Slashdot Mirror
Unusual, Obscure, and Useful Linux Distros
angry tapir writes "Most people will be familiar with some of the big names when it comes to Linux — distributions like Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Debian, and Mandriva. Most of the well-known Linux distros are designed to be used as general-purpose desktop operating systems or installed on servers. But beyond these distros are hundreds of others either designed to appeal to very specific audiences or to fulfill the somewhat niche needs of some users. We rounded up some of the most interesting Linux distributions that you might not have heard of."
... the live CD you have with you.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
We need a new instant mirror site for slashdot. Any suggestions?
"One of the benefits of open source software that many people are most familiar with is that it's free to download.
This means you can grab great applications — such as Mozilla's Firefox Web browser, the OpenOffice.org office suite or the GIMP photo editing program — without paying a cent.
However, the other major benefit of truly open source software (some "open source" software licences are more restrictive than others) is that you're allowed to modify a program and redistribute your altered version so other people can enjoy it.
Linux is a classic example of this: there are hundreds (at least!) of different Linux-based operating systems. Most people will be familiar with some of the big names — distributions like Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Debian and Mandriva.
Most of the well-known Linux distros are designed to be used as general purpose desktop operating systems or installed on servers. But beyond these distros are hundreds of others either designed to appeal to very specific audiences or to fulfil the somewhat niche needs of some users.
We rounded up some of the most interesting Linux distros out there that you might not have heard of.
Insecure by design: Damn Vulnerable Linux
Damn Vulnerable Linux is "The most vulnerable and exploitable operating system ever" according to its Web site.
It's designed for security training; it includes training material and exercises (as well as a whole bunch of flaws to exploit). As Mayank Sharma notes: "Damn Vulnerable Linux (DVL) is everything a good Linux distribution isn't. Its developers have spent hours stuffing it with broken, ill-configured, outdated, and exploitable software that makes it vulnerable to attacks."
Indulge in paranoia: Tinfoil Hat Linux
Tinfoil Hat Linux is pretty much the opposite of Damn Vulnerable Linux: it's designed for the paranoid among us.
"It started as a secure, single floppy, bootable Linux distribution for storing PGP keys and then encrypting, signing and wiping files.
At some point it became an exercise in over-engineering." According to its developers, a possible reason for using it is that that "Illuminati are watching your computer, and you need to use morse code to blink out your PGP messages on the numlock key." They're joking. Probably. (In case you want more tinfoil protection, there are some links to a site about aluminium foil deflector beanies and tinfoil suits.)
CSI Linux: CAINE
CAINE (Computer Aided INvestigative Environment) is probably one of the coolest niche Linux distributions around. It's designed for digital forensics (so sadly, no blood spatter analysis) and was developed at the Information Engineering Department of the University of Modena e Reggio Emilia in Italy. It includes software such as TheSleuthKit and Autopsy Forensic Browser for examining file systems, data recovery applications, steganography tools and utilities for securely wiping drives (you know, in case someone else has a copy of CAINE).
Open source engineering: CAELinux
Eminently embeddable: Zeroshell
Zeroshell Linux gets its name from being designed to be solely administered through a Web interface. It's intended to be used on servers and embedded devices.
Its features include load balancing, support for 3G mobile broadband connections and RADIUS support.
Ditch Windows Media Centre: Mythbuntu
Mythbuntu is not really a niche distribution, but it is designed for a specific task rather than being a general desktop distro.
Mythbuntu is used to run PVRs and media centre PCs. As its name indicates, it's derived from Ubuntu Linux.
However, it's ditched the Gnome and by default utilises the relatively barebones Xfce desktop environment.
Damn Small Linux is damn cool
Damn Small Linux (DSL) is actually quite a well known distribution. It's not nearly as small as the amazing MenuetOS (which is a non-Linux OS writ
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The site is rapidly going down the slashdotting drain. This is the twelve without analysis or explanation.
