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About

Goals

CRUX is a lightweight Linux distribution for the x86-64 architecture targeted at experienced Linux users. The primary focus of this distribution is keeping it simple, which is reflected in a straightforward tar.gz-based package system, BSD-style initscripts, and a relatively small collection of trimmed packages. The secondary focus is utilization of new Linux features and recent tools and libraries. CRUX also has a ports system which makes it easy to install and upgrade applications.

Unlike other distributions, the primary goal of CRUX is not to be the most popular (read: biggest number of users) or to put as many features as possible into the system. The idea is rather to build a streamlined distribution, targetted at a specific audience which in turn gets a system without compromises. Some of the characteristics of CRUX are:

The result may not be the best distribution for everybody, but as mentioned above, that's not the goal. If you're part of the target audience however, you might enjoy running CRUX just as much as we do.

Compared to other Linux distributions

It's quite hard to do an objective comparison of linux distributions, since it's often a matter of taste. We therefore believe that you should compare potential candidates yourself, and choose the one you like best. One thing you should remember is that CRUX is targetted at experienced users who don't mind doing some work themselves, so if you're completely new to Linux-based operation systems or want a zero-effort distribution, CRUX is not the optimal choice.

Also, especially new users sometimes confuse a deliberately omitted feature with a lack thereof and suggest it as an "improvement"; you do yourself and us a favour if you try to get yourself adjusted to CRUX for a while before making suggestions to seemingly improve the system; many of the developers have been working with various Linux distributions already and are quite aware of their features.

The Project

We are a group of volunteers providing the core and optional packages for CRUX. We share a common philosophy regarding what an operating system should be, and we seek to achieve this in CRUX. We invite you to join us as a user, or as a team member, if you feel that CRUX is for you.

The Team

Core maintainers

You can find a list of retired members here. The contrib maintainers have their own over there.

To contact the team members, please use the mailinglists or IRC channels.

The Hosting

You may also find the history page interesting.