Hi,

First of all, I do not know exactly if it's the perfect category, where I should post this new topic. I hope I'm not wrong…

So, after thinking about a minimal static environment, that will "allow" me to use a system that can be easily maintained by me (or people with UNIX "luggage"), I decided to create my own distro. I know we already heard something similar, thousands of times and it seems not exciting / new at all. I also think it's a bit presumptuous, to use the "distro" word. Unfortunately, I lack a term that could perfectly illustrate my work.

After torturing my brain to find a name that sounds good to me, I was able to finally write the pieces of code which will compose the base. I started this work in March. I tried to be *<b>VERY</b>* careful with the code. It means something readable and understandable (any guinea pig here?).

Here a very-short summary, about what goals I would like to reach:

- Minimal system (between 10 and 12Mib, without manpages)
- Compiled statically (with 'musl' libc)
- MIPS or ARM archs
- Kernels without modules
- Should be perfect for firewalls or routers
- Learn things?

We could argue that 'OpenWrt' already does the trick, but I was not satisfied. To me, the build system is obscure and I didn't feel enough confortable, when I inspected the sources. I'm also a dude that is productive when I work in my little corner (afraid of big structures).

The cross-compilers were my first priority because I'll need them for the specified architectures. Once it was correctly done, I had to decide what softwares to include in the filesystem. Compiling those softs was not very hard, except for a one or two (cf 'iproute2').

Hum, I guess I forgot something… Oh yeah, the kernel!

That was the serious problem :) Building a kernel is not that hard, but then you need the hardware where you can test it. You could do it with 'qemu', but it's rather limited (thinking about '32bit' on 'MIPS64' for example). Having a RPi B+ around helped me a lot and it was the opportunity for me to write the scripts / services, used by the init (here 'sinit'). This part is not over, ATM but the system successfully booted .

Other parts not listed here, are also currently developped (system tools) by me.

So far, it was a wonderful experience and having something that was created from scratch is motivating!

I will not bother you more, dudes :) My objective was to introduce you 'solyste' a little bit, and by chance, raise your curiosity! If you felt interested about my project, feel free to visit the following links:

- http://solyste.ywstd.fr (there is a "diary", updated every months)
- https://git.framasoft.org/Ypnose/solyste
- #solyste on Freenode

Happy Sunday!

Sincerely
Y.