news
Distributions and Operating Systems: Old Mac, MX Linux, Tiny Core Linux 16.2, NixOS
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Pete Brown ☛ Trying out Linux again (on an old Mac)
I mean, it basically works, and TBH not much seems to have changed. Things are still roughly where I expect them to be, and dealing with my various Raspberry Pi projects over the years has allowed me to maintain my chops with the Linux command-line. Drivers are still flaky, and I still struggle with not having a bunch of the apps I like, as well as with the general lack of polish and refinement I've gotten used to with the Apple stuff.
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ZDNet ☛ This Linux distro is a new spin on my old favorite - and it's delightful
ack in the early 2000s, Enlightenment was my desktop of choice. To this day, Enlightenment is still an option, and it's one that remains just as fun and unique to use.
Back in those days, I had to install Enlightenment manually, because there were no distributions that offered it as a default. At one point, a new Linux distribution came into being that made use of Enlightenment as its only desktop environment -- Bodhi Linux. After some time with Enlightenment, the primary developer decided to fork the DE and created Moksha. Moksha is still in the vein of Enlightenment, only with a dash more user friendliness. It offers a vast amount of configurations and a menu that can be accessed from anywhere on the desktop with a left mouse click.
The developers of MX Linux have decided to create a new spin, MX Moksha, and it's delightful.
I downloaded and installed MX Moksha to see how it fared, and here are my thoughts.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ Tiny Core Linux 16.2 still fits a proper Linux desktop into a 23MB download — but it has grown 1MB since the last time we looked at it
This isn't a prank, and it isn't just a "look how small we made Linux!" gimmick. Tiny Core Linux is a real, maintained distribution with current kernels all the way up to 6.12, modern libraries, system extension repositories, and working support for contemporary hardware. It's extremely small because the project has a very strict, long-standing philosophy: keep the base minimal, load everything else as modular extensions, and run the whole system in RAM when possible.
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But she's a girl... ☛ Using Denix for a multi-host nix config
Since getting back into running NixOS, I have been having a whale of a time configuring my Linux machine. The declarative life is somewhat addictive. However, I felt that I could be improving my configuration in a couple of ways. First, while I was learning how to configure NixOS, I had tended to scatter bits of code about randomly, and so it started to become a challenge to find what I needed. Second, I was getting the itch to bring some of the benefits of declarative configuration to my macOS machines. You obviously have less control there (even with nix-darwin), but I have tailored my Emacs, Neovim and shell environment just the way I like them, and every time I use macOS, it irks me that I don’t have access to the nice configuration that is set up on my Linux box.
In my browsing around, I came across Denix, which solves both problems very nicely.