Insecure by design: Damn Vulnerable Linux
Indulge in paranoia: Tinfoil Hat Linux
CSI Linux: CAINE
Open source engineering: CAELinux
Seeking open source converts: Ubuntu Christian Edition
Frag-tastic: live.linuX-gamers.net
Hard disk wizardry: Parted Magic
Get creative: Musix GNU+Linux
Eminently embeddable: Zeroshell
Ditch Windows Media Centre: Mythbuntu
Damn Small Linux is damn cool
And then there's really small: Tiny Core Linux
http://www.goodgearguide.com.au.nyud.net:8080/article/351651/12_most_interesting_unusual_useful_linux_distros/
Come on submitters, just hit it once before you hit submit, that way a mirror exists somewhere.
These distros should become meta-packages for larger distros. You should not need to install a specialized OS because you need specialized applications or specialized configurations. The application developer would be better served working with the larger Linux community, to ensure that the usefulness of the given applications is compatible and availible across all distros and platforms. Linux should always have a diverse ecosystem, but Linux should also have a universality about it, that a given meta-configuration can be established to a given Linux with automatic dependency resolution.
Not seen this one mentioned yet. pfsense is by far my favourite specialised linux distro.
bundaegi is good for you
It makes the Slug rock!
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Coral Cache:
http://www.goodgearguide.com.au.nyud.net/article/351651/12_most_interesting_unusual_useful_linux_distros/
List of the distros:
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
According to its developers, a possible reason for using it is that that "Illuminati are watching your computer, and you need to use morse code to blink out your PGP messages on the numlock key."
Nice. For the uninitiated, this is (spoiler alert) an allusion to one of the coolest (realistic) hacks in all of fiction, which occurs in the novel Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. Required reading for computer and cryptography geeks.
"This algorithm runs in constant time. Come on, 2,147,483,648 is a constant..."
But really, I think this is all the common people would want/need if they want to replace Windows.
My favorite, but no longer obscure. Puppy is now v. 5.0 and # 10 in page hit ranking on Distrowatch. Puppy is arguably the cutest distribution, the most sincere distribution, and the most beloved distribution. Not to mention very compact, very capable, very easy to install or run live, and very extensible. Try some now! Try some today! Puppy is good for you! Everyone should know about it!
At first reaction, I laughed quite hard. Upon further examination, the software included in the distro looks to be quite useful. I have forwarded Xiphos (a piece of bible study software included in the distro) on to my grandfather, who immerses himself in study of scripture. If that's your thing, I would check it out. Guess I learned about a new project today. Look at that, Slashdot taught me something.
That was how I read the title at first glance. So disappointed.
1. Jesus saves - early and often. Or maybe you could just configure him to auto-save?
2. Who needs backups when you have faith?
3. Wait until you see our "firewall"!
4. Well, good, at least they're trying to convert those Linux heathens.
5. Some tools not included: head, finger, fsck...
6. "missionary" the only available filesystem (mount -t missionary - and then only for procreation)
7. Good news! Jesus healed the Gimp! Zombies raised from the dead!
8. Thou shalt not take the hostname in vain.
9. Honor thy PPID.
10. Thou shall not kill -9.
11. Those are penguins, not nuns!
Known bugs:
Sometimes Jesus thinks he's Richard Stallman.
vlc only plays G-rated AVIs.
$ mesg y
$ write god
write: god is not logged in
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
"If you don't laugh, you didn't get it, but if you ONLY laugh, you didn't get it." [Book of the SubGenius]
It only took 12 hours for the site to load, but lets have a look at the "distro" and their roots.
Damn Vulnerable Linux unknown
Tinfoil Hat Linux unknown
CAINE Ubuntu
CAELinux Ubuntu
Ubuntu Christian Edition Ubuntu
live.linuX-gamers.net unknown
Parted Magic Ubuntu
GMusix GNU+Linux Debian
Zeroshell Linux LFS methods (i.e., actually rolled themselves)
Mythbuntu Ubuntu
Damn Small Linux Debian
Tiny Core Linux unknown
Ubuntu 41.6%
Debian 16.6%
--------------
Known Distros 58.3%
Unknown distros 33.3%
Original works 8.3%
Feel free to reply with updates if you know the origin of the unknown's.
