Wednesday, August 26, 2015

about CRUX

CRUX is a lightweight, x86-64-optimized Linux distribution targeted at experienced Linux users and delivered by a tar.xz-based package system with BSD-style initscripts.
It also utilizes a ports system to install and upgrade applications.
Although crux is the Latin word for "cross," the choice of the name "CRUX" itself has no meaning. Per Lidén chose it because it "sounded cool," and ends in "X" which makes it Unix/Linux-ish.

Installation

CRUX does not include a GUI installation program. Instead, the user boots the kernel stored on either a CD or diskette; partitions the hard disk drive(s) to which the operating system will be installed (using a program such as fdisk or cfdisk); creates the appropriate file systems on the various partitions; mounts the CD or NFS share along with the partitions made previously for use by the package installation script; compiles a new kernel; and installs a bootloader, all via shell commands.

Package management

CRUX implements an infrastructure similar to that of BSD-based operating systems for package management. Packages consist of a Pkgfile (which is a shell script), any patches required to adjust the program to work, md5sum hashes used to verify the integrity of the downloaded files and a footprint file listing the files to be included in the packages. These files are downloaded from a CRUXsoftware repository, compiled, and installed using the prt-get frontend to pkgutils. The software sources are downloaded from the websites of their respective upstream at the address specified in the Pkgfile.

Releases

x86 Release History
VersionDate
1.02002 December
1.12003 March
1.22003 August
1.32003 December
1.3.12004 February
2.02004 March
2.12005 April
2.22006 April
2.32007 March
2.42007 December
2.52008 December
2.62009 September
2.72010 October
2.7.12011 November
2.82012 October
3.02013 January
3.12014 July

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