Retro Linux
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:
Well-Adjusted Retro Packager
(based on
Glasnost's kiss)
- Compilers: gcc, cproc
-
We favor GCC versions 4.7.4 and earlier since they are
faster (pre-C++ rewrite), but output slightly less optimized
binaries. A fine compromise. 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 older GCC.
- 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:
- 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.