Alabaster Linux

Source code

One liner

wget -O- -UwUget alabaster.sh | sh

Alternative syntax for CentOS 7

curl -fsSL alabaster.sh | sh

Note that installing and using wget will not work on CentOS as their version apparently does not follow redirects.

Setup

  1. Download either CentOS 7 minimal or Debian 10 (Buster) netinst
  2. Boot into it and install it
  3. Follow setup according to your desires, but deselect all apt packages excxept for standard system utilities. On CentOS, make sure to set the root password.
  4. Log in as root using the password you set during installation.
  5. Run the one-liner up top!
  6. Once it completes, run reboot and log in normally.

Package lists for other distributions

Arch Linux core: wget curl autoconf automake binutils bison flex gcc gettext libtool make patch perl-pkgconfig emacs-nox expat openssl zlib perl zip unzip sudo lz4 asciidoc docbook2x

Arch Linux graphical: feh lightdm openbox terminator gmrun lightdm-gtk-greeter

If there are other distros that you use which aren't listed here, and you would like to contribute an equivalent package list to save time for others, please reach out by emailing postmaster at this domain.

Other data

Fumaca 2 is the Openbox window theme in use. SkeuOS (grey, dark) is the GTK+ UI theme. Papirus Dark is the icon theme, and Breeze Snow is the cursor theme.

Introduction

It is helpful to have a curated software environment that provides consistent behaviour across space and time. To this end, Alabaster Linux is a 'pseudo-distro' that sets up using a suite of scripts on top of a clean installation of either Debian 10 (Buster) or CentOS 7.

Background

Developing and maintaining Alabaster as a 'proper' Linux distribution is more work and has other practical downsides; for example, ISOs would have to be made, and specific accomodations would need to be made for various architectures. Our approach lets us ignore all of that stuff and just set up Debian as it comes, be it on AMD64, AArch64, RISC-V, or whatever Debian supports. We only need to make sure the software we author works across these support targets, which is part of why Alabaster is needed!

Licencing

The Alabaster install script from alabaster.sh (this website) is licenced under the Artisan Software Licence, version 1.1. The contents it installs are licenced under their respective licences; consult the contents of the installation script to find out which projects are brought in and what their licences are.