I found a small distro (CRUX[http://crux.nu/Main/HomePage], actually.) I'm pretty impressed with it so far, but I wouldn't advise it for a newcommer to Linux. Even it came with a compiler, which no Microsoft OS can tout. Heh. Wulfe

Nope, it claims to be base on a pretty obscure distribution called CRUX.

http://www.crux.nu/

According to http://crux.nu/doc/handbook.html

in the FAQ

"4. I heard CRUX was based on Slackware, is that true?

No, that's incorrect. CRUX was built from scratch and has never been based on any other Linux distribution."

Quote from Arch's wiki:

Arch Linux is descended from Crux.

So both dpkg and rpm seem slow to me :)

i agree. Each time i have tried to install gentoo, i have run into massive issues with broken ebuilds during the stage 1 or stage 2 install. Each time, i got fed up complaining about the "quality control" of the install ebuilds and went back to http://www.slackware.com/ or http://www.crux.nu/. Crux has a BSD ports system that works better than portage, IMHO, and its a lot easier to deal with. Each to his own of course, but there are always other options :)

Actually crux is closer to ports, and slackware + pkg-src is basically the same thing.

...and performs a bit better than Bochs. Install a smallish distro like Crux. QEMU also is supposed to support Windows 95/98/ME/2K but Bochs will probably prove to be more compatible. Don't expect speed demon performance and you'll be OK.

AC

There is a rough equivelant. In Windows XP at least, you can right click on an executable and select "Run as..." and type in the username and password of the user that you want to run the program as. Need to install? Run as a normal user, and right click on the setup.exe, select "Run as..." Fill out you username and password with some administrative user, and there ya go. Note: I'm a linux user who was informed of this feature when I was otherwise bitching about the lack of a su type feature. Windows XP doesn't appear to be all bad, but I still prefer CRUX Linux

Currently I run crux, this is a nice alternative to the bloated distros out there. It's a "build what you want" (aside from the 'base' and 'opt' packages). Personally I gave up on RedHate about 2 years ago, it's way too bloated and slow. I run crux with xfce4, it's light and fast, on my 500mhz laptop that does make a difference, especially when you are trying to get something done while compiling firefox :).

Seriosly, you need more space to build a fluid, friendly OS / windowmanager, but you don't need bloat.

I like having a nice core set of tools, I don't need three gui calculators and 5 CD playing utilities. There is a lot of bloat, and it's not doing anyone much good.

Crux. The others are all too bloated. :-)

CRUX Linux is a toy distribution

Does he compile every time he runs something?

No, but have you ever compiled KDE on a 300 Mhz machine? It takes literally days. And you have to do this every time you want to upgrade to a new version. Like maybe to fix a critical security hole. Are you just gonna leave the machine vunerable while waiting for crap to compile?

I thought that was the big point of Gentoo - optimized binaries for your exact platform so that when you do run it, it runs faster than Debbie or whomever would run on that slow platform, or am I missing something?

Yeah, have you ever benchmarked the differences? I have. Hardly any difference at all, and if you use an i686 compiled distro then there is no difference at all.

Any other creative source based distro out there besides gentoo and rubyx?

CRUX Linux

At any rate, a Gentoo user compiles his own kernel, right? I know you could use a stage3 kernel, but the documentation that is so wonderful goes through the process of building the kernel yourself. Hence, it doesn't really ship with a 2.6 kernel, just the sources.

Because of that, you could argue that the distribution I use has been using 2.6 for a long time, since I put the 2.6 sources onto my Crux CD before I install it.

Besides, I won't consider any distribution to be really USING 2.6 it one ships with a glibc compiled against 2.6 (right now in cvs, but what will be the next version). IIRC, Gentoo is still building glibc against 2.4 headers, is it not?

Granted, Mandrake is too, so I'm splitting hairs.

Too bad Gentoo isn't the only one with a PORTS clone.

Ever looked at Crux, Arch, or if you want "the original", BSD?

Gentoo isn't very unique in respect to portage. ;-)

The idea that the chosen defaults for RH, Mandrake, etc. take away control is absurd. You can still logon to root and hack them into a debian box, or even Gentoo. You just have to know how. You can build all your packages from source with "l33t" compiling options (however much they actually erode performance), as well as install within a chroot environment, as per LFS.

Really, Gentoo users often perceive that Gentoo is giving them control, when actually Gentoo is just making easier the same advanced tasks that you can do on any other distribution.

The only problem with that is that Gentoo takes ages to install, even on modern equipment.

Try Crux instead.

I'll second Crux linux as a wonderful distro :) But it is something which will scare a lot of users away, as almost all functionality you have to add in yourself.

Vector Linux looks like a "halfway house" between the bloated nature of the mainstream distros, and the minimalism of Crux. This can only be a good thing ...

