Peropesis is a Linux Distro for Living in the Command Line

[@Mach7RadioIntercepts]

Fun times, friends. I started back in the day with KDE, went to Unity, MATE, i3, DWM, and now gonna just live on my server mobo with this here Peropesis.

[@vaisakh_km]

For me it was in reverse... when i started, my installation broke, used just tty for months, cuz it's faster than windows in that old system... then i got xfce... but i suddenly gone to a window manager (awesome) after buying a raspberry pi... then dwm.. then bspwm..qtile and kde... then gnome, and now i am finally on fedora kde on a new laptop that i brought with my own money after getting first job

[@GertBoers]

I stopped flashing single ISO's on a USB-stick after I discovered Ventoy. This one definitely finds it's place on them! Thanks for sharing.

[@m0r4ag]

Ventoy is amazing!

[@m0r4ag]

@@user-xv9mq it doesn’t give you anything, just enables you to put multiple isos in a single usb stick, u just have to drag the isos into the usb and when u boot into the usb you’ll see a menu with you isos

[@GertBoers]

@user I'm not a native English speaker and not sure what you mean. If you mean that you can use a downloaded ISO, copy that to the stick and start it from the Ventoy menu, then yes. However, Peropesis is the first ISO I come across that doesn't boot from Ventoy. The cursor stays unblinkingly on the display and I have to power off the system with the power button...

[@quinten01]

@user not sure what feature you're referring to but you can completely ignore that and download whatever iso yourself anyways

[@quinten01]

@user isn't ventoy open source? You could verify what it does yourself then. I suppose it's safe 🤷

[@chrisg6091]

For those of us who began our IT exposure back in the late 80’s ed invokes a strong sense of retro nostalgia. ed/edlin is a painfully crude way to edit anything. Peropesis seems a great learning tool for improving shell skills. Thanks!

[@kennystrawnmusic]

Looks like a fantastic system rescue distro - would be nice to have a Peropesis drive lying around in case some software update (or configuration file editing misstep) breaks your Arch installation and you need to make some emergency repairs.

[@no_name4796]

Or if you have a potato computer, with 2GB of ram, even though i3wm on arch is already great, using only half a GB of ram idle

[@tent405]

the arch install ISO is a far more useful system rescue distro, especially for repairing an arch system. peropesis is a nice toy OS with an oldschool init system, but that's all it is. * an archiso slightly modified to add an xfce desktop for gparted, because if i'm rescuing a system, i want gparted

[@timsmith1426]

Oh wow, "Screen" brings back college memories. We used to use it to go between different consoles through a terminal. Super fun. :)

[@youdontknowme2508]

Bloat. Why not just use pen and paper instead

[@user-tc9tb3a]

Sometimes it's better to be able to calculate numbers quickly

[@-someone-.]

They banned pens at schools coz it’s now a weapon, and paper can be used to communicate off grid🤌🤦‍♂️. The system doesn’t like that

[@hexisXz]

Pen and paper 😂😂 thats more bloat, just use your brain.

[@itsfkf6106]

Or just cave paintings...

[@NebulaHatesWatchdog]

Pens are bloat too. Pencil is based.

[@dejanzabaljac6950]

Tiny Core: "Finally, a worthy opponent!"

[@CaptZenPetabyte]

Ive been looking for something like this for decades. Thanks for showing us

PERsonal OPErating SIStem = PEROPESIS (I know the word is system, but just throw me a cookie)

[@master138]

🍪

[@hk0O7]

I guess "POS" didn’t sound so good.

[@edbeckerich3737]

Treat it like Slackware or LFS, and build up a system with GCC and dependancies, could be lots of fun

[@joshuacrumley2031]

I've used Linux graphically on and off for a few years, but never really bothered to learn about it or it's shell utilities. I've recently been looking for a distro that would basically force me to learn some of that stuff. This looks like a decent enough starting point.

[@wisteela]

I can also recommend Debian without a desktop environment.

[@joshuacrumley2031]

@@wisteela That's a decent idea too. I've used it before, just with a lightweight environment. I know a little about it's insides.

