Frugalware

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Frugalware Linux
Image:Frugalware.png
Website www.frugalware.org
OS family Linux
Source model Open source
Latest stable release 0.8 / March 11, 2008
Package manager Pacman
Supported platforms i686, x86-64
Kernel type Monolithic kernel
License Various
Working state Current

Frugalware Linux is a general-purpose Linux distribution, designed for intermediate users, who are familiar with command-line operations. It is based on Slackware, but uses a different package management system, Pacman.[1]

Contents

[edit] Aims

Frugalware's developers attempt to make Frugalware as simple as possible while establishing a priority based on comfortable use. Their goal is to ship consistently fresh and stable software, as close to the original source as possible.

[edit] History

Frugalware was founded by Miklós Vajna. He considered Slackware's package manager pkgtools too slow, and wanted to rewrite it in C programming language. He was told that it would never be accepted by Slackware, so Vajna started to think about founding a separate Linux distribution. He replaced Slackware's original package manager, init scripts and build system. As a result, Frugalware was born.[2]

[edit] Package management

Since version 0.6 Frugalware has used Pacman-G2 package manager.[3] It is a fork of a CVS version of the complete rewrite of Pacman by Aurelien Foret, which was not officially released at the time.[4] Previously Frugalware used a modified version of the older, monolithic Pacman by Judd Vinet.

Frugalware's packages' extension is .fpm.[5] The packages are tar archives that are compressed using bzip2,[6] not gzip like the packages used by Pacman of Arch Linux.[7] Bzip2 archives have smaller file size but longer unpacking-time compared to gzip archives.

Repoman is a tool to compile source packages and automatically create and install closed-source packages.[8] With Repoman, the user can also download all packages' buildscript and recompile them with specific build options. The build options can be changed by editing a configuration file.[5] The first Frugalware release that had Repoman was Frugalware 0.3pre1.[8]

[edit] Branches

Frugalware has a -current and a -stable branch. The -current branch is updated daily, and the -stable branch gets updated every 6 months.[6]

[edit] Architectures

Frugalware currently supports x86 and x86-64 microprocessor architectures.[6] The x86 packages are optimized for i686 processors, and the 0.3pre1 was the first release that also had an x86_64 port.

[edit] Releases

According to the Frugalware development roadmap, the next stable version "Solaria" is going to be released on September 9, 2008.[11]

All the Frugalware releases except "Genesis" have been named after planets in science fiction books by Isaac Asimov.[11]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Interview with Frugalware Linux Developer, VMiklos (HTML). Open Addict. Archived from the original on 2007-07-14. Retrieved on 2008-02-27.
  2. ^ Interview with Miklós Vajna, Frugalware Linux (HTML). DistroWatch. Retrieved on 2008-03-26.
  3. ^ Frugalware 0.6 (Terminus) Changelog (TXT). Frugalware Project. Retrieved on 2008-02-27.
  4. ^ Pacman-G2 (HTML). Frugalware 0.7 (Sayshell) Documentation. Frugalware Project. Retrieved on 2008-02-27.
  5. ^ a b Creating new packages (HTML). Frugalware 0.7 (Sayshell) Documentation. Frugalware Project. Retrieved on 2008-02-27.
  6. ^ a b c About Frugalware (HTML). Frugalware 0.6 (Terminus) Documentation. Frugalware Project. Retrieved on 2008-02-27.
  7. ^ Ladislav Bodnar (2003). Interview with Judd Vinet (HTML). DistroWatch. Retrieved on 2008-02-27.
  8. ^ a b Frugalware 0.3pre1-i686 released (HTML). Frugalware Project. Retrieved on 2008-02-27.
  9. ^ Frugalware 0.3-i686 released (HTML). Frugalware Project. Retrieved on 2008-02-27.
  10. ^ Frugalware 0.3-x86_64 released (HTML). Frugalware Project. Retrieved on 2008-02-27.
  11. ^ a b Frugalware Roadmap (HTML). Frugalware Project. Retrieved on 2008-03-24.

[edit] External links

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Linux distributions