Retro Linux

Updated in July of 2022

Your own reflection

Depending on other people's software almost implies "compromise" of one's ideals in some way. And like everyone else, we have our own way of doing things in this distribution. We hope it is of your liking.

To be included in official repositories

We only list the most relevant types of software, either by how essential they are or how controversial are the choices within.

• Package manager: Custom one, working on it
• C compilers: gcc, cproc, etc...
• In general, we favor compilation speed over binary optimization (example, GCC versions <=4.7.4, since those were before the C++ rewrite). Note "favor"; it is obvious that some programs may not build properly with older versions of GCC. However, this won't mean the exclusion of neither those programs nor the alternative compilers.
• Init: up for votes (sinit+perp or s6+(?)?)
• udevd: skarnet's mdevd
• libudev: libudev-zero
• Libc: musl
• Coreutils: sbase+ubase (potentially k9base or toybox as choices?)
• Shell: oksh, mksh, dash
• netbsd-curses instead of ncurses
• Display server: xorg
• Toolkits:
• athena
• foxtk
• fltk
• (gnustep?)
• gtk+1.2
• tk
• motif
• (openlook?)
• wxX11
• Audio server: jack
• Web browsers:
• (x)links2
• lynx
• dillo
• Window managers:
• amiwm
• fvwm2
• scwm
• (olwm/olvwm?)
• wmii
• (gnustep?)
• SXEmacs
• Text editors:
• SXEmacs (and GNU Emacs, mg?)
• Variants of vi (vis, nvi, OG vi?)
• nano and "better nanos" (ne, tilde)
• ed, of course.
• Suggest some please...
• Fonts (We favor bitmaps):
• UW ttyp0
• Terminus
• Artwiz
• Kappa/japanese-bitmap-fonts

To never be included in the base system

But potentially in segregated official repositories.

• systemd, pulseaudio, udev, dbus, polkit
• pam, consolekit2
• gtk2+
• This means adding (more) modern browsers!
• Werefox
• Potentially: a fork of Firefox 2 (it's very fast)
• Boring Ungoogled-Chromium/FFQuantum/etc
• qt4+
• tqt3
• wayland
• node.js, rust
• dwm
• Everyone wants to have their own patched version. A very similar situation to the one with the Linux kernel.

All imply the introduction of their associated dependencies and dependents, of course.

Goals

• Achieving plenty of features with the maximum speed. This implies minimizing dependency count, and also usage of monolith/huge programs.
• Bringing attention to old/obscure programs and other computer resources. Many times, they tend to be faster (the programs), so this goal is related to the last one.
• As we are essentially forked from KISS, we inherit some of their ideas as well. We will go into detail about this sometime soon.

Motivations

Too many distributions nowadays take the position of only caring after the features of their package manager or community, or whatever else. But little care goes into a selection of packages, simply complying with whatever is the current norm for the greatest part. Needless to say we want to take a position where others would never consider one or completely disregard it to begin with.

Yet our main objective is still to make a very useful distribution. We are not making a mere toy, but rather a demonstration that you can still give applications to a computer expected of the Current Year with little to no compromises in staying in not just the "Lightweight" but the "Retro" zone.

Finally

If you have any suggestions or inquiries, send them in our XMPP chatroom.