#Nakooki (home *) __page_

A simple GNU/Linux sources-distribution based on Norean tools

About

Nakooki is a small GNU/Linux distribution, based on Norean tools, with a sources-only approach: no binaries are provided, nor official CD release.

The first goal of Nakooki is to show a real life example on how Norean tools can be used - but this is not exhaustive, Nakooki uses only a part of Norean features.

The second goal is to provide an adapted system for Norean developers, and help testing all of this. This can be done with other distros (BTW, some of us don't use Nakooki).

What's inside

Nakooki main parts are three SVN repositories:

nbuilds-basesys
nbuilds-official
nbuilds-unofficial

nbuilds-basesys is the base system, with a selection of packages quite close to those one can find in an LFS system, despite some notable differences (in the selection and how things are installed).

nbuilds-official are the additional packages that are supposed to have a good maintenance in the future, these are mostly "killer-apps" that you can find in almost any Linux distro.

nbuilds-unofficial provides packages that are either:

redundant
have a non-optimal integration level with the rest of the distro
subject to non FSF compatible License
merged only "for fun" to please one the maintainers
possibly not updated in next Nakooki release

Packages availability

It's very important to point the fact that the number of available packages is rather low, and we intend it to stay like that. There's no fixed limitation, but let's say that there are poor chances that Nakooki provides more than 1000 packages in the long-term.

The reason is that Nakooki is mainly a testing and demo distro, we don't want to waste human resources to re-create what other distros already do with talent (ie: Gentoo, SourceMage, archLinux and others).

If you need more package, we encourage you to either:

Take Nakooki as a start point for creating you own distro with your own nbuilds set.
Create your own Norean-based distro with your nbuilds written from scratch.

Supported platforms

For now, nbuilds are known to work with any x86 (32 bits) platform (ie: Intel, AMD etc...). We're interested in AMD-64 related patches, fixes, testing - contact us. We have not much interest with other platforms (PPC, Sparc, etc...) because we don't have access to such hardware (at least not for our own use) - hardware donations or active sponsoring might change our point of view, of course :-)

If you need support for other architectures, you should consider maintaining/forking your own project.

Developement cycle

Nakooki release are identified by two digits, starting from 0.0. Even and odd number have no meaning of stable or unstable here - technically, it's always to be considered unstable (but in real life, that can be more than usable).

Current release is always named: current. When it becomes completed and usable enough, it's frozen, named with digits, and a new current branch is initiated. No official support of frozen versions is to be expected, the work is always done on current, to allow reasonable reactivity with few people involved.

There is no release planning, some versions have a long life-cycle, others can be extremely short, that depends on too many factors to be planned - we release when needed + practically possible, that's all.

How to get into it

The easy way

Sometimes, one of us contributes a tools tarballs (a statically linked toolchain, with basic Dev tools + Norean tools), you can use it to directly jump to the Chapter 6 (compilation of the basesys).

The hacker's way

Start from scratch, build your own Chapter 5 toolchain, using the lfs directory of the Nakooki SVN repository and reading the Howto (see docs).

Nbed-Nakooki Live-CD

This a Live-CD based on Nakooki, more informations on the Nbed-Nakooki Homepage.

Some features of Nakooki

Linux-2.6.x based (vanilla)
Gcc-3.x based
Glibc-2.3 based
FHS compliance
Freedesktop.org RFC's following, when possible
X: Xorg
hotplug, udev
init: simpleinit provided by Norean.
nanofw: netfilter-based Firewall/NAT init service (we bundle it with iptables)
LVM2 support (not for / partition yet)
Raid support (not for / partition yet)
Window managers: pekwm, openbox, metacity, windowmaker and a few others.
Desktop: XFCE, Rox.
Desktop apps: mostly gtk+ or gnome based apps.
Nbed 100% compatible, to create Nakooki installers or bootable Live-Cd's, usb-keys etc.
Web: Firefox, sylpheed, pan, xchat, gftp and more.
Graphics: The gimp, blender, inkscape, xsane, dia and more.

Well, that's classic stuff you can expect from a modern Linux system.

Useful links

Nakooki mirror hosted by Norean:
http://norean.freecontrib.org/nakooki/

Browse the SVN repositery:
http://norean.freecontrib.org/nakooki/SVN/snapshot/nakooki/

SVN snapshots for download available here:
http://norean.freecontrib.org/nakooki/SVN/snapshot/

Contributed tools tarball can be found here:
http://norean.freecontrib.org/nakooki/packages/precompiled/

Unofficial Norean and Nakooki support by Franco Azzano (aka fraazz):
http://norean.freecontrib.org/nzone/

Documentation

This can be found here:
http://norean.freecontrib.org/nakooki/SVN/snapshot/nakooki/current/docs/