Comments on: Looking forward to Crux 2.7

By: Back to Debian, at 133Mhz and 32Mb « Motho ke motho ka botho

Back to Debian, at 133Mhz and 32Mb « Motho ke motho ka botho — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 23:18:47 +0000

[...] even went one step further and got my mysterious RT61-based PCMCIA card to link up nicely, with the firmware-ralink package out of Lenny [...]

By: K.Mandla

K.Mandla — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 22:18:51 +0000

Well, the difference in speed I saw when I moved from Ubuntu to Arch was equally dramatic when I moved from Arch to Crux. And considering in my “final” days of using Arch regularly, I was spending a lot of time rebuilding software to see if it would go faster, it made sense to try a distro that was intended to be built from source.

And don’t take my advocacy as a sign that it’s only for outdated hardware. Spend a little time in #crux and you’ll hear about all manner of high-end, cutting edge systems using it. Some of those machines have frightening specs. …

By: tomas

tomas — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 15:21:06 +0000

I dont understand why crux is supposedly that good. From what I read I get the feeling its only advantage is that it runs on extremely low spec machines.

By: K.Mandla

K.Mandla — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 00:31:34 +0000

You might be splitting hairs there, Bob. Crux provides the framework, you rebuild everything in that fashion to follow a different architecture. Is it a different distro? That’s up to you.

You could do the same thing with Linux From Scratch though, and call it your own, so I don’t see why starting with Crux would be much different. You decide when it becomes “bob linux.”

By: bob_v5

bob_v5 — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 00:27:53 +0000

In theory, If I recomplie EVERYTHING, wouldn’t it then become “bob linux” instead of crux?

By: K.Mandla

K.Mandla — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 23:35:13 +0000

I’ve never tried it on a 486, mostly because I don’t have a 486 around to playtest it with.

But in theory, if you can downscale the kernel to run on a 486 and still keep your interconnecting hardware happy, then everything after that just needs to be recompiled to follow the 486 architecture. I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. …

By: K.Mandla

K.Mandla — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 23:31:05 +0000

Yes, I was going to reply to Juergen too, and see if he would mind building one more. I would use it, for certain.

By: K.Mandla

K.Mandla — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 23:29:34 +0000

I can’t speak to the RT61, but I do have a leftover PCMCIA card with RT61 guts in it, so I’ll try it and see what happens.

I’m guessing though, that the Ralink instructions for the firmware would have to be followed, unless it’s provided when the kernel is built.

I’ll see if I can come up with an answer on this one, since I actually have the hardware to give it a try.

By: bob_v5

bob_v5 — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 22:56:24 +0000

Crux says it’s optimized for 686. You are running it on 586. Would it work on 486? And how the heck would I go about answering that for myself next time?

By: Glenn Becker

Glenn Becker — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 15:19:15 +0000

Thanks for that.

I’ve dug into my memory of the experience more and have come to the conclusion that it was just as likely the compiling-my-own-kernel step that bit me when I tried Crux.

I can think of no reason to *not* go back and let it bite me again, and again, until I learn. I’ve long wanted to get more familiar with the kernel-compilation process and this would be as good a way as any to do that.

I may try installing Crux on an “ancient” Pentium I have, though a recent post on the Crux mailing list seems to put the creation of an i586 version of 2.7 in a “does anyone still need this?” sort of light.