Simplux is based upon the Linux kernel maintained
by Linus Torvalds and lots of other kernel developers.
Simplux also uses additonal kernel modules, namely
Hardware recognition is based upon scripts taken from Puppy Linux, mostly written by Barry Kauler.
Session management scripts are genuine Simplux, written in Simplicity by Michael Niederle.
Simplux uses Portage originally developed for Gentoo Linux as its primary package manager.
A lot of thanks go to Günther Brunthaler who helped integrating Portage into Simplux.
The primary desktop manager is iceWM by Marko Macek. Simplux adds automatic menu generation for "emerged" packages.
SIMPLUX is a Linux-based operating system to be installed on an USB pen drive and to be run on nearly every PC - ranging from old PENTIUMŪ based PCs to modern quad-core workstations. It is based on Puppy-Linux and will share easy start up and automatic hardware recoginition with this great Linux-distribution.
SIMPLUX is meant to be used for everyday work. Just plug-in the SIMPLUX-pen, turn on the computer and start working. The "computer" can be your computer at home, at work (school), in an internet cafe or whereever you may want to work. Whereever you are, you have all your data at hand and work with your preferred desktop and application settings!
Simplux recognizes computers you worked with before and reenable all environment-specific settings you used the last time while working on this computer.
A typical SIMPLUX-pen has a memory size of 4 GB or above. Data can be backuped to external storage like hardisk drives: Support for rented internet space is planned for the future. All data will be encrypted before beeing transfered and stored. So you can store backups of your data securely in public places.
The first available part was SIBLO (SImple Boot LOader), a boot loader derived from SYSLINUX but able to directly start Windows Loaders - even from large FAT32 partitions. - That is not trivial!
Simplicity is the language used for all Simplux-scripts. It is currently under development. It is not yet finished but stable. Beta versions are available for download. (It is included in Simplux as well!)
The first available tool - written in Simplicity - was the xwizard - a script that automatically checks your hardware configuration and creates an xorg.conf-file. The current version also automatically enables 3D-rendering.
ISO-image: simplux_alpha_2.iso.
MD5-sum: simplux_alpha_2.iso.md5.txt.
My thanks go to Florian Boigner and lots of other students who helped testing the Alpha-versions!
These instructions are very brief. More detailed informations will follow soon.
The Simplux-CD has two purposes
It is not meant to be used directly. It is ultimately slow compared to versions running from an USB-pen-drive. To install Simplux onto a FAT32-formatted device enter
install_simplux device
on a shell prompt. The device should not be mounted! The installer installs the SIBLO-bootloader and copies all necessary files to the destination-device. There are no files removed - except there would be a name clash, which is very unlikely because all files are stored in the subdirectory simplux or contain the string "simplux" or "siblo" somewhere in the filename.
To detect onto which device to install use MUT (the icon in the upper left corner). In case your pen-drive is shown as /dev/sdc, just enter the follwing command:
install_simplux --verbose /dev/sdc1
Please ensure that at least 1GB of free space is available on the target-device! The more the better! 4GB will allow a rich environment of installed packages.
Since 2008-05-13 the new update-system is available for testing. For installation instructions see here.
To install addtional packages use the Gentoo commands
eix - for gathering information about packages
emerge - to install or deinstall packages
The system menu also contains porthole - a graphical frontend to the package-manager.
There are man- and info-pages are available for all commands.
Use reboot and shutdown to ensure correct shutdown of Simplux including copying all data back to the pen-drive.
There is no automatic save (every half an hour) as in Puppy. Use merge_ramdisk whenever you want to copy files from the ramdisk-layer to the save-file. Files are moved if possible, so after calling merge_ramdisk, the ramdisk should be (nearly) empty again!