[@deanrose5676]

It is possible to watch a video in the command-line only. And it's do-able to edit images as well

[@dromedda6810]

this is what the guy at work thinks i use as my main os when i say i only use linux at home

[@SirWolf404]

Nice find! 😁 This brings back memories. 25 years ago when I started using Linux, I didn't have much use for X. Instead I ran Linux (on a 486 PC) with Linux and 10 virtual terminals. I agree, a text-based OS should include all kinds of modern nice text-based utilities and text UI applications. Oh and definitely a kernel with frambuffer console support and applications that can use it. 🤔 I bet that it wouldn't be so hard to create an install script for arch or that would give you a nice selection of these things. 🤔 Oh and I'd definitely improve the resolution from 25x80 too! 🙈

[@askholia]

I don't know what it is, but something about this idea is awesome to me. I love the CLi so anything that lets me live in it, rent-free, I am down.

[@marsdrums6298]

That is pretty sharp!

[@torsten.breswald]

i would totally put that onto my ventoy

[@MasterHigure]

From just spending two minutes on the forum, it seems that it doesn't have a package manager, and that the canonical way of installing and updating packages is to make-compile from source. Which, of course, is the true way and all. But I don't think I could do that myself. Also, I wonder how easy it would be to install another terminal emulator. I would like at least a little color support, and a more modern font. Apart from that it looks like a really cool project.

[@savagepro9060]

FreeBSD😈: "PeropeSIS🤔🤨 Sounds like a disease for penguins!🐧"

[@gnuPirate]

Great video review man, I dig your channel overall.

[@samoylov1973]

Interesting idea, though. Well, yes, without Vim, w3m, fzf and ranger it shouldn't be even named as an operating system. And DT, in fact one could edit videos on such systems. You couldn't watch them obviously, but with ffmpeg you can cut and do other manipulations with videos.

[@anon_y_mousse]

You can watch them with mpv --vo=tct. Have fun with that one.

[@tylerdean980]

Hey DT, do you know of a Linux equivalent to NomadBSD? I want a pocketable distro but not BSD preferably

[@deleted-test]

​@@popeye747 there's also Tails GNU+Linux as a security-focused pocketable distro.

[@terjeoseberg990]

193 MB!!! DOS was on a 360k floppy and there was still room for programs and data.

[@MartinMenge]

I really won't mind a distro that just boots into a good terminal emulator with multiple panes.

Weren't there distros that included GUI in ~200MB images?

[@anon_y_mousse]

In the past, when distros were a lot smaller.

[@bologna3048]

i mean nowadays you can probably get it under 1GB with LXQT maybe, i don't use it so don't quote me on it

[@jasonfahnestock9494]

SLiTaz linux, busybox without musl like alpine. Uses openbox and some cool artwork, if you like spiders.

[@michaelplaczek9385]

Do your settings save after a reboot?

[@wisteela]

This has got a lot of potential. I'll certainly be checking it out. I'm more than happy to use Nano. 😋

[@zhaadd]

"minimalist" is what gets the people going!!!!

[@phonewithoutquestion80]

Distrowatch rankings are not legitimate numbers. But I'd like to use this on a system that has really scant memory.

[@circle9nerd]

Cool but why not just Alpine?

[@richardtwyning]

I'm glad they put nano in rather than vi or vim. Tilde would be good

[@jasonfahnestock9494]

You are producing very informative videos, keep up the good work. I do have some disagreements. @6:30 "nobody is going to use ed", a whole lot of UNIX/BSD users might disagree. Did you check to see if emacs is on there? There you would potentially get a complete OS up and running. I think the're about to add SystemD to it soon😂. I would love to see if ee from FBSD would work. I hope they don't add one more program. This distro could be used to develop dozens of LFS distros on. @8:26 "you couldn't watch (/edit) a video", how about trying out ffmpeg/ffplay?❤

[@anon_y_mousse]

Seems neat for a tiny distro, but for terminal only it needs a lot more, and needs to be a lot smaller. Otherwise, I'd say just use Alpine or better still, build it yourself with LFS.

[@jasonfahnestock9494]

@anon_y_mousse I think it would be a useful starting point for getting into LFS/BLFS/ELFS by practicing with peropesis. Looks like documentation is good for this. I like alpine and FreeBSD too because of clear, and extensive documentation. I can't wait to see for myself if this distro can connect to the internet on my recycled/refurbished device.

