To Crux or not to Crux

Hey Fellow Forum Members.
I'm going to try out the latest from Crux but I have a few questions that I can't seem to locate on the crux website.
1) Which DE comes default?
2) Is Madwifi included or should I rely on the trusty source code?
3) does Crux come with kernel sources, since I won't have 'net Access.
4) would it be easier to chroot the whole install including missing packages?
5) Does it have long compile times, like Gentoo?
I have been using Ubuntu Gutsy for about a week now, And I like it a lot, it's just not what I am looking for. It worked almost flawlessly, samba, my HP all-in-one, Atheros wifi, I have nothing but good things to say about it.
I'm actually looking for a distro for our son, something I can set up completely, I don't mind having to tweak it for him, and basically never have to mess with it again. Gentoo is a bit too much for this job, I think.

It's been a few years since I last installed/used CRUX, so my answers are based on that experience:

1) it comes with neither, comes only with base system, add gui after installing
2) it wasn't included back then
3) if I remember correctly kernel sources were included
4) not really sure if that would be better, or not
5) yes, it has very long compile times (like Gentoo)

I don't personally think CRUX is the right distribution for your son. In some ways, it's harder to work with than Gentoo, at least in my opinion. It's truly a geek distro. You might want to consider Arch. It's not as easy as some distros, but easier than CRUX and Gentoo, in my opinion. It's more a medium difficulty distro, again in my opinion.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ozar

It's been a few years since I last installed/used CRUX, so my answers are based on that experience:

1) it comes with neither, comes only with base system, add gui after installing
2) it wasn't included back then
3) if I remember correctly kernel sources were included
4) not really sure if that would be better, or not
5) yes, it has very long compile times (like Gentoo)

I don't personally think CRUX is the right distribution for your son. In some ways, it's harder to work with than Gentoo, at least in my opinion. It's truly a geek distro. You might want to consider Arch. It's not as easy as some distros, but easier than CRUX and Gentoo, in my opinion. It's more a medium difficulty distro, again in my opinion.

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Hi ozar!
Thanks, I will certainly look into Arch.

Hi MikeTbob,

As a full fledged Crux user who uses it every single day, I have to tell you that I love it... Even more than Slackware if that were possible. With Crux, you really start from a very basic install from CD. No X, no nothing really except a basic system or foundation if you will, to build up as you want. It's that building up process that is appealing to me. I know once I've reached the end, I'll have a rock solid OS that is exactly as I want it. In that way it is much like Gentoo. I tried Gentoo and it just was not a good fit for me whereas Crux just seems to fit me like a glove. Having said that, I think there likely are better choices for your son. Arch would be a good choice as is good old Slackware. Actually, I'm waiting to see if there will ever be any other Crux users around. Using Crux can be kind of lonely! It's a shame too because (in my opinion,) it is as good if not better than Gentoo. It is a mystery to me why more users don't choose it over Gentoo. If per chance you ever decide to check Crux out, let me know. I'd be happy to help in any way I can. :)

Dapper Dan, when I last ran CRUX there was no dependency checking for installing new packages. I remember well that it took me what seemed like forever to get my system fully setup and tweaked the way I wanted it.

Is it still pretty much that way, or have things changed?

It must have. I started using it at 2.2 and have noticed vast improvements in 2.3. You can install packages the old way... cd to the pakage in /usr/ports and install with pkgmk. Or the better way is with prt-get which solves dependencies if you tell it too. If you wanted to install gtk-gnutella for instance, you would just do:

Code:

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prt-get depinst gtk-gnutella

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To upgrade all packages, just do:

Code:

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ports -u

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Then:

Code:

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prt-get sysup

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Done.

Also, there are now many, many more packages to choose from. It's all just a matter of putting in the right ports in /etc/ports. There are ports for xorg, kde, gnome, xfce and many more. :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dapper Dan

Also, there are now many, many more packages to choose from. It's all just a matter of putting in the right ports in /etc/ports. There are ports for xorg, kde, gnome, xfce and many more. :)

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Thanks for the info. There was definitely a severe shortage of ready-to-go packages when I last tried it so it's good to know that's improved.

Did they have depinstall and prt-get when you were using it?

I don't really remember either of those and was thinking it was something more like pkgconfig, or something similar to that. It's been 2 or 3 years (maybe more) though, so I could be mistaken.

Wow... If all you had was pkgconfig, I'm surprised you stayed with it long enough to get a desktop!

prt-get is pretty much the same as emerge. When it works, it's a beautiful thing to see. When there is a misconfiguration in a repository or a missing package, it can often be daunting to figure out where the problem is. Mostly it works as it should though. The problems I run into with prt-get are usually either footprint mismatch or md5sum mismatch which often occurs. Both easily worked around by options -if (ignore footprint) or -im (ignore md5sum mismatch). So far, I've not run into any problem ignoring package footprints or md5sum mismatches.

Another thing about Crux.... The default kernel configuration is extremely light. Recompiling to include drivers you may need only takes a few minutes and you still have a lightening fast mean and clean configuration.

I've run most of the major distros at one time or another and Crux is by far the fastest distro I've ever experienced.