I know from personal experience, rolling your own distro is hard work. I tried, using other distros (Slackware and LFS methods) as a guide. Just taking someone elses patched beyond usefulness sources and calling them your own isn't your own work. You aren't building, and you can't go back to the original author and submit a fix. Mine was to stay true to the original author's work, since I've seen so many problems which are directly (correctly) attributed to some distro haphazardly patching (and breaking) things.
I spent a lot of spare time writing and rewriting build scripts, hunting down sources (real quick, where is the authors site for the most current version of "ps"?), building a build environment, building the sources into installable packages. It sounds like an awful lot of fun, until you've already spent a month putting things together, and you've just gotten past the low level stuff (basic system utilities, filesystem utilities, compilers, major required libraries, and the boot loader of your choice). Wow, a month later, and we don't even have X, a desktop manager, or occasionally useful things like a web browser. Now you have to go back and check all your versions against the current version available from the author. Unless you have a rather dedicated team of folks with no day jobs nor personal lives, you'll spend your days just verifying that your packages are built from current sources.
God forbid there's a change in say glibc, which breaks some other application. Now you're notifying the author of the application, which can be a job in itself to go back and forth with them about what distro you're running (built it myself). Oh, you're own? That's good and bad. What versions of the compiler and required libraries are you using? "Sign up to my mailing list, so we can all work on it." Two weeks later, you may have a patch which may become a released version two more weeks later. If you're a good guy, and somehow have way too much time on your hands, well versed in every programming language and methodology, a genetic disposition to not sleeping, and a serious speed habit, you may be patching it yourself, and handing that patch up to the author. What? Your patch was refused because it didn't follow his methodology? It doesn't work in recursion and will break older distros (like the one right before the glibc update). Now you've fallen into what others do. I'll patch mine, but just this one, I swear. It'll be the authors true code when he releases the right fix. On to the next!
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Surely BackTrack needs a mention. One stop shop for Penetration Testing, Ethical Hacking, Security Analysis and pretty much anything else security-related. It might not qualify as a fully-blown "distro" depending on your definition, but it's a lot more customised than your standard "Clonebuntu" variants.
If you are even remotely interested in Network Security or Penetration Testing, it's a really invaluable tool.
Curse you, mod point allocation bot! I need to mod parent 'eye-opening if, like me, you never considered how much work goes into a distro'.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
" Damn Vulnerable Linux unknown"
It's based on Debbian and Knoppix. See: http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=damnsmall
" Tinfoil Hat Linux unknown"
Not listed on Distrowatch, or at least I couldn't find it :(
" live.linuX-gamers.net unknown"
It's based on Arch, see: http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=linuxgamers
" Tiny Core Linux unknown"
Independent (self-rolled). See: http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=tinycore
If you want details about Linux Distributions there's no better place I know of, or more comprehensive, than distrowatch.com. Really surprised Tinfoil is not listed!
I tried to build up a RT Linux distro using the latest release from kernel.org while trying to support a OMAP processor. Needless to say, since they wanted it in 30 days, I didn't get it all put together. I was shown the door. even though I had the x86 version running.
You forgot
anything Ubuntu Debian
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
S L A C K W A R E
What gives you the right to tell others what they should do?
If someone wants to make a carbon copy of Ubuntu but written entirely in Perl on a single line, that is THEIR business. NOT YOURS.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I just want a 64-bit distro that has working Flash and sound drivers. Even if I had to buy a specific sound card I'd be happy.
Of course the first time I updated it would probably switch to some new sound driver which wouldn't work.....
And then there's the issue of Adobe dropping support......
I want to use Linux, I really do! But I need to get some work done, not spend all my time tracking down drivers and patches.
The original Christian distribution: Jesux!
Yes, a very good point. Distros based on Ubuntu really shouldn't have their "origin" credited as "Ubuntu". Some credit for Ubuntu is warranted, but certainly not as the "Origin".
