

Special Purpose Linux Distributions - Tsiolkovsky
http://www.slashgeek.net/2012/12/27/10-single-purpose-linux-distributions/

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DanBC
I'm not sure how they chose that list.

It's not a great article.

Other people have mentioned Geexbox and XBMC which are useful media centre
distributions.

Slitaz is a cool minimal distribution, with excellent internationalisation.
(It's amazing what they fit in to such a tiny package.)

Tinycore / microcore are great minimal distributions, but I don't know how
much they're being developed at the moment.

Exherbo looks suitable for masochists. (<http://exherbo.org/>)

Arch / Gentoo / Linux From Scratch are great for people who want to learn
Linux or who know exactly what they want.

~~~
tygorius
Tiny Core Linuxis still going strong (<http://www.tinycorelinux.net/>).
They're now up to three images, all built on the idea of running out of RAM
with a 3.0-era kernel. The Core image is CLI-only and weighs in 8 MB; TinyCore
adds a GUI/WM interface at 12 MB; and if you have RAM to burn you can opt for
the 64 MB CorePlus image which is the only one that starts up with wifi set
up.

It's a kick to play with. It's just amazing how fast a minimal distro can be
running out of RAM. Even when you load it up with Firefox and a bunch of other
apps you're still only looking at a few hundred MB.

No xmonad version yet though. :(

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wtracy
Scientific Linux really isn't a special-purpose distribution. It's just
another Red Hat clone like CentOS. (Some people claim that it's actually a
superior alternative to CentOS.)

~~~
moondowner
It's as special as Edubuntu. It may be based on RH (as Edubuntu is based on
Ubuntu), but it's prepackaged with lot's of software for scientific usage (the
same way Edubuntu is prepackaged with educational software).

It's obvious that some distros are more special-purpose and some of them can
easily be configured/converted for everyday usage.

~~~
4ad
No, Scientific Linux is not prepackaged with lots of software for scientific
usage. It's extremely close to RHEL. The additions are documented here:
[http://www.scientificlinux.org/distributions/6x/features/add...](http://www.scientificlinux.org/distributions/6x/features/added)

~~~
mbubb
Yes - exactly. It does not have 'special science sauce' added.

~~~
keithpeter
Springdale Linux (previously PUIAS Linux) is another RHEL 6 clone but they
_do_ provide a repository that contains some computational maths software.
That repository is not installed by default, and can be used with the other
RHEL clones.

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sycren
Open Artist - <http://openartisthq.org/>

It tries to combine free software into a suite for creative people. Driven by
the fact that there are so many cool applications out there, but most people
do not know them, openArtist tries to be a complete package of creative
software.

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mbubb
'Devian' Linux? Never heard of it.

Sci Linux:

"As the name suggest, the distribution is geared towards scientists doing
scientific stuff (I wouldn’t know)."

No it is no more (or less) scientific than CentOS.

Dreadful article.

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frozenport
This list is bogus, silly and probably plagiarism
[http://www.linuxhaxor.net/10-special-purpose-linux-
distribut...](http://www.linuxhaxor.net/10-special-purpose-linux-
distributions/) (2 years ago)

I would propose CNK or CNL Linux. These are stripped down version of Linux
that run on the compute nodes of a super computer. See
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compute_Node_Linux>

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noonespecial
Its cool to see the OS starting to be configured specifically around certain
applications rather than the other way around.

How soon until apps live in their own specific OS environments on USB sticks
and my "main OS" is just a hypervisor to run them? The return of the
cartridge. Everything old is new again.

~~~
jiggy2011
USB sticks? I'd rather just have everything pulled over the network and cached
on my SSD :)

~~~
dredmorbius
Sticks are still handy if you want to be able to boot Joe Random Device to a
known standard distro. And/or for security / forensics / recovery work.

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benvd
SystemRescueCd is a great one. I always carry a USB drive with it on my
keychain.

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p4bl0
Another media center oriented Linux distro is GeeXboX [1]. I've never used it
myself but I've herad that it's quite good.

[1] <http://www.geexbox.org/>

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andrewcooke
parted magic looked interesting, but doesn't seem to add a coherent interface
to everything. has anyone who has used it also used yast's partition manager
(from opensuse)? if so, how does it compare? because i'd love a simple,
standalone tool (one that i could use on other linuxes) that had all the
functionality of yast's pm (eg. it can create encrypted llvm volumes over
raid, for example - something that's available in the opensuse installer but
seems to be beyond many other distros).

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MrVitaliy
Open Media Vault[1] a Debian based NAS OS. Although Synology's DSM[2] is also
linux based it doesn't appear to be as free

[1] <http://www.openmediavault.org/> [2]
<http://www.synology.com/dsm/index.php?lang=us>

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keithpeter
I find Clonezilla pretty useful, it is a one use kind of tool though not
really a full Linux.

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jimux2
Sad to see no Qubes on, but I guess it doesn't sound as interesting as others.

<http://qubes-os.org/trac>

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gbog
XBMC is another one.

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JulianMorrison
Does anyone here have experience of Ubuntu Studio? How mature is it, as a
distro / Ubuntu fork?

~~~
bwanab
I've used it a lot and it works very well. However, at present I'm using stock
Ubuntu 12.04 with the studio (mostly music production based) applications
loaded through standard apt-get means. In the past Ubuntu Studio packaged a
kernel built with Ingo Molnar's low-latency patches, but the stock kernel is
good enough for real-time, low-latency production these days. Other than
having most of the applications that you'd need packaged for you - a valuable
service for new users - I'm not sure what Ubuntu Studio brings to the table
for experienced users.