[@anon_y_mousse]

@@jasonfahnestock9494 Unless you're using a dialup modem or wi-fi it should be no problem. I still remember when I first got into Linux and had to get drivers for a horrible soft-modem to connect over dialup. Now days ethernet is pretty much always covered and that's the only way I connect.

[@UNSCPILOT]

This might be a handy training tool, especially if I want to learn to run a barebones server

[@tent405]

yeah no. first of all, it hasn't been created with a FOSS-first attitude (where's the source?) if you want a barebones production ready server, use alpine, it's tested and proven

[@liamodell7191]

I don't understand. What is wrong with Nano? I've been using it since 2004. It's simple, easy to use without all the extra BS. Granted that I mostly only use it to edit config files in terminal/command line. Anyways, I'm very interested in Peropesis. I've been looking for a command-line-only for a long time. Something I can build my own custom exclusive OS out of without having to rip everything apart. I'll have to check it out.

[@phonewithoutquestion80]

Nano was my first serious use of the command line in Linux/UNIX-like. Even when I was new to Linux Nano just made a lot of sense to me.

[@denoww9261]

nothing wrong with nano, i think DT's point was more that a majority of people in the linux space, especially those comfortable enough in the terminal to use something like Peropesis, use vi/vim.

[@liamodell7191]

@@chrisbitus1328 So, despite the fact I've been a Linux user since 1998 and I'm happy with using Nano since around 2004, I'm somehow not very bright and pretty much an outcast? This is why I always hated childish fanboyism in the Linux community. Too many children pretending to be pro users. Sell your shills somewhere else, pal. Or throw a childish temper tantrum about it on twitter. I could careless either way.

[@bologna3048]

​@@liamodell7191 > I could care less either way >Writes a comment whining about someone roasting them in a clearly tongue-in-cheek-manner You're a linux user from '94 and you're STILL whining about getting roasted by other Linux users? lmao wuss. Man imagine this guy having a conversation with Luke Smith 🤣

[@liamodell7191]

@@bologna3048 Uhh... 1998, pal. Don't you think you should actually read a comment before you reply? And yes, I don't care who cries like a baby on twitter the same way you are crying in your reply just because I like using Nano. Geeze, how old are you? 12? But keep it up. I'm making screen shots of this conversation and will be used in an article about problem users in the Linux Community. Thanks for giving me yet another perfect example.

[@catholic_zoomer_bro]

I get this is still in development, but why would someone use this over for example ubuntu server or any other minimalist distro without a DE/WM ?

[@coalhater392]

I was wondering the same

[@johnathanmcdoe]

That's what I've been wondering. A minimal Debian install is

[@phonewithoutquestion80]

Why would anyone use Ubuntu over Arch, and vice-versa? Why would anyone use Puppy Linux over Tiny Core Linux, and vice-versa? Some will be interested, some won't be. Simple as.

[@catholic_zoomer_bro]

@@phonewithoutquestion80 at that point you have different packaging systems, and different packages. This one doesn't have any of it, even gentoo would have a better UX for trying out different software. If you only cared about coreutils there are other minimalist distros like alpine

[@UltraZelda64]

It's just a fun toy and a really small live system. You can just play with it as-is, use it as a learning tool if you're new to Linux, use it as a live admin/recovery OS, or use it on other systems when you just need a minimal Linux CLI and don't want all the extra crap that the existing Windows OS brings with it. I feel like it has its place right up there with classics like Finnix, Grml and PLOP Linux and I'm glad super lightweight and fast barebones live distros like these still exist. To more directly answer your question: You *wouldn't* use this over Ubuntu for a server, because it is meant to be run live. Your settings won't stick, and even an unintended power outage will cause all of your servers/daemons to go *poof*. This makes it a disposable OS, where a reboot or even a simple power loss means you get a brand-new, fresh instance loaded on next boot. I'm not sure that there is even an official way to install the OS permanently to a system if you did want to use it as a persistent server, and aside from installing software from source, there is no official way of getting new packages on the system... it doesn't provide a package management system.

[@jeremymcguire7069]

Hmmm. This looks similar to the Gentoo install iso without the bulk of being able to compile and install a usable system.

