Icadyptes A Linux distribution based on Arch Linux.
Download

Icadyptes Ranking & Summary

Icadyptes Tags

linux operating system distribution Linux distribution arch linux arch

Icadyptes Description

A Linux distribution based on Arch Linux. Icadyptes is a Linux distribution based on Arch Linux. It is under heavy development, and much will change in the future. Icadyptes is currently not documented (though the comprehensive Arch wiki usually applies), and is not currently meant to be used by those new to Linux. However, if you are experienced with Arch Linux, Icadyptes should not be too hard to work with. Many aspects are easier and more refined, but some things are in a transition stage and still need more work. Once the core of Icadyptes is stabilized, more work will be done on frontends and making it usable by non-geeks and the "average Joe/Jane".While we ideally want Icadyptes to be easy to install and use, we do not want to sacrifice from power users and make the system less efficient. It would be easier for most people to pick up a distribution that functioned just like Windows, but they would be receiving far from the optimum. It is our intent to give the most efficient and ideal system (within reason), but provide intuitive ways for people to learn it without having to glance at documentation on another computer at the same time.Icadyptes is not intended to support every protocol and method of accomplishing tasks. Rather than support everything, bloating the system and making it non-optimal for anyone, we try to make a compromise supporting what is needed, the best available solutions, and additional ones if they can be implemented in a good way. Icadyptes' scope is not just that of developing a distribution. Computing in general is very subpar and messy. Lower level computing is quite beautiful, but high level systems are usually far from elegant (though many of them certainly are quite good). Rather than live with modern computing's problems, we intend to submit proposals to resolve these issues. We can build an operating system around modern computing, or we can build an operating system around how modern computing should be.The above is mostly theoretically, and Icadyptes could use some more technical examples of what is different about it. More needs to be written on the theory and practical matter, but here are a few key points about Icadyptes in its current state (it is more understandable if you have experience with Arch).Modified makepkg, and slightly modified Pacman: Rather than put {md5,sha*}sums inside the PKGBUILD, SHA256SUMs are put into a CHECKSUMS file. You can simply run `makepkg -g` and the CHECKSUMS file will be updated. Shared source repositories use the SHA256SUMs as filenames, so there are no more filename conflicts with source files. Much more is planned for this, but it is already making development somewhat faster. No arch=() line means that arch=('any'), and a runtimedeps=() has been added for dependencies that aren't needed for building.IPv6-enabled everything, and IPv6-by-default where possible. Icadyptes' domains can be resolved over IPv6, and all of the sites are accessible over IPv6 (so you can have an up-to-date system without IPv4). The primary developer can be emailed purely over IPv6. While Icadyptes is a much smaller project than most, we believe it is the first Linux distribution (possibly operating system) to have the main website, support, and packages all available over IPv6.Enlightenment: While Icadyptes does not have a desktop environment on the installer, e17 is our desktop of choice (although currently the only one in the repositories other than twm). There are a couple problems with it that are likely due to our packaging, but it runs quite well for the most part. Many thanks to the e17 crew for such a great desktop environment.OSS4: While having difficulties with ALSA's microphone support under Intel HDA sound cards, we were suggested to give OSS4 a try. Our experience with it has been excellent (asside from the build system), and we have had no problems with microphones under Intel HDA chipsets. We use OSS4 exclusively, and do not have ALSA in the kernel or the associated libraries and utlities. Many thanks to the OSS4 developers.Light and performance tuned: While Icadyptes' installer presumably does not work with less than 64MiB of RAM, the installed system's requirements are quite minimal. With removing legacy functions and libraries, disabling unneeded features, and more aggressive CFLAGS, Icadyptes' binaries are generally smaller and faster than most other distributions. A few months back we put a 486 with 16MiB of RAM, serving dynamic content, to the test against Digg, with great results. We believe that modern software should be faster on old hardware than the software of its era, though of course there is a point where some necessary and important features mandate the need for faster systems.Security minded: We see security as a top priority and are aware of many potential areas of weakness in a distribution. While Icadyptes has not progressed enough to get our approval as being as secure as it should, we feel it is generally more secure than most other distributions. (We know that this is a broad statement, but don't have time to elaborate just yet; sorry.)Open minded: Icadyptes has lots of room for improvement, and we are open to suggestions and ideas. Just because something has been done a certain way for years does not mean that it is ideal, so please let us know of your thoughts. It is currently easier for us to change core things about Icadyptes because its userbase is much smaller and more experienced than most other distributions. Changes like moving to uClibc are much more possible than in Ubuntu, for example. What's New in This Release: · Icadyptes 0.2 is released, almost exactly 7 months after the 0.1 release. While this may sound like the second release, it is actually the fourth or fifth ISO. · There are plenty of changes, countless bug fixes, many new packages, and it is much more refined. Of course it still needs work, but I think Icadyptes is ready to be publicised. · We have Git on the repositories now, a forum, a much better website, and a fast mirror (all hosted on the same VPS running Icadyptes). · The ISO has grown to 142MiB, with the core/ repository totaling 128MiB, and with extra/ at 298MiB.

Icadyptes Related Software