Cucumber...
 

http://www.cucumberlinux.com/

Cucumber Linux aims to provide a Linux distribution that is usable as an every day, general purpose operating system. It aims to this in as minimalistic a way as possible and in a way that follows the Unix Philosophy. Cucumber Linux favors simplicity and modularity of design over simplicity of use. While developed independently, Cucumber's design is heavily influenced by Slackware Linux...

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=cucumber

No thanks. I'll stick with the real thing.

First thought: "wow, even their web design looks like slackware.com"

Member response
 

Hi,

Why move from the real thing? No gains by using a fork to feed the ego of a copier!

Have fun & enjoy Slackware!
:hattip:

Uh.....no. Slackware is the only distribution for me.

"A huge thanks goes out to Patrick Volkerding of Slackware Linux and the Linux from Scratch development team. I couldn't have done it without inspiration from your systems and guidance from your buildscripts."

That's fine and stuff, but I have to ask ... why? It seems like he's just trying to recreate Slackware, and even using parts of Slackware's SlackBuild scripts.

Edit: and also using the same package management tools.

"Cool." ;)

IANAL and I should MYOB ... but I wonder ...

Is it OK with Pat to re-license Slackware as Cucumber under the MIT License ?

-- kjh

It seems like a good thing to me. Forks and derivatives help spread Slackware-like knowledge. Even if Cucumber is a copy or "dies on the vine" it's fun to see how others imitate the best Linux distro ever!

I don't see anything saying you can't do that in the standard slackware license, for example from pkgtools.

Cucumber has me confused on the meaning of "Based on: Independent."

Well they had to start somewhere and they chose a great place to start, as long as they don't step on any copyrights then I don't see what the problem is, and overtime they'll probably drift away onto their own thing. A college student started it.

rofl, cucumber linux.

what's next, Pumpkin linux ?

I guess cucumber because onebuck already introduced carrot back in 2014....
https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...ot-4175516202/

Let's not forget the irish version potato linux.

I think you all are being a little hard on Cucumber.

If someone wants to fork Slackware, at least it's not yet another *buntu (though I do think the comment about the derivative website is valid).

I'm downloading the *.iso now and will throw into VirtualBox tomorrow or the next day, just to see what it looks like.

I'm still laughing, but I have no opinion about it really, just thought I'd share that with you.

But given I'm not a 'Slacker' (but maybe one day), I'm leaving while the going's still good! ;)

Don't get me wrong, I don't have any problem with it. I just don't see the point, other than someone got the itch to create a distro. For example, I'd like to hear why the creator thinks someone should run this instead of Slackware.

I've already grabbed the *.iso.

I'll report back tomorrow.:)

It is a slack baby ... good to no !

:p

I was unable to get Cucumber to install in a VM under VirtualBox. I had the 64-bit *.iso, so I created a 64-bit "Other Linux" VM with about a 20GB virtual HDD (dynamically allocated).

I fired up the *.iso and got as far as partitioning the drive with cfdisk. Formatting was not a discrete step in the default installation routine. I got an error that swap could not be mounted.

I deleted the VM and tried again. This time, after creating the partitions, I formatted / with mkfs, then formatted the swap with mkswap. I got the same error.

You can see a screenshot of the "select partition" dialog here: http://pineviewfarm.net/weblog/wp-co...partitions.jpg

You can see a screenshot of the error message here: http://pineviewfarm.net/weblog/wp-co...ber2_error.jpg

I'm pretty much booked tomorrow and the next day, so I won't have a chance to try this on another computer for a few days.

I installed cucumber linux (64 bit) on an unused partition of my main hardrive.

Had some trouble getting the install disk working. Don't remember the error, but
it kept looking for some i386 stuff. It finally booted, though.

Did a full install, returned to my main partition, reworked grub and reboot into
cucumber. Had only a few minutes to play with it, but it seemed to work okay in
a console.

Could not get X to come up. Major problem: startx is missing.

It's new so I expect a few problems, but I think I will still like Slackware better.

Is this a Slackware derivative?
From the FAQ:
Imitation is the sincerest from of flattery.

