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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[–] AnnaFrankfurter@lemmy.ml 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)
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[–] AkatsukiLevi@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

If being usable is a metric, Slackware

[–] 0x0@programming.dev 5 points 3 days ago (2 children)
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[–] brachypelmasmithi@lemm.ee 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

2 days ago my friend found an old SATA hard drive and gave it to me to check what's on it, and me, not having a disk station or anything, and against all better judgment, I just swapped the disk in my laptop for my friend's, and instead of my laptop being fried it turned out the disk was running something called Crunchbang Linux

[–] Lemmchen@feddit.org 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (3 children)

I loved that distro. Unfortunately it got discontinued at some point.

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[–] Dustwin@lemmy.ca 13 points 4 days ago (2 children)
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[–] sunred@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 3 days ago

I see no one has mentioned Bedrock Linux yet. Not sure though how others would rate its 'obscurity' though. It's definitely a standout among distros.

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

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

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[–] Quazatron@lemmy.world 11 points 3 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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[–] icerunner_origin@startrek.website 12 points 4 days ago (4 children)
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[–] metaStatic@kbin.earth 12 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Yellow Dog

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

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[–] StrawberryPigtails@lemmy.sdf.org 11 points 4 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 13 points 4 days ago

Gentoo still exists 🙂

[–] superkret@feddit.org 8 points 3 days ago

Gentoo still exists. Damn Small was dead for a decade but has risen again recently. Puppy is alive and well. Knoppix is still alive, but the last downloadable release is almost 4 years old.

[–] 0x0@programming.dev 3 points 3 days ago

Gentoo's forums are quite active and it's one of my daily drivers. I think the others kinda faded away.

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[–] notthebees@reddthat.com 6 points 3 days ago (2 children)

No one mentioned Bunsenlabs or Crunchbang Linux here, but they aren't really that obscure.

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[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

United Linux - the famous Red Hat Enterprise Linux killer!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Linux

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[–] Captain_Baka@feddit.org 9 points 4 days ago

The old PearOS(which looked like a meme-ish knockoff MacOS), UwUntu and Nyarch

[–] TootSweet@lemmy.world 9 points 4 days ago (2 children)

I imagine there was a time when this wasn't obscure, but I'm guessing people today don't remember Caldera OpenLinux. That was the first Linux distro I installed/used. A guy from church gave his copy.

Caldera eventually became SCO. But I'm pretty sure I was using Caldera OpenLinux before the whole Novell patent suit thing.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago

Speaking of old, dead distros, my first Linux -- sort of -- was TurboLinux 6.0. I say "sort of" because I never successfully got it to install and run. : (

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[–] Aiwendil@lemmy.ml 9 points 4 days ago

Obscure as in "only for a very specific purpose and nothing else"?...

Well, there is the Mircrosoft linux distro for their azure cloud

I guess DD-WRT as distro for router is also kind of obscure. Or the more general openWRT for embedded systems.

[–] Vivendi@lemmy.zip 5 points 3 days ago (2 children)

SLiTaz

It's an obscure originally live usage oriented distro that you could also install. It was the first *Nix I ever used.

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