I have a 1TB harddrive on my desktop computer that isn’t doing much of anything, so I’d like to dual-boot something “interesting”. Suggestions are greatly appreciated, so let me know what y’all find intriguing/interesting/frustrating/innovative.
The logo is just for attention, but EFF is a great cause that we should all support.
Qubes - an OS that compartmentalizes system functions (including userspace) into separate VMs, with the intent of keeping them secure from each other. Kind of an internal zero-trust approach. Complicated to use.
Alpine Linux - stripped down to create a reduced attack surface, with the intent to provide only packages which have been vetted for security. Fairly straightforward.
Redox OS - a Unix-like OS written in Rust (not actually Linux). Limited, still kind of a prototype.
Damn Small Linux has been revived with a new version recently, which is nice to see.
HoloISO - a community built reimplementation of the Steam Deck OS.
You want to try something interesting but want to dual-boot. That last bit could be difficult or “impossible” but using a VM or running from USB stick are options.
- https://www.haiku-os.org I’ve run it from USB stick on some older laptop.
- https://chimera-linux.org FreeBSD user-land with a Linux kernel.
- https://nomadbsd.org FreeBSD which can be run from USB stick with persistent storage. Has a version with ZFS support.
- https://nixos.org Very interesting concept.
- https://www.gobolinux.org GoboLinux is an alternative Linux distribution which redefines the entire filesystem hierarchy. Doesn’t seem up to date but quite interesting. If I remember well you can have different versions of software installed at the same time. Let’s say (making this up) Bash 1.1, 3.1 and 5.2
- https://bedrocklinux.org Bedrock Linux is a meta Linux distribution which allows users to mix-and-match components from other, typically incompatible distributions.
GhostBSD My pre-coffee self mistyped. I have a separate drive with my daily drive OS on their (Mint), and I have an additional separate drive that I’d like to do something interesting on. These are fun suggestions, so thank you!
I was also going to suggest Haiku. It’s the spiritual successor to BeOs. I was always disappointed that didn’t become more popular.
BeOS on my old PowerPC blew my mind in the late 90s.
If you’re looking for interesting more than useful, may I present TempleOS.
. . . could you possibly unpresent it? I kid, I kid–this looks insane and I love it. Thank you!
If you have never heard of it before, I recommend checking out the wikipedia page for it, and some of the information available about its creator.
Wow, thanks! What an interesting read :O (But also really sad to watch the video on the templeos site)
Void, stable, fast, not a fork, also is using runit
NetBSD
Perhaps TempleOS and unholy forks of it?
Fedora silverblue
The main system OS is immutable and tracked by a git like system, which means to upgrade, or downgrade your whole OS to a release you just pull in the ‘tag’ you want, and it just does it.Can also side grade easily to respins of the OS using this too, just add the remote and pull in the image.
Oooh that’s a fun idea. Thank you!
It’s really hard to go wrong with Debian.
That’s my safe answer.
If you share more about your interests, hobbies, I might have other ideas.
I suppose, when in doubt, there’s always Linux From Scratch. It’s a very interesting experience.
Except Debian is neither interesting nor innovative.
Debian is the Volvo of Linux distros.
AROS (Amiga) Research Operating System
would run in an emulator or bare metal boot from separate media.
Oh look! Amiga’s still alive! Awesome, thank you!
New to you or new to the world?
Either way, just looking for something interesting to play with.