Hello Everyone,

I'm Scott (A.K.A. Z5T1), the creator and BDFL of Cucumber Linux. Thank you all for taking the time to check out and discuss Cucumber Linux. I see you have some questions and I'm going to do my best to answer some of them.

I originally started Cucumber Linux as a personal Summer project. I have always been a big proponent of the Unix Philosophy and I have been unhappy with how most Linux distributions have been abandoning it recently. I've also been interested in the inner workings of Linux distributions and systems for many years. In May of 2016 I was a student looking for a fun Summer project, so I decided to combine these two passions and create my own Linux distribution. I did this primarily as a learning experience, but I also wanted to have distribution for my personal use that followed the Unix Philosophy and would always be free of Systemd, PulseAudio and all the other crap that flies in the face of the Unix Philosophy.

Now I could have easily just forked Slackware; however, I decided to build a new distribution from scratch, figuring that would provide a much more complete learning experience. I actually initially set out to create a disto based off of Linux from Scratch, not Slackware. There were some thing I thought Linux from Scratch did well, but there were some things I thought Slackware did better. Ultimately, I largely combined the two distributions together, drawing heavily from both distros but also doing certain things my own way. I actually used very few SlackBuild scripts; I wrote most of the buildscripts myself, and if you look at the way they build the packages you'll see they're closer to the Linux from Scratch/Beyond Linux from Scratch buildscripts than SlackBuild scripts.

After I spent over a year working on Cucumber Linux, I figured I may as well make it publicly available in case anyone else happened to find the project interesting.

Being that I wrote most of the buildscripts myself, I have the right to license those buildscripts as I see fit. For the few SlackBuild scripts I did incorporate into Cucumber Linux, I left Pat's original licensing in place. If you look at the Cucumber Linux License page, you will see that I said the distribution is licensed under the MIT license only as far as upstream licensing allows.

Slackware's a great disto, don't get me wrong. I used Slackware for years before I created Cucumber Linux, and I still use Slackware on some of my systems. You're right that I largely did get an itch to create a distro; however, I do believe there is one key advantage that Cucumber Linux has over Slackware: security. I have found that, while Pat does a great job building Slackware, sometimes there are security vulnerabilities that go unpatched on Slackware, and sometimes these vulnerabilities can have a severe impact. There are several vulnerabilities that currently exist in Slackware 14.2 that I have long since patched on Cucumber Linux.

Also, Slackware's lifecycle is a little vague about security and can be deceiving. For example, Slackware 13.37 is still supported; however, it uses a kernel that hasn't been patched since upstream support ended for the Linux 2.6 kernel many years ago. Turns out this kernel is vulnerable to both dirty cow and stack clash, and probably several more vulnerabilities. With Slackware, if you don't dig deep enough, you can easily end up thinking your system is secure when it really is not. With Cucumber Linux, I have a much more clearly defined lifecycle and I make sure that if a version of Cucumber Linux is supported, it is really completely supported and up to date on all security patches, period.

- Scott

Thanks for taking time to respond here Scott. I suspect we'd see eye to eye on quite a few subjects based on what you've written above. Best of luck with your project.

Agreed! Good luck Scott and keep Cucumber going!

Thanks for the explanation. It's always good to have alternatives in case something ever happened to Slackware.

Care to elaborate?

Agreed, I am sure PV and team would like to know what those vulnerabilities are. Did you ever submit those patches to PV? You said you used Slackware for a long time on several boxes, did you ever participate in LQ, I noticed this was your first post as Z5T1.

Sure.

CVE-2016-1248 arbitrary code execution in Vim via a specially crafted text file.
CVE-2016-9273 and several vulnerabilities in libtiff that were fixed in libtiff 4.0.8 (Slackware is still on 4.0.7).
CVE-2017-3636, CVE-2017-3641 and CVE-2017-3653 all in MariaDB that allow unauthorized access of information and unauthorized inserts, deletes and updates.
CVE-2016-0634 arbitrary shell command execution as any user in Bash via a specially crafted hostname.
CVE-2017-10663 in the Linux kernel allows for arbitrary code execution in the kernel space when mounting a maliciously crafted F2FS filesystem.
CVE-2017-12424 a buffer overflow vulnerability in shadow that could result in a crash and other unspecified impacts, possible privilege escalation.