[@pullrequest1481]

Hi DT, i recently installed arch along with dwm + st. Is there any DE that lighter than dwm?

[@tod069]

I think that dwm is as light as a DE/WM can get

[@pullrequest1481]

@@tod069 thank you man! I hope i can get on with my life. I've been exploring some DE but this is my first time using dwm and i honestly really love it.

[@phonewithoutquestion80]

CWM (Calm Window Manager) is so light it doesn't even come with its own bar.

[@tod069]

@@pullrequest1481 yeah I love dwm as well, I'm not very good in C so I used an online config, it's amazing how time-saving tiling wms are!

[@pullrequest1481]

@@tod069 true, i'm not using any patch or crazy "mod" of my dwm. Just basic battery percentage in the bar, time and date. I don't see any good at patching. As long as i can do web development at ease i don't need anything else. 🤜🏻🤛🏻

[@_vsnwprintf_s_l]

gnu emacs is also a distro for living in the command line :)

[@bahathir_]

ed? Yes, it is my main text editor. :) Similar distro like that is, Rescue Is Possible RIP Linux. IT mainly for recovery , such as chntpasswd: changing Window's password, testdisk: recover files from corrupted storage,.. GNU Screen: It is a must for me, especially when remote access to server. A must have tool for system administrator. Thank you.

[@PenguinRevolution]

You use ed? If this is true than you must love punishment. LOL

[@Romek_S]

Would be nice to have an WSL image for this :)

[@buladas361]

Would it be possible to build vim from source in this os?

[@DistroTube]

The ISO is only 193MB so I'm sure it will be missing a lot of builld tools. And Vim has some dependencies that are usually already present on most Linux distros, but probably will not be there on Peropesis, so you'd have to build those too.

[@buladas361]

@@DistroTube pretty much no then 😂 thanks

[@pleonexia4772]

​@@buladas361 wtf? What distro do you use?

[@martinsalmeida321]

They have instructions on their user manual on how to install extra software ... from source code. So theoretically you could install vi or vim to your liking. Personally I got used to utilize nano as it is available in most linux distros. This linux distro is more adequate for college or university purposes, no one in 2023 in its perfect mind would use a character based browser to access the internet, but it's just my opinion, as there are people out there who cheer with this kind of stuff.

[@paulhol6669]

Other than the smaller footprint what is the benefit to this OS vs just installing a base arch installation with no xorg?

[@Tuishimi]

Yes! Back to ASCII images! :D

[@SB-qm5wg]

no busybox? 😆 Good vid. TY

[@PinakiGupta82Appu]

I want something like this for small robotics projects. Very low-budget robots, very low-budget solutions. A small OS like this can also be used as a personal file server on the local network. Custom-built routers can take advantage of such a small OS.

[@danielpicassomunoz2752]

You'd do better with alpine Linux

[@daetalytica]

The root user won’t have a `.bashrc`. It’s /etc/bashrc.

[@ethannishimura2619]

Does Peropesis include any sort of package manager?

[@UNSCPILOT]

*Our battle will be leg-... difficult to follow*

[@oneirofono]

peropesis is NONsystemD too... can you try adelie ?

[@reverenddick8562]

This looks fun. Like Dwarf Fortress 'fun'.

[@martinsalmeida321]

To download a minimal cli linux distro like this one doesn't make sense unless you have a practical mean of installing extra software and even install a GUI desktop if you wish. There are many character based linux distro out there without these sub-minimal restrictions.

[@rogerxxxxxxx]

Although a huge fan of command line interface (eg. console, curses, ncurses, ...), think most can, and always have been able to, do similar with their own Linux distribution of choice. As for me, a Void Linux user, likely very easily done by avoiding installing Xorg/Wayland packages, as well as any packages pulling in Xorg/Wayland as a dependency. If a user's Linux distribution of choice package manager has masking/blocking capabilities, far easier for preventing installing not needed software. Very strange Peropesis Linux distribution does not have vi, as historically Unix was mostly command line use, has had vi.

[@emptydata-xf7ps]

Am I the only one who uses the cp command to burn isos to a usb? dd has always taken forever on my machines.

[@bobgrimes8618]

Can you add programs?

