CRUX

Reader supplied reviews for CRUX Average rating 7.5 from 4 review(s) Please specify which version of the distribtion you are reviewing. Please select a rating in the range of 1-10. Please write at least a few sentences about the distribution while limiting your review to 4080 characters. What are your thoughts on CRUX? Please include a few pros and a few cons, along with your overall impression of the operating system. Our FAQ page has tips on writing a good mini-review. Version: -- 3.8-rc53.73.6.13.53.43.33.23.13.02.82.7.12.72.62.52.42.32.22.12.01.3.11.31.21.11.00.9.40.9.30.9.20.9.1 Rating:    -- 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 out of 10 Your review (minimum 250 words): Past reviews - sort by: DateVotes Version: 3.7 Rating: 2 Date: 2023-08-02 Votes: 0 Slackware does everything CRUX does but much better. CRUX is bare-bones to the point of being almost completely useless. There is no task in CRUX that can't be done better in any other Linux system. If you really want something bare-bones and UNIX-like, Slackware is a much better experience. CRUX has no options built in for a desktop environment. If you want to use anything other than a standalone window manager like openbox or twm, your only option is to use a community-maintained repository. These are very hard to use and many of them are missing parts. I was *barely* able to cobble MATE together. It took hours and I had to install multiple dependencies manually from source because the port versions weren't recognized for some reason. Most packages had to be manually installed by force because of a footprint mismatch. Once MATE was finally ready, it barely worked. Most of the menus didn't work and many components were missing. Even if you don't want a desktop environment, installing basically any software is a horrible experience. Although the same could be said for Slackware, its SlackBuild system, while annoying to use, is at least functional. Plus, Slackware, in spite of its narrow repositories, has enough available in its default installation for most use cases. CRUX has basically nothing. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 3.7 Rating: 10 Date: 2023-07-21 Votes: 13 I came across this distro very recently after having been on Artix for many years, before that on Arch, before that Manjaro, before that Debian, before that Mint, before that Ubuntu, before that Red Hat. So I kind of went gradually from the more abstract to the most simple (perhaps KISS is even simpler). What I have to say about CRUX is, I love it! Everything is open and out of your way, it makes understanding the system extremely easy, the community is very friendly, no Code of Conduct (which is very rare to see these days, but a lack of a COC is a clear sign of a project being aimed at responsible grown ups), just due to the nature of source-based distro's, it takes forever to get my system ready for daily use, but I think it's worth it in the end. I also love the choice of a simple BSD-style init script system, because it really makes you understand how an init system works under the hood, and if you really need your own equivelant of "systemctl ACTION PROGRAM", you can always make a 1 line shell script (or 2 lines if you count the "/bin/sh" header), put it in /usr/bin, and use it. Making ports is super easy and funnily enough it's front and center of their documentation, so much so that besides the base installation process, documentation doesn't talk about much else, but that's simply because there's no need for it. Everything apart from the ports system and init system is just a raw Linux experience, so whatever you've learned in other distributions can be applied in CRUX very easily. In many ways, CRUX feels like what Arch could have been if they'd stick to their philosophy. I also feel like CRUX is much cleaner too, because in Arch when you install from the AUR, it quickly starts to feel like you're running software compiled by mutually incompatible maintainers with each their own opinion on how to do things, but in CRUX there are a certain set of rules for making ports to keep things as clean as possible, even if you enable ports from many different users. At the same time it also feels like a freer (as in freedom), smaller, and more standardized version of Gentoo. Before trying CRUX, I viewed compiling literally everything from source as a meme, but now I really love it. Works great on laptops and desktops, but if you're looking for a server that's just as KISS as CRUX, consider OpenBSD instead. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 3.6.1 Rating: 8 Date: 2021-12-12 Votes: 11 This linux distro is really great, it has the customization of gentoo with the freedom of slack and the installation is arch-like (probably because arch formed from crux's philosophy), But i'll have to say that this distro is not for the beginner nor for the intermediate, as many issues that you'll encounter is not very easy to fix. For example: some of the processes were a pain, even though i followed the documentation I still encountered issues with some of the commands needed missing in the installation medium, so, if you have a problem, then you are on your own when it comes to fixing issues during and after the installation. Sadly, for those who want Freedom, this distro doesn't offer a Libre-kernel, but with some hard work you can get a Libre-kernel working after the installation. Finally. If you are dedicated to the crux cause, you should make a custom repository for software, keep on K.I.S.S-ing! 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