And I could go on, but I think you get the point :). I tried contacting the Slackware security team about some of these, but never got a response. All of these vulnerabilities have been patched in Cucumber Linux. Also, there are some vulnerabilities that have now been patched in Slackware, but went unpatched for several weeks after the upstream patches were released. In these cases, Cucumber Linux was patched within a day or two.

No I actually haven't posted on LQ before. I've been reading it for years, I just never found anything worth commenting on until today.

Also, as I mentioned in my previous post, I did try submitting some of the patches to the Slackware security team, but I never got a reply from them and the patches ultimately went unapplied. After this happened a couple of times, I gave up on submitting them.

Thanks for sharing and good luck with your distro!

Hmm.

1. To start off, I fully believe that you tried to do the right thing and sent patches to the Slackware security team.
2. I also fully believe that the Slackware security team didn't know you from Adam when you submitted those patches.
3. In my opinion, they didn't know if you were trustworthy or not.
4. I'll agree that examining your patches should have resolved how trustworthy your patches were.
5. I'll mention that the Slackware security team isn't paid (to my knowledge) to do what they are doing.

Nice bunch of bullet points. Where the hell was I going with them?

Hmm. Nowhere. (OK, dick move on my part. [I chose my handle for a reason, after all.])

You decided after you were ignored several times (despite my nick, I'm not making light of your experience) that Slackware didn't fulfill your requirements for fixing security issues.

I honestly cannot say what an unreasonable SLA for security updates would be when that is handled by unpaid volunteers.

I wish good luck to you and your distro. Maybe I'll be using it after Pat throws in the towel. Maybe he will use your distro as a baseline for security updates.

You never know.

Thank you very much for responding here!

If you want still want to submit them I would suggest doing so in this thread.

https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...00/page42.html

Getting a reply through e-mail can be tricky.

What is the difference between your distro and all of the rest? If you ask me, they are all technically the same. Just different defaults. One distro will have xfce for default, another with gnome. Another distro will have vlc, or smplayer or whatever they choose. Some with newer kernels and some with old. I see nothing special in any distro that offers any advantages over the others. Then people end up with 4 browsers 3 media players 6 text editors etc... Do your distro resolve dependencies? If not, it just slackware clone and a headache for newbies. The only way to be a great leader is not follow the trends of other. If your distro doesn't stand out from all the rest, what is so special about? I wish you well through your journey though. The way my system is customized it could be considered a distro as well. I don't follow the slack motto, "I have to have a full install or else".... I don't do it on Windows so what make any other operating system any better?

What is the difference between your distro and all of the rest?

Simple it is the result of a lot of hard work and sweat and perseverance so that is the difference - total respect for anybody creating a distro.

Do your distro resolve dependencies? If not, it just slackware clone and a headache for newbies.

Great way to learn.

Question(s) for Scot: do Cucumber repositories work with slackpkg+ and, if so, how compatible are the Cucumber packages with Slackware?

I ask this because some users like to expand the Slackware base system with packages from Salix, which are mostly compatible with Slackware, and I'm wondering if they could do the same with Cucumber.

Good questions. Most Cucumber Linux 1.0 packages should be largely compatible with Slackware 14.2 and current. I haven't ever tried using Cucumber Linux packages on Slackware myself, however the Cucumber Linux 1.0 ABI is quite similar to the Slackware 14.2 ABI, and newer Slackware ABIs tend to be quite backward compatible, so it should (in theory) work for the most part.

The Cucumber repositories do not work with Slackpkg+. Cucumber Linux uses its own package updater called Pickle, which uses its own repository format. However, Pickle is effectively just another front end for pkgtools (like Slackpkg+ is). This means that it should be possible to use Pickle on a Slackware installation to install/update Cucumber Linux packages. If you're feeling adventurous, you can install the Pickle package (http://mirror.cucumberlinux.com/cucu...4-noarch-1.txz) and give it a try. The documentation for Pickle can be found at https://z5t1.com/cucumber/wiki/packa...ate_management.