[@pleonexia4772]

I cannot believe some of the questions being asked in this comment section.. Jesus!

[@bobgrimes8618]

@@pleonexia4772 Do you need a Prozac?

[@bologna3048]

@@pleonexia4772 you sound constipated

[@hk0O7]

There's no mention of a package manager in the user manual and as DT mentioned in the comments there are probably no build tools for you to install programs from source, so it would most likely be as manual of a process as forking the distro yourself.

[@viktor133100]

Couldn't you just install Debian without a GUI? Or Arch without a GUI? Or really anything?

[@idjdbrvvskambvvv9007]

Hey DT, we need to hear your opinion on weebs existance on linux world, and why there is so many of them

[@SuperM00b]

Was looking forward to watching youtube in ascii hd video.

[@pleonexia4772]

Vlc's ASCII videos aren't too bad.. as long as you squint 🤣

[@anon_y_mousse]

If you can change the font size and have colors, then mpv --vo=tct will be good. I've used it to watch videos on remote servers while logged in via ssh before.

[@webasdf]

But does it play Doom? 😅

[@laniusdev]

Well, they even have in their manual a guide showing how to use ed to edit .mailrc, so it seems vi is wholly intentional omission, and that means they want you to use ed to feel the true Unix CLI experience, more than to make this live system actually useful.

[@vaisakh_km]

It quickly gone from cool to meme, when there was no vim installed

[@Tn5421Me]

Nano is honestly fine for writing plaintext, it's just shit for any programming beyond tweaking config files.

[@johnlinley2702]

My God! This does bring back memories. 1978 unix from the days of the command line, the way God meant computers to be. But running on ed. That is a little primitive even for me. I used ed, but there was always a vi in there because vi was written from ed. So here is the question: is there an editor named e ? That is just an e ? This was the beginning of the editors in that chain. e led to ed which led to vi. Doe this system have e?

[@Amos_Huclkeberry]

Can it run games?

[@jeffchilders9455]

Have you ever done a video on SplitLinux? It is a pretty unique distro. Made for stealth. splitlinux.org/

[@lua-nya]

193MB with no GUI is HUGE! We used to have an ISO with X, a WM, and even a graphical we browser in 50MB. Ah, I miss Damm Small.

[@tropicalsunset2546]

Peropesis should only be around 8-10 MB in size if this is all it has, TinyCore has 3 x86 versions including Core at 16MB (I recall it being 13MB a few years ago?). I suppose TinyCore doesn't cut it - I haven't tried it yet but its on my mind. Not much attention and an user base.

[@patpopov]

I like nano, so there.

[@danielberglv259]

Besides web browsing and when not working with something in an IDE, most work I do is in the shell, more specifically through SSH. All my editing is done via nano and piping to cat. I would never use vi, hate that thing. But I agree, vi should properly replace ed seen as nano and vi would cover most people.

[@mattwilliams1844]

New challenge: Use ed for 1 month. Do frequent video updates so we can watch you slowly descend into madness.

[@ixtirochiavlodlar]

Wow

[@lucius1976]

Do not see the point. Why not a minimal Debian install and you install all those CLI tools you need

[@andreasbaumann6943]

Is it just me or are there no sources, patches and build scripts around? In terms of "reproducability of build" this is not good. I also cannot spot a package manager (even tarfiles would count as one :-) ).

[@johnychinese]

Suckless won't be proud of this

[@The1RandomFool]

This makes the Arch Linux ISO look bloated.

[@sasan8822]

Bloated. You can't put it on a floppy disk.

[@PenguinRevolution]

ed is installed by default in almost any Linux install, since it's a GNU tool. Nano is also a GNU tool as well. But seriously, who the f**k is still using Gnu ed???

[@essetee]

nix package manager

[@bologna3048]

"vi: command not found" and just like that I instantly don't care about this anymore.

[@knewdist]

Tmux

[@MarquisDeSang]

No EMACS = useless

[@Stopinvadingmyhardware]

Eww. It’s only an ISO. Let me install or stop trying.

[@kptxxz]

Peropesis seems pointless when alpine and antix are leagues ahead of it.

[@mehdikhawari8830]

Sorry DT, but your videos are full of prejudgments.

[@bologna3048]

no shit, that's the point.