BusyBox with a custom kernel could probably have been pulled off in that time frame. As long you were quite aware of it already.
I find some of the more obscure and useful stuff is simply about finding it.
Plop is a nice busybox variant which has been design to boot and run entirely in ramdisk. I designed several rack burn utilities with plop so I could test on a closed network. The advantage of creating a single head and moving onto the next host with my usb stick was quite handy.
However, getting to that point and finding someone who had laid a good foundation was a bit time consuming.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
hehe. Thanks. :)
Really, I hadn't thought it was so hard until I tried. I'm glad I did. It's something every really serious senior Linux admin should try at least once. Besides a very interesting understanding of how things work beyond "type this command, watch this happen", it taught me to respect my elders, and watch for mistakes that are made (like the patching chaos that is the Redhat/Debian/derivatives world).
After that dive in, I pray to the Slackware god, since he does things pretty damned close to the way I like. There are several finer points that I could probably argue with Patrick about over beers sometime (assuming we're ever in the same place at the same time, and he'd accept a free drink or three). Not that the argument would get anywhere, but it would be a nice discussion, and a fun excuse to drink. Bah. Who needs excuses for that? :)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
It's pretty sweet!
http://hannahmontana.sourceforge.net/Site/Home.html
I haven't checked on the TA-Spring (or simply the spring project) updates anymore... but a year ago, that seemed like one of the best (ever) real time strategy games - as far as I'm concerned up there with the likes of Starcraft... meaning it's up there with the popular windows games.
It has it's problems for the installation (you need separate bots, maps, and sets of units), but that's really why I was hoping to have it included in this gaming distro.
The highlights
DansGuardian http://dansguardian.org/ web filtering not something I'm bothered with for myself but anyone with kids should be concerned with what their children see.
Its built into ubuntu christian edition along with bible study software and other religious junk but obviously would work for any ubuntu edition.
http://ubuntusatanic.org/screenshots.php ubuntu satanic edition has some really nice art work not mentioned in the article but in the comments also there is sabily A muslim edition of ubuntu. Other religions are available even one designed to run Amiga software on, http://www.xamiga.net/
musix is a fully open source multimedia debian based distro
caine is for digital forensics
DVL might be interesting if you have an interest in security
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
Thanks. Since the only one left is tinfoil, I grabbed it, and did a little poking around. Just based on the mentions in the readme.txt, it may be a self-rolled distro. It to be Busybox based. I was thinking of rolling one of those up myself, except busybox annoys me when it can't do particular things because it doesn't understand posix flags (my biggest annoyance is with cp). That can be corrected easily enough with some select static binaries, rather than symbolic links to busybox. :)
... Target
... Target
... and over ... and over ...
The busybox "cp" flags are:
cp [-a] [-d] [-p] [-R] Source
The posix "cp" flags are:
cp [-f] [-H] [-i] [-p] [-r | -R] [--] Source
There are others, I've just had quite a few occasions to boot to a Busybox based CD, and then my commands don't work. Or worse, a script on the machine doesn't work because the flags don't work.
So the distro tally is up to:
Damn Vulnerable Linux Debian
Tinfoil Hat Linux self-rolled (?)
CAINE Ubuntu
CAELinux Ubuntu
Ubuntu Christian Edition Ubuntu
live.linuX-gamers.net Arch
Parted Magic Ubuntu
GMusix GNU+Linux Debian
Zeroshell Linux self-rolled - LFS methods
Mythbuntu Ubuntu
Damn Small Linux Debian
Tiny Core Linux self-rolled
Ubuntu (5) 41.6%
Debian (3) 25.0%
Arch (1) 8.3%
--------------
Known Distros (9) 75.0%
Original (3) 25.0%
That's still a long way from a list of distros to check out, unless you like checking out the same thing over
BTW, sorry for the code formatting. I wanted to keep my columns straight in the data parts of the post, and I don't know of a better way on here to do it.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I had busybox on my list of tools I used and cut a systems with it using slack, but I got paranoid
after the latest kernel requirement and bailed to debian for the tools. In the end, I SUCKED and DIED.