Again, this is all in theory; I haven't actually tried any of it. Please keep in mind that none of this is officially supported by Cucumber Linux or Slackware Linux, so it's probably best to give this a try in a VM or on a testing machine first.

The mount point for your swap partition should be just 'swap', not '/swap'.

Linux is a wonderful thing. It allows everyone to make a completely customized version that best suits their needs. Windows allows this too, however, due to licensing and a mostly closed-source model and all that jazz, it prevents people from distributing their customized version to others.

So, what makes this distro different to the one you have installed to your computer? In reality, not much. But, the driving force behind it may be completely different. We each have packages that we require that others may not. We have to install those onto our computer. Others don't have that need. But what makes this different than what you're running is that Z5T1 is willing to upgrade all the core packages that most of us will just wait for others to do for us. Ok, that may not be that much different than somebody using LFS... but Z5T1 is also willing to share his work to others.

The beautiful thing about Linux is it is fully customizable. The other beautiful thing is those customizations can be shared. Sure, Cucumber may not have what you're looking for in an OS, but it may be what *someone* is looking for. The fact that Z5T1 is willing to share his work to the community is a great thing.

As for the lack of resolving dependencies, why does that automatically make it a Slackware clone? There are other distros that don't do dependency management, just Slackware is one of the big names. If you look at the security issues that Z5T1 brought up that have been patched on Cucumber, it should be obvious that this isn't a Slackware clone.

Just as kikinovak was able to make a great distro that could be considered a "slackware clone" many people found it better than Slackware because of the limited choices of applications. As you state, why do people need "4 browsers 3 media players 6 text editors etc"? Certain distros cater to that by deciding for the user what programs they should use. The so-called "One application per task" method is great for some and horrible for others. I look at some of those "what do you use" threads and realize that I may be in the minority on quite a few things. If Slackware catered to the "One application per task" method, there would be a lot of annoyed people. It's great that we're provided many options, but some would rather have those options decided for them.

TL;DNR: Linux is great because someone can tailor their installation to their needs. It is also great because Linux allows sharing those customizations in a complete distro that others may install. Not everyone may be interested in that new distro, but it may be perfect for some. I'm plenty happy with Slackware, but there might be some who would be happier with Cucumber. It's great that we have a choice :)

Cucumber doesn't use pulse audio, did you fork bluez so cucumber still has bluetooth audio support or is that missing?
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/bluet...328cb0b1ab0818
Or do you use BlueALSA
https://github.com/Arkq/bluez-alsa

Cucumber doesn't officially support Bluez, however we have a plan to add unofficial support for it in the near future.

Thank you for the answer.
I rather use BlueALSA with Bluez then being forced to pulseaudio.
I like the non PA and systemd mentality.

Agreed.

I can't do nothing more but respect what you posted. Kudos and people like you and a few others are the reason Linux can be great. I'm glad you read and actually understood my post. Continue to be who you are, a very good person. Thanks again.
Hell, I might give it a shot just to see......

Excuse me. I miss something?

What is the sense to discuss about a (stand-alone) Linux distro into Slackware official forum?

I know, I know, some confused it with a Slackware derivative, which is NOT.

At least according with its maintainer claims, even the supposed compatibility with Slackware 14.2 of the particular 1.0 version looks dubiously in this case...

So, how about this wonderful thread to be moved in a more appropriate section of Linux Questions?

PS. For gods sake! BDFL is a title given by community, not a taken one. I can consider this guy as the Maintainer, or Creator, or Author of this obscure distribution, but his claims to be some sort of BDFL of something is just pitiful arrogance!

When you seen Patrick Volkerding recommending himself as The BDFL of Slackware ?!?

Darth Vader made an excellent point about moving this thread to another forum, and he made another good point in his P.S.
I absolutely agree.

Here.

Yeah, BUT as a JOKE, I suppose. On very context with (some of) his tweets:

I think that the spirit of Darth Vader's remark about BDFL is quite simple: before giving yourself (or accepting) a big title, you must actually do things that justify this title. But I see that this thread was moved into the Cucumber linux forum; I have nothing to do here anymore.