D. E. Evans' Core Linux Distribution is a minimalist AMD64 GNU/Linux operating system, the outgrowth of my persistent and continuing use of Josh Devin's Core Linux Distribution, designed to be the basis for a system constructed by the end user. A fresh installation of Core will boot into a terminal and provide the user with the tools needed to download, compile, install, and configure other applications. It contains little beyond what is necessary to perform these tasks, build itself, and build LFS.

Primarily designed for experienced Linux users, it can also be used to learn about the internals and operation of a GNU/Linux system. The user is expected to consult man pages and other documentation. I consider this project to be the successor to Core and Core 2/Prime. It can be considered as the Core 3 project.

This release is dedicated to St. Clare, a nun of Assisi.

Installation

At least a 2G hard disk and 512M of RAM are required for installation. Booting to the media, these instructions can be found by typing:

	cat /README.txt

Download the ISO, burn a DVD or make a USB thumb drive, and boot the media, or use the ISO file for a VM install
Partition, format with ext4, and mount the new file system
Run 'install_core [mount point]'
Optional packages in /pkgs/optional/ can be installed with corepkg(8)
To build a custom kernel, copy the source from /pkgs/kernel/ to [mount point]/usr/src/
- otherwise install the /pkgs/kernel/linux*.cpk package that is provided
Let me repeat: the kernel is a separate installation step
Run 'chroot [mount point] bash -l' to chroot into the new system
Run grub-install [sda]
Review and modify the /etc/fstab and /boot/grub/grub.cfg files
Exit the chroot and reboot

Video card note

Some chips, especially video, have issues that cause a problem during boot. This is mainly due to the need for proprietary drivers or firmware, (or having the firmware provided from kernel.org being available). With an AMD system I have, blacklisting the radeon module on boot is a temporary work around, such as for Evergreen: modprobe.blacklist=radeon. Another more aggressive work around is nomodeset. I really should just download the firmware.

For further information, visit:

A brief history

Josh Devin's Core Linux Distribution started in 2002, presumably as a project building Linux From Scratch (LFS 3.3?). It had its formal and final release on 4 April 2003, built against the Linux 2.4.18 kernel. A community formed around its use. I installed Core and began using it, fashioning build scripts to preserve the work. I slowly began upgrading the existing packages and adding new ones. It became apparent that an in-place upgrade feature was needed for CorePKG, so I modified it to do so. I had no reason to upgrade to the 2.6 kernel, as I was running hardware that worked fine with the existing 2.4 kernel. I could move to the Core 2 project (released 1 May 2007), using the 2.6.21.1 Linux kernel. From time to time, I had to rebuild the toolchain, following the mainline 2.4 kernel at first, then Willy Tarreau's stable patches.

Around Christmas in 2010, Willy announced that Linux 2.4 would go end-of-life in a year. I had assumed a 2.4.37.12 package would be released, but that never occured. It was time to put together a new installation CD, to preserve my work before moving on to Linux 2.6 and to support a small user base. I wrote Josh, and he licensed CorePKG to me under the GPL. The first CD was in 2010 with Linux kernel 2.4.37.10. I included all sorts of things from my experimental work with that release. I called it sinuhe's GNU/Linux Operating System (sGOS) at first, and posted the experimental version online. However, Devin's original design made more sense, and was far more meticulous, so I returned to it. I continue to use that system at home, off-and-on, accumulating package updates with the newest sources I can still build with it.

In 2008, the Core 2 project at coredistro.org had morphed into the Prime distribution, culminating in http://primeos.org and prime-linux.org, which released on 28 May 2008. Prime GNU/Linux used a newly designed build kit, without package management, perhaps another artifact of the LFS approach, but it lacked Devin's meticulous, trim approach to building a minimal system for installation. I created a kit for converting it back to CorePKG, and then continued on. At this point the Linux kernel was receiving stable patches independent of Willy, and 2.6.25.4 which Prime came with had another 16 patches. Greg K. H. recommended to move to 2.6.27, which Willy Tarreau later picked up, then abandoned for 2.6.32, which I switched to and stayed with for a time. I continued following Willy's kernel until 3.10 went end-of-life. Kernel 3.7 was the last to support the i386 kernel, and the last patched kernel to support it was actually 3.2 from Ben Hutchings of Debian.

It became apparent that my 32-bit hardware was aging. I had been running Sparc64 Ultra 10 workstations for a time, and it became clear at this point that 64-bit was where the industry had gone. I boot strapped a 64-bit kernel on a Dell workstation that my neighbor gave me, starting with the 4.5 build of my version of Core (I had gone back to mainline kernels at that point), back tracked to 4.4, and continually rebuilt until I had a small base for AMD64. I had moved to 4.9 for my last 32-bit build on 16 February 2019, which is the last 32-bit ISO I released.