I type "prt-get sysup" and get the same results. Gentoo doesn't suck, it's actually a very well maintained distribution. As long as it's on topic, I really don't mind. Just tell those 14-year old zealots that frequent those infamous forums of yours to stop throwing pitches where it's not on-topic, 'cause you're not the only one who can do that, nor is Gentoo the first to come up with it (there have been source-based distros for Linux for a while). By the way, prt-get is a tool for Crux, a minimalistic distribution with a ports system. More my style than Gentoo, as it leaves more of the configuration in my hands.

And yes, I am being hypocritical.

The perfect lightweight distro. Total ISO size less than 200Mb, I installed it without problems on an old PI 233MHz with 32M RAM, could have got away with 16M.

Agreed. It always fascinates me why Gnome/KDE feel the need to re-invent the wheel (heh, literally :) for things like mouse settings, keyboard settings, etc, when X already handles these perfectly well.

I've been playing around with 2.5.73 recently using WindowMaker, and I haven't noticed any problems with X mouse performance/accel ...

In fact, I'm in the process of changing over to the 2.5 series - in my experience (albeit of about a week) it seems stable and highly usable. (The delay is that I'm switiching distro's as well, from bloated Mandrake to minimalist Crux - and I need to download and compile a lot of software!)

However, I personally find that plenty of other distributions fill the same needs. In my case, I've started using a lightweight distro called CRUX, which installs as binary packages, but has a ports utility with which you can easily streamline building from source. When you're done building, you have a tar.gz binary package that you can use over and over :)

Any distribution that's not built around a huge binary packaging system like CRUX or Gentoo is good for this. Though if I were using Mandrake or Redhat, I'd just build ardour in /opt/ardour (that's what /opt is for).

I think ardour will get as good as you need for most ameteur and a lot of professional use. Remember that famous albums like Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska and the Beatle's Sgt. Pepper were recorded on old four-tracks.

Ardour will be great if you do a lot of your eq/compression/fx before you hit the soundcard. It will not be as good as Cakewalk or other apps if you want to use it as an all-in-one mixer/fx/kitchen sink.

As someone who is currently writing some bioinformatics software which I imagine will be quite useful (the only equivalent programs are expensive, less accurate and - needless to say - closed source) and which I'm intending to release under the GPL, I can say from personal feeling that I do not want to be "rewarded" for writing it and giving it away for free. I've written it partly because I needed to, but mainly for enjoyment. I don't want money for it!!

I currently use Mandrake 9.0, but while I can see the virtues of the distro as far as others are concerned I'm unlikely to ever upgrade or pay for it. In fact, if I was to change distro I'd probably be a lot more inclined to switch to something like Crux (which is completely open and free, and makes my ancient P120 laptop fly: I admire it for its lack of bloat and for the fact that it's teaching me how to set up a linux system). As it stands, most of the software I use on my current Mandrake system has been compiled by me (from X toolkits upwards - the exceptions are the kernel (because I'm lazy), the GNU tools (no real advantage to compiling yourself AFAICS) and X (takes too long and uses up too much disk space)) so I can't say I'd really miss Mandrake if it suddenly collapsed.

For that matter, since all the Mandrake tools are GPL'd anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if Mandrake didn't continue to live on in some shape or form even if the company went bankrupt. The only thing I would expect to change would be that support would no longer be provided in the form of the Mandrake Club.

i started using linux a little over two years ago. i went to linuxworld 2000 in nyc and came home with free copies of several distrobution's cds. i went cold turkey off of windows and into redhat. after about a month, i realized that i wasn't really learning much from redhat.
that night i decided i was going to find a distro that i liked. i installed everything (suse, turbolinux, debian, conectiva). finally, i installed slackware an was amazed at its simplicity. it was remarkably voodoo-free. there were no crazy scripts to confuse me, everything made sense.
now i use debian. i forget when or why i made the switch. i still love slack, but i'm hooked on debian's package management and software availability. slackware is the best distro to *learn* linux on. it forces you to do things yourself, and that's important. it's not quite as hardcore as linux from scratch, and i've heard crux and gentoo are similar, but slack will always hold a special place in my heart.

Thanks Pat.

I'm in a similar situation to yourself - I tried Gentoo, but for some reason it scream REDHART LOONIX at me. Don't ask why, it just did.

So I found something similar, CRUX linux. Fell in love with it after my first install, it has bsd-like ports but done better (IMHO) than gentoo's.

My 2p.

It sounds like you aren't looking for a source-based distro, but you don't need one in order to use Linux.

Crux is small. You want their i586 version.

Peanut Linux, as the name implies, is compact. They have an abiword package if you don't want to compile it yourself.

Some major distros like Mandrake offer minimal install options.

Big catagorized lists of distros are here and here and here.

You can get about any distro to work nice if you use a lightweight window manager such as blackbox or xfce (which is actually a complete lightweight desktop environment). Every major distro has a few like these.

Crux already has this. And its tiny!

Personally, I'd go with Peanut.

No thanks, I will stick with Crux, at 413 MBs, I am quite happy with all its packages.