Where's Hannah Montana Linux?
http://hannahmontana.sourceforge.net/
>page1
>page2
myface.jpg
Its always been a great distro for people who just want a stock Unix on their PC rather than a Wannabe-Windows clone but it was frequently a bugger to get some hardware working properly and also Xwin configuration was very tedious. I defected to Suse for a while because of this but now Slackware is more or less plug and play. I installed 13.0 on my Acer laptop and desktop Dell at work and it Just Worked. The only issue I had was with the wifi on the laptop but that was a kernel bug - I compiled a later kernel (yeah, slackware can still be hardcore) and wifi worked fine.
Is this like fast, cheap, and reliable - choose any two?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Just organize the differences you make as a set of SlackBuilds and release those. Call it a derivative (unless you are a financial institution).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Time for a reality check! Let's get started.
The developers of each of these distributions kept them seperate from mainstream distros, because that's what they wanted to do. Obviously they had the choice of offering some kind of add-on system for mainstream distros, but they didn't, and they must have had reasons for that. If the developers didn't have that choice, or were pressured or harassed into trying to merge into an existing distro, then they probably wouldn't have done it at all.
In conclusion, mind your own business and stop worrying about whether other people are "contributing" to the world in the "correct manner" as defined by yourself, and simply let people enjoy what they do.
I'd like to throw voyage-linux in there as well, (its debian lenny based). I use it alot loading linux onto embedded devices (x86). Great if the system only has a cf card for storage, load the live cd up on your desktop, and pxe boot the embedded device. After installed, two commands remountrw and remountro let you update/change stuff on the device and then set the filesystem read only again. http://linux.voyage.hk/live-cd
Really?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I call bullshit -- parent is either a troll or an idiot.
I've been running 64-bit (open)SUSE for about 5 years (since 9.0 or 9.1, I can't remember which I started with now) on an assortment of commodity desktops and laptops, and Flash and sound have always Just Worked for me.
(PS - What sort of "work" *requires* you to have Flash and sound?)
I'm suprised no-one has listed backtrack yet. I always have one flash drive and one dvd of it in my kit with me at all times (among some other things listed). It rocks for throwing up metasploit or cracking WEP real fast. It is a merge of Whax and Auditor) I also miss PHLAK.
"It's ok, I'm completely secure as long as my iron is off"
I read your post and i'm not really sure why you are taking something someone else did and trying to keep "loyal" to his work.
If your making your own distro/branch/whatever. You snapshot whatever source your taking it from, and then just work from that. If you keep going back to the source and trying to add updates to your NOT finished work, you will never get your project finished.
You take the source, do what you need to do to get it working. Then you can go back to the updates and work them in.
Plus, if your going to follow someones source so close, just go help them out instead of stealing their crap and changing stuff for your own. Your just wasting your time, and then theirs if they are trying to help you fix something that's not working.
Be seeing you...
I was using Slackbuilds, but those can get complicated, with programs that require complex setups. I wish everyone just set up for "./configure && make && make install", of course with setting an install prefix so it doesn't just go stomping all over the running filesystem.
For my old work, we ran our own Slackware mirror, and let it pull additional packages as needed. It was a very smooth operation. You have to love a network of about 150 machines, where there are just two guys doing all of the IT, and everything works like clockwork, so the only "urgent" work is the occasional page warning something is down. Of course, those come at the worst times. No woman is impressed when your phone starts beeping, when you're having an X rated adult moment. Somehow, the servers knew when it was happening, and would break something before either of us finished. :(
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
The Ubuntu Satanic Edition. This list had the Christian Edition, it really should have included the Satanic as well, which is just as much of a legitimate distro as they are both based on Ubuntu anyways. Yet for some reason this one gets snubbed regularly, even having difficulties getting listed at distrowatch for some reason (while their Christian brothers have no such problems).
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Tinfoil is gentoo hardened.
