Looking forward to Crux 2.7

15 Replies

The world doesn’t need me saying it, but I suppose it’s worth mentioning that Crux 2.7 is out.

Crux is still my favorite distro, with three of the four machines I have — all of them i586’s — running it. It’s definitely not for everyone, but it’s worth trying at least once.

What I’m really looking forward to this time is the bootable USB image, since it should mean that I don’t need the acrobatics I was performing six months ago, with the traditional ISO.

In any case, as soon as an i586 version is ready, and as soon as I have the few hours it takes to experiment, I’ll give some sort of note on how things go. 😉

15 thoughts on “Looking forward to Crux 2.7”

  2. Armor Nick

    A little question; how hard is it to set up fstab? I’d love to tray Crux sometime but it frightens me to have to set up the filesystems by myself. This is one thing even Arch is more user friendly at.

    Reply ↓
    1. Glenn Becker

      I briefly gave CRUX 2.4 or 2.5 a shot and I am pretty *sure*, anyway, that the fstab setup was the step I completely b0rked up. 😉

      If I’d had more time, I might’ve wound up with a working system, but I’ve kind of had to throw over distro-hopping for now.

      Reply ↓
    2. K.Mandla Post author

      It doesn’t seem hard to me, but I keep my partition table rather sparse. Just as an example, this is the fstab file for my 120Mhz Pentium (only because I’m using it to reply right now 😉 ) 

       # # /etc/fstab: static file system information 
# # <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass> 

#/dev/hdc /media/cdrom iso9660 ro,user,noauto,unhide 0 0 
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy auto user,noauto 0 0 
devpts /dev/pts devpts defaults 0 0 
none /sys sysfs defaults 0 0 
none /proc proc defaults 0 0 

/dev/hda1 /boot ext2 noatime 0 1 
/dev/hda2 swap swap defaults 0 0 
/dev/hda3 / ext2 noatime 0 1 
/dev/hda4 /home ext2 noatime 0 1 

192.168.x.x:/home/kmandla /media/nfs nfs noauto,users,nolock,nfsvers=3 0 0 
192.168.x.x:/usr/ports /media/ports nfs noauto,nolock,nfsvers=3 0 0 

# End of file

      You do have to put that together yourself, but Crux provides a skeleton file to work with (or it did, in 2.6. I haven’t had a chance to look at 2.7 yet, although I can’t imagine that it would change 🙄 ).

      Reply ↓
      1. Glenn Becker

        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.

        Reply ↓
  3. Jeff Flowers

    How does one get their wireless firmware into Crux? For example, in Arch, I just install the linux-firmware package and I am good to go. If it matters for your answer, my wireless NIC is the RT61.

    Reply ↓
    1. K.Mandla Post author

      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. 😐

      Reply ↓
  4. bob_v5

    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?

    Reply ↓
    1. K.Mandla Post author

      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. … 😉

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  5. bob_v5

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

    Reply ↓
    1. K.Mandla Post author

      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.” 😀

      Reply ↓
  6. tomas

    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.

    Reply ↓
    1. K.Mandla Post author

      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. … 😯

      Reply ↓

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