CRUX

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**CRUX Linux**
Website:	crux.nu
Company/ developer:	Per Lidén and CRUX Linux community
OS family:	Linux
Source model:	Open source
Latest stable release:	2.2 / April 9, 2006
Kernel type:	Monolithic kernel
License:	GPL
Working state:	Current

CRUX is a lightweight, i686-optimized Linux distribution targeted at experienced Linux users. The primary focus of this distribution is keep it simple, which is reflected in a straightforward tar.gz-based package system, BSD-style initscripts, and a relatively small collection of trimmed packages. The secondary focus is utilization of new Linux features and recent tools and libraries. CRUX also has a ports system which makes it easy to install and upgrade applications.

Current release is 2.2

1 Ports System
2 prt-get
3 Releases
- 3.1 Other Architectures
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Ports System

taken from the CRUX handbook

A port is a directory containing the files needed for building a package using pkgmk. This means that this directory at least has the files Pkgfile (which is the package build description) and .footprint (which is used for regression testing and contains a list of files this package is expected to contain once it is built). Further, a port directory can contain patches and/or other files needed for building the package. It is important to understand that the actual source code for the package is not necessarily present in port directory. Instead the Pkgfile contains an URL which points to a location where the source can be downloaded.

The use of the word port in this context is borrowed from the BSD world, where a port refers to a program that has been ported to a system or platform. The word can sometimes be a bit misleading since most programs require no actual porting to run on CRUX (or on Linux in general).

[edit] prt-get

taken from prt-get manual with permisson from author

prt-get is a package management tool for CRUX which provides additional functionality to crux package management system. It works with the local ports tree and is therefore fully compatible with ports and pkgmk/pkgadd. It offers the following features:

abstract port installation/update from file system
install/update a list of packages with one command
list dependencies for a list of packages
show information about ports
search within the ports
advanced logging for builds

What prt-get basically does is installing and upgrading packages, using pkgmk and pkgadd. Additionally, you don't have be in the port's directory to call prt-get. prt-get will search for the respective port itself in a list of directories specified in /etc/prt-get.conf. This allows you to just install or update a package, without caring where it actually is located on your file system.

prt-get also offers some features like searching ports by name, showing information about ports (without installing them of course) and can list the dependencies listed in the Pkgfile, and provide a complete dependency list for a port. Note that dependencies are no requirement for crux packages and therefore not always accurate.

[edit] Releases

x86 release history
version	date
0.5	January 20, 2001
0.5.1	January 30, 2001
0.5.2	February 4, 2001
0.5.3	February 11, 2001
0.5.4	March 3, 2001
0.6	March 11, 2001
0.7	April 6, 2001
0.8	June 10, 2001
0.9	July 7, 2001
0.9.1	October 3, 2001
0.9.2	January 20, 2002
0.9.3	April 14, 2002
0.9.4	September 12, 2002
1.0	December 14, 2002
1.1	March 23, 2003
1.2	August 11, 2003
1.3	December 6, 2003
1.3.1	February 20, 2004
2.0	March 20, 2004
2.1	April 25, 2005
2.2	April 9, 2006

Recently with devfs being deprecated the CRUX team has had to move from devfs to udev. The current release has udev installed and uses the 2.6.15.6 kernel. CRUX has had to answer the same question over and over, which is: Why devfs instead of udev?

To quote Per: You are not forced to use devfs, it just happens to be the default in CRUX. Feel free to use udev or a static /dev if you want... It was chosen 5 years ago, when I first made CRUX, simply because I liked it. Until recently I've had no reason to replace it with something else.

Though this is a moot point now because in their current release CRUX has udev on the CD with a few major overhauls that have been discussed and are being implemented.

[edit] Other Architectures

[edit] CRUX PPC

Created by Giulivo Navigante and maintained by the Crux PPC Team.

taken from the CRUX PPC site

CRUX PPC is a port of CRUX for the PowerPC platform. It's a GNU system with a Linux kernel and runs on NewWorld PowerPC computers. The included software works at its best speed on 750 (G3) and 74xx (G4) CPUs. CRUX PPC supports PegasosII and the most of Apple's PowerPC-based computers (Dual CPU included) and has special features (such as CPU Frequency Scaling) for laptops. Support for IBM CHRP, 64bit IBM POWER* and 64bit Apple Macs is being worked on for 2.2 on and is working on the never-released-as-stable 2.1rc2.

The stable downloadable CD is at version 2.0 but there are some modern special features CDs like the iBook Memorial Edition, and an almost-stable beta of Crux PPC 2.2+.

CRUX PPC also has a forum and a mailing list.

[edit] CRUX 64bit

Discontinued, was maintained by Daniel Müller.

[edit] CRUX SPARC

Maintained by Johannes Winkelmann.

taken from the CRUX SPARC site without permission (yet)

CRUX/SPARC 2.1rc1 is out, and appears to work fine; that said, I installed and run it on my blade 100.

All ports of the original CRUX base have been ported, except for those that are x86 specific: bin86 and lilo. In addition, silo (Sparc Improved linux Loader) and sparc-utils are available, plus binutils64 and gcc-sparc64 to compile a 64-bit kernel; note that the userland is 32-bit for now.

The site is located here, with an iso at version 2.1rc1.

[edit] See also

Comparison of Linux distributions

[edit] External links

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