Being a flash developer? :P
I also run Debian (now Ubuntu) on my now 3 year old laptop with no sound issues and perfectly stable Flash 10 plugin (though I did install it manually, not using the ndiswrapper)
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Your experience mirrors my own w.r.t. building a GNU/Linux distribution. After spending the better part of 6 months automating the "build instructions" for Linux from Scratch (LFS) it was satisfying to have gained a much deeper understanding of the effort required to create a distribution. Now that the automated build framework is completed I have been able to successfully build and deploy a variety of systems suited to my specific needs.
You can always check out bio-linux, for the bioinformatics minded :-)
http://envgen.nox.ac.uk/tools/bio-linux
Where's systemrescuecd? Where's Backtrack?
Not an attempt to be a smartmass; but, had you considered building a distro just for building distros? Database, web crawler for tracking source updates, virtual box included for compiling/testing, svn, etc....all the tools for building a maintaining a distro over time.
Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.
The sound drivers for 64-bit are the same as 32-bit (eg. still balls, but not impossible to fix, and still easier to fix than if they go haywire in Vista or 7, where you're shit outta luck). And Flash on 64-bit is Adobe's battleground. Why do you think everyone wants to move away from Adobe's turf anyway?
I was interested in the bit about busybox (namely, wondering why they wouldn't include such useful and dead-simple flags like -f), and the first page I discovered (http://www.busybox.net/downloads/BusyBox.html) listed the following for cp:
If I had a nickel for every time I had a nickel, I'd be richcursive!
It's a copypasta, you drooling 'dromer.
" Tinfoil Hat Linux unknown"
Not listed on Distrowatch, or at least I couldn't find it :(
Hence the name...
Ima dumbfukc butta really wanta run teh linoox
reely doo
How do people like you even reach Slashdot?
Linux is crap but it is perfectly able of running the shitty Adobe Flash plug-in in 64-bits with working sound despite intense attempts to break everything every two releases.
If you can't get that to work you shouldn't be allowed near the highly dangerous electric stuff that powers your computer.
If you were complaining about graphics support you would have a point. It's entirely Linux PTB's fault that it is crap. If they didn't suck so many binary dicks, Linux could become a decent OS one day. Think "Pretty Woman".
Not an attempt to be a smartmass; but, had you considered building a distro just for building distros? Database, web crawler for tracking source updates, virtual box included for compiling/testing, svn, etc....all the tools for building a maintaining a distro over time.
In some respects, I think that's what Gentoo is.
You mean Tin Hat Linux is gentoo hardened.
Last I looked a few months ago or so Damn Small Linux looks to be abandoned ware, or close to it. Too bad, an interesting and useful little distro.
You're results might vary but I've built at least a couple from-scratch linux liveCD's using gentoo's cross compile option (ie, not using a stage tarball) and slax live-cd tools. Could pull one off in about a week of spare time. At one point in a time I wrote a stageless livecd wiki article but I think it died when gentoo's wiki disappeared a couple years ago (there is a new wiki now).
I think unionfs has been replaced by something else but using gentoo you can build overlay slax modules by creating a unionfs on top of your base system and adding new packages :). Was useful back when you only had 512MB of ram, wanted to boot your system in ram, but also wanted the option to add a bunch of games to play (which would load off the CD as needed).
While I respect LFS users it isn't actually *that* hard to build your own linux distro (if you already know your way around linux). But why would you make your own when you can build on top of an already proven platform?
Cache of the download mirrrors page: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://live.linux-gamers.net/%3Fs%3Ddownload
He spoke before he considered the ramifications of the tired old generic "everybody is wasting effort by not merging together as I see fit" argument.
Because of previous experiences, I take into consideration the effort and time it'll take to write something up from scratch for my own customized use or just adapt someone else's work. Though, I've never released code that I didn't write.
What is interesting though, is to catch your work in action under someone else's name! I was writing scripts for mIRC (I know!) in the 90s and did some cool stuff. So one day in a channel I see familiar format and I'm like hmmmm. So of course, being a little sneaky after having been ripped off (no credit!) before, I paste some text and bam! There it is, Socrates Script 2000! Ah how sweet it was.
