Crystal Linux - Another Arch based distro

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21

What features is amethyst targeting that are not already covered by yay, paru, etc ?

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speed
paralleled AUR building
better searching

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23

by increasing make flags?? What does it mean ?

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I would assume he means that if you’re installing packages X and Y with no dependencies from one to the other, then they shall be built in parallel to save time.

I see plenty of -git AUR packages where compilation is single core; that could be a huge speed up, depending on what you’re installing.

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I did not install Crystal Linux but this article sheds more light on it:

  • One thing I appreciate about Crystal Linux is that it installs with a bare minimum of software.
  • The ideal audience for Crystal Linux is those who want to get a taste of Arch Linux, without complications.

I think it’s like this: Crystal Linux → Arch Linux :: ElementaryOS → Ubuntu

Arch spins are nothing new but CL comes with it’s own:

  • DE: Onyx (= I want gnome but should be sane like KDE)
  • GUI Installer: Jade
  • Package Manager: Amethyst

A fresh new take or reinventing the wheel?

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Here’s a thread from August with more info and posts from one of the developers:

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Stuff like browsers, Python2 (yeah, I know, I know) and Proton-GE could really benefit from some parallelism. Those are pretty beefy compile jobs.

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Just in case, here’s also my review https://www.lorenzobettini.it/2022/09/a-first-look-at-crystal-linux/

I particularly appreciated btrfs, timeshift and grub-btrfs automatically set-up and configured

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29

The most interesting part for me is the installer GUI. I appreciate that its gtk and integrates well in a GNOME environment.

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That’s something I wish we could put in the installer as an OPTION…not into requiring it, and some people still want to use EXT4. But other people start off using EXT4 and then later on realize they can’t do snapshots. At least a message when choosing the disk format would be nice.

31

btrfs is already an option in the installer.
All the required sub volumes are configured for you

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32

yeah but no one knows that if they don’t choose BTRFS they can’t get snapshots. Maybe just a blurb “BTRFS required for snapshot support” or something along those lines.

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If they don’t know, they’re better off using ext4 IMHO

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Might be better to let them decide. :wink: