this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2024
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Linux

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (2 children)

gobolinux

it's main feature is that it completely redefines the system's root directory structure. the only reason i even know it exists is because i'm friends with one of the creators

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

I'm gonna go with Tom's Root Boot. Or maybe the father of all live distros, Knoppix.

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (3 children)

Rebecca Black OS.
It is the only Linux distro to date built around Weston, using Wayland's full capability:

It doesn't include any Rebecca Black theming or is related to her in any way.
It's just called that cause the dev is a fan of hers.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 8 hours ago

From the name, I expected a Hannah Montana Linux type distro.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I’m pretty sure that screenshot is Wayfire, not Weston.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 hours ago

Tell me if has a special "Friday" desktop at least.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

Check out the random button on Distrowatch (distrowatch.com/random.php) - it's like a Linux lottery, but you always win something weird!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 hours ago (8 children)

Let's make this a game. Click on it, then you have to install that on bare metal and daily it for a month.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

Ha I got tuxedo OS, hopefully thats not too niche

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 hours ago

I got Linux Lite, which I've tried in the past.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 hours ago

I got Plamo Linux

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 hours ago

Jolicloud. I ran it on an old low-spec netbook in 2013ish, basically a ChromeOS before Chromebooks were a thing. It was discontinued in 2016 but great for the hardware while it lasted.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 hours ago (3 children)

Smoothwall. I used to run it a lot back in the early 2000s for personal use and even helped set up a couple small businesses with it but I don't hear of anyone else using it these days, people seem to love openwrt and pfsense more.

It was great for just taking any old x86 machine and making a powerful, fully featured firewall/router out of it, including a VPN server, all through a web interface. Nowadays that's boring shit but in 2002 it was pretty cool.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 hours ago

Good old Smoothie. Served me well back then. I think it went commercial at some point.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (1 children)

Suicide linux. Nobody can run it for more than a day

Edit: i just searched "suicide linux" to see if it still exists and one of the top results was ian murdock's wiki page, :(

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 hours ago

“suicide linux”

Looked it up with quotes and the first update in the first search result:

Update 2011-12-26

Someone has turned Suicide Linux into a genuine Debian package. Good show!

:(

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 hours ago

I created a distro once for class that just had diaspora installed on a live CD. It was only used for demos a looong time ago. DiasporaTest.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Not obscure but I love hyprland

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 hours ago (6 children)

Well I don’t hear much about Gentoo, Damn Small, Puppy or Knoppix anymore. Wonder if they still exist.

I haven’t done much disto hopping since I settled on Ubuntu around ‘08 and then on NixOS last year. I like my systems working when I need them and waiting around for a new install to finish is boring to me.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 hours ago

Gentoo still exists. Damn Small was dead for a decade but has risen again recently. Puppy is alive and well. Knoppix is still alive, but the last downloadable release is almost 4 years old.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 hours ago

I use puppy from time to time. Works well.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 hours ago

Gentoo still exists 🙂

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 hours ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 hours ago

I don't see nixos in there!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Should hyprland be in the table or are Wayland Compositors ignored? 👀

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Probably KaOS. It puts a strong focus on KDE and Qt.
As in, it doesn't package programs using different GUI toolkits, aside from the most popular, like Firefox and GIMP. When I tried it a few years ago, you also had to enable a separate repo to get access to these.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 hours ago

Reminds me of chakra linux. Same principals, except built on top of Arch base, and the other toolkit apps were distributed as self contained image files.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Hannah Monata Linux and Red Star from North Korea.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

Woah woah woah, there's a North Korean Linux distribution?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Yes, of course. They can hardly use an OS that phones home to the US.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

It's interesting because it's essentially the opposite of the idea behind Linux. Using Linux specifically to censor and spy on people is diabolical, but it makes sense why they chose it.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 9 hours ago

The idea behind Linux is to create an operating system anyone can use in any way they want.
That includes the North Korean government using it to spy on their people.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 hours ago

I haven't tried all that many distros, but I'd say Puppy Linux. Pretty neat that it loads into RAM from USB and has fairly light memory requirements, but it does feel a little on the clunky side as far as configuration and stuff goes.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 hours ago

I had no idea mageia existed until I met a dude who had it

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

Yellow Dog

I actually ran this on a PPC Mac back in the day

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 hours ago

Someone gave me a PowerMac and of course I had to try to run Linux. It was an interesting experience, it would boot to MacOS and then run the Yellow Dog bootloader. Couldn't get it to boot directly. That little experiment showed me how tightly Apple controlled what would run on Apple machines back then.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 hours ago

That was the my first distro. Getting it to run off a FireWire drive was an interesting introduction to Linux.

Fun fact: yum stands for Yellow dog Update Manager. I know it's been replaced by dnf but I still think that's cool.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 hours ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 hours ago

It was dead for a long time, was replaced in spirit by Puppy Linux, and only recently was reactivated.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Linux STD! Waaaay before skiddos had backtrack or kali

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

That's an...interesting name.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 hours ago

Security Tools Distribution :)

https://s-t-d.org/

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