My abilities are only limited by my imagination
Over the years, I've seen many times where end users will have a fault that was a direct result of patches the distro vendor did. Basically, they install the vendor (distro) provided package. It has some nasty bug that makes the software crash. The end user goes to the software author's mailing list or forum (obvious choices for getting help with a specific program) and says "Your program always crashes. You need to fix it! Help me!" In reality, the software works fine as the author wrote it, but the vendor patches broke it. I've seen it where either applications, or even major libraries.
It's not always just crashing problems. Sometimes there are induced security holes. I cringe every time I see an announcement on a security mailing list, where the only affected systems are from a particular distro vendor, because they inadvertently created the security hole.
I believe in loyalty to the authors work, because they are the experts in it. If there's a fix to be made, provide it to the author, and let them include it in their future release. If you think you know the authors software so much better than them, and their program needs your patches so bad but you aren't willing to submit them back up, fork it or write your own competing software.
You don't read security mailing lists much, do you? You'll never make a snapshot of a utopian world. Program x today may have a huge bugfix tomorrow. Distros are always putting out upgrade packages specifically to fix problems. If you just grab what's available today, and bury your head in the sand, you'll have all kinds of problems in the future. I worked somewhere, and they sang the song you're singing. They'd used a particular version of a distro years ago. Once they decided that worked for them, they kept installing the same version of that distro everywhere. They didn't do patches. They didn't upgrade anything because "We don't know what else it could break." They also found themselves vulnerable to a huge variety of remote exploits that had been corrected in subsequent patches and newer versions.
Where did I say anything about stealing anyone else's stuff?
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
" Damn Vulnerable Linux unknown"
It's based on Debbian and Knoppix. See: http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=damnsmall
Actually, that's Damn Small Linux. Damn Vulnerable Linux is Slackware/Slax-based, at least according to this
That's kind of where mine was progressing towards. I'd grab the sources, and the build scripts were flexible enough to build new versions. My build environment did everything from scratch on a weekly basis. The project was never completed (as I mentioned), but it was set up to rebuild everything from current sources and build a fresh ISO, so i didn't have to sit around waiting for it, I could just go grab the current ISO to use. It was to take advantage of the fact that there was a scheduled weekly build, so if say a new version of zlib came out because of a nasty bug, everything that was linked to it would be updated for me too. I'm sure we all remember that happening. Automation was important, so I couldn't screw something up manually. :)
Not every authors site has a friendly way to just check in and see what the current release is. Sometimes there are version number naming convention changes. Like their version history may go: 2.0 , 2.0.1beta, 2.0.2-rc3, 2.0.2-final, 2.0.2.1, 2.2 . You could go all crazy with regular expressions, but extra decimals, abbreviations, and text make it a nightmare to automate. Even if you just had a crawler in place to see if their releases page had changed, sometimes the authors simply add some text change, which would trigger it. Like, someone may have their releases on their front page, and put news updates also. Great. On Dec 25, you could very likely get a flurry of notices that pages changed, just to find out that a few dozen people put up a note saying "Merry Christmas". What's worse is when they move. They may have a message on their page saying that it's going to be served from a new site. You may have to go hunt it down.
I'd suspect it has been done. I'd also suspect that those folks spend a lot of time reading false alarms.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
My example must have been from an older busybox. I know I've seen it recently, but not everyone stays up to date on boot disk utilities. :) To find the flags, I just searched Google for "busybox cp options", and got this page, which shows the older options set.
http://spblinux.de/2.0/doc/cp.html
If I'm moving a lot of stuff around, especially if there are a variety of ownerships and permissions, I (out of habit) use "cp -RPp". I know "cp -a" would do the same thing in either case. It wasn't crippled, it just broke my habits, and some scripts when they ran in that environment. I'm glad they updated it.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
No woman is impressed when your phone starts beeping, when you're having an X rated adult moment.
Unless it also starts vibrating, and it was being used in an X-rated manner at the time. I think there's a lesson in this...
