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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[–] superkret@feddit.org 73 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (4 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.

[–] comfy@lemmy.ml 46 points 6 days ago

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

[–] Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 6 days ago

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

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[–] mlg@lemmy.world 46 points 6 days ago (3 children)
[–] markstos@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago

Yes, particularly the variant distributed on a business-card sized CD rom. To be carried in your wallet for emergency use.

[–] TootSweet@lemmy.world 8 points 6 days ago

Oh jeez. I forgot about that. I had that running on my DS back in the day from a GBA flashcart with a big-ass CompactFlash card sticking out the bottom. Good times.

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[–] sasquash@sopuli.xyz 45 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Hannah Monata Linux and Red Star from North Korea.

[–] countrypunk@slrpnk.net 15 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

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

[–] superkret@feddit.org 32 points 6 days ago (3 children)

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

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[–] A7thStone@lemmy.world 16 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Meego, a combination of Intel's Moblin and Nokia's Maemo. It only ever shipped on one device, the Nokia N9.

[–] PetteriPano@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago

I much enjoyed it back in the day. Nokia even had their own app store for it and gave a nice financial incentive for the first hundred or thousand apps.

I feel Jolla & SailfishOS is the spiritual successor.

[–] lancalot@discuss.online 32 points 6 days ago (4 children)

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

[–] superkret@feddit.org 21 points 6 days ago (13 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.

[–] Auster@thebrainbin.org 11 points 6 days ago

Got RISC OS

mom, I'm scared

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[–] data1701d@startrek.website 2 points 4 days ago

This distro’s default background isn’t a knockoff of any particular popular non-*nix proprietary operating system’s default background:

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[–] TimeSquirrel@kbin.melroy.org 30 points 6 days 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.

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[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 33 points 6 days ago (1 children)

The first one that came to mind was fli4l (Floppy ISDN for Linux). Originally a distro of German origin that fit on a single floppy disk to turn a 386 or 486 PC into a router for ISDN connections. Last I looked it's still actively worked on.

There are probably tons of more obsuce ones. But this is one I actually used.

[–] urfavlaura@lemmy.ml 10 points 6 days ago

I've recently gone through my dad's floppies and found one with fli4l.

[–] Deckweiss@lemmy.world 24 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (6 children)

hyperbola

they have a wiki with insane nonsens about why they don't package certain things. Example:

pam
Package has different security-issues and is not oriented on the way of technical emancipation as Hyperbola is trying to adapt lightweight implementations.

https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:philosophy:incompatible_packages

[–] grue@lemmy.world 8 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (4 children)

Wait... they're militant enough about Free Software to refuse to package anything even slightly non-Free, but their "final goal" is to switch the kernel to BSD (i.e. away from copyleft)? WTF?

[–] cqst@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

but their “final goal” is to switch the kernel to BSD (i.e. away from copyleft)?

HyperbolaBSD is a hard fork, that relicenses the OpenBSD kernel as GPL (as permitted by permissive licenses.)

HyperbolaBSD has already dug into the OpenBSD source tree and discovered numerous licensing issues.

https://git.hyperbola.info:50100/~team/documentation/todo.git/tree/openbsd_kernel-file-list-with-license-issues.md

HyperbolaBSD will be a truly libre distro that takes advantage of copyleft, while moving away from the major issues Linux is stepping into too.

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[–] pokexpert30@lemmy.pussthecat.org 11 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Bohdi linux. smoll and beautiful. Used to run it on my eeepc 701

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[–] bunitor@lemmy.eco.br 23 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (3 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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[–] eldavi@lemmy.ml 25 points 6 days ago (8 children)

elive

you think a distribution that automatically includes all the proprietary stuff that we use baked into the distro would be more popular since it makes linux ready to go for most people; but it still gets fewer than 300 clicks per month.

[–] GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml 20 points 6 days ago (1 children)

automatically includes all the proprietary stuff

Jail.

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[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 13 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Doesn't Pop!OS do that already?

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[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 11 points 6 days ago

I feel like the Enlightenment desktop environment isn't to everyone's taste. It's definitely got some idiosyncratic design choices...

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[–] dai@lemmy.world 5 points 5 days ago

dyne:bolic - specifically 1.4.1

Had support for the original Xbox, a multimedia editing / streaming focussed OS. I'd never run it on mine - just messed with xdsl before going back to XBMC.

[–] Pika@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 days ago

Not super obscure, but not many talk about it. Q4OS, I love it, a perfect windows replacement down to even imitating the old style windows installer. Plus it's Debian based so it has a lot of support. I plan on moving my grandparents to it when windows 10 gets fully discontinued as their current rig doesn't support 11

[–] Cheems@lemmy.world 16 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Have you ever heard of arch? That's what I use by the way

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[–] urfavlaura@lemmy.ml 15 points 6 days ago (1 children)

KISS

it's just a single bash script and a repository containing package definitions to compile them from source.

Basically LFS on drugs.

[–] utopiah@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 days ago

Interesting, was searching for anybody who mentioned LFS/Linux From Scratch leading here. Doesn't seem active anymore though.

[–] OhNoMoreLemmy@lemmy.ml 8 points 5 days ago (2 children)

There was a bunch of weird rebadged Ubuntu derivatives back in the day.

Ubuntu satanic edition. https://archiveos.org/ubuntu-satanic/

Ubuntu Christian edition. https://archiveos.org/ubuntu-christian/

Hannah Montana Linux https://hannahmontana.sourceforge.net/

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[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 9 points 6 days ago (1 children)
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[–] 9488fcea02a9@sh.itjust.works 14 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days 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, :(

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[–] Dustwin@lemmy.ca 14 points 6 days ago (2 children)
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[–] AnthropomorphicCat@lemmy.world 11 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Jarro Negro. Made by Mexican students. And as far as I know, it's independent, not based on another distro.

[–] greedytacothief@lemmy.world 8 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Sabayon Linux. I'm not sure if it's still releasing updates, the main website is dead. It was based on Gentoo and later funtoo, but had a package manager of precompiled binaries. You could still use emerge if you wanted to. Definitely a weird and interesting distro

Blend OS is trying to do the declarative nixos thing but with an arch base. That's pretty cool.

ClearOS was Intel's attempt at an immutable os. From what I remember it was really fast.

Edit: actually it clear Linux not clearOS. Edit: also clear Linux is stateless. I don't know, there's a lot about it I don't understand

[–] davidgro@lemmy.world 9 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Limiting to those I have used daily and treated as Linux (used the terminal for example) probably Maemo. I used to carry my Nokia Internet Tablet 770, and then my N800 everywhere with me.

Maemo is also an ancestor of both Tizen and Sailfish OS

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[–] HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com 13 points 6 days ago (4 children)

most obscure and to me coolest but unfortunately not very active https://sourcemage.org/

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[–] icerunner_origin@startrek.website 12 points 6 days ago (4 children)
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[–] metaStatic@kbin.earth 12 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Yellow Dog

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

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[–] Quazatron@lemmy.world 11 points 6 days ago (2 children)

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

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[–] fatur0000new@lemmy.ml 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Longene Linux. Linux-based operating system kernel intended to be binary compatible with application software and device drivers made for Microsoft Windows and Linux.

[–] achsideaslemmee@lemm.ee 2 points 4 days ago

templeos /j

[–] StrawberryPigtails@lemmy.sdf.org 10 points 6 days ago (12 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.

[–] theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world 12 points 6 days ago

Gentoo still exists 🙂

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