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
My first distro was slackware, a 50 diskette distro for my laptop back in the early 90s. Since then I've experimented with many distros, including linux from scratch and beyond linux from scratch. Mostly now I go with ubuntu from laziness, but a couple of distros that I've been favorably impressed with lately that don't get mentioned a lot are arch linux and Sabayon. I particularly like Sabayon as a live CD. (Note: Sabayon is up to 5.3, but I'm still using 5.0).
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
BTW, sorry for the code formatting. I wanted to keep my columns straight in the data parts of the post, and I don't know of a better way on here to do it.
You could... only format the table that way? Not all tags need to be opened at the beginning and closed at the end, y'know.
have you read the Moderation Guidelines Addendum?
I was just saying that if you're going to build on someone else's work, say that it's theirs with mods. The post I was replying to was complaining that these "distros" weren't distros, they were skins with some packages added. Only 2 of 12 were distros in their own right. The remaining 10 were existing distros with mods.
When I take Slackware and mod the heck out of it, it's still Slackware with mods.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Actually, I just set the input mode at the bottom to "code". For a while the code tag itself wasn't working, but I see it is again. I don't tend to use it that much.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Sabayon?
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
For a while the code tag itself wasn't working, but I see it is again.
Yes, I've noticed that and wondered why. When quoting your message I saw that it used tt for monospace, although I can't for the life of me get an option to ignore html tags in this message.
Huh, I've never even click the Options button down there. It seems to be just about as well-designed as the rest of /. ;).
have you read the Moderation Guidelines Addendum?
Ah yes. I appologize and should have double checked that before I posted. I just vaguely remembered them from the gentoo hardened mailinglist and made an assumption. ;)
No mention of Gnewsense? Unusual - Sure is. very few distros take software freedom this seriously. Obscure - Sadly again true. Very few Linux users take software freedom this seriously. Useful - If you want to know if your hardware doesn't require non-free binary blobs then this is a good way to check.
I'm not clear on this one...
Do you think that Damn Vulnerable Linux is more vulnerable than your Vista install?
What are you, a MS fanboy or something?
wake up and hold your nose
Care to share your homebrew "ALFS" scripts, etc. ? I'd love to avoid
reinventing the wheel, especially if what you've done is fairly straightforward
and clean.
What's really interesting about your list is ...
Since Ubuntu is really a Debian derivative itself...
And since not a single one is RedHat/Fedora based...
It says something very interesting about the ability to easily roll your own distro off of Debian's choices (over a decade ago) in their packaging system, vs. RPM.
And I remember oh so clearly how .spec files and RPM were going to "change the packaging world" over that "clunky dpkg stuff you use on Debian" from oh-so many friends who bought into the (paid) marketing hype from RedHat... back in the day.
Not trying to start a distro war, just thought it was interesting that RH/Fedora distros are so almost non-existent in this particular list. Respin makes rolling a custom CD of CentOS/RHEL super duper easy these days, too...
Very interesting.
+++OK ATH
Why does the gamers distro have to be unavailable at a time like this?! I was kinda looking forward to seeing what that is all about. :(
I am not devoid of humor.
I've heard a lot of these stories, but it still doesn't solve the problems. You got lucky with your hardware. Are you using 64-bit?
Lenovo T61, Core2Duo running 64-bit (ndiswrapper isn't needed for 32-bit I thought... but it seems to be a great point of trouble for 64-bit builds that use flash with it.)
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
There's this idea I've had in my head for a while - RSS feeds of patches from DVCS, targeting a build server directory, with basic scripting control. That way distro makers can have almost any combo of patchsets that anybody can reasonably want, and leave them just with making the final app/version selection, and wrap the binaries up in archive*cough*package format of choice. Though some compiler features are warranted, in order to support all the different compile time options - I'd say storing the AST in a database as a compiler cache, and some language integrated macros to provide for the actual compile time options. Result will probably be a main binary, with some diffs, or a really fat ELF that ca be stripped with standard tools. I was wondering whether anybody round here think it's reasonable.
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
Bookmarked
"Don't mind me cutting myself on Occam's Razor"