Hi all,
Here I will try to explain what the SoloBSD project is all about.
First things first:- I am not a programmer/developer. (So, no new features will be added).
- My knowledge on creating BSD LiveCDs is very limited.
- Currently I'm studying Physics and my time and money is limited too.
Introduction.
Since my early days into *BSD and OpenSolaris, I was fascinated by small size Live CDs like MilaX and FreeSBIE. So I began to investigate how could I build a minimal personalized *BSD Live CD.
First stop was PicoBSD, which is nearly dead. A bright idea came to my mind and it was to use the stable HardenedBSD sources to build PicoBSD. There are a few projects using it as a router but images no longer exist and documentation is very outdated. So I managed to edit and customize all the configuration files required for the build. By some reason it failed. So I dropped the towel.
Some years ago I tried to pick up again the idea and I ended up discovering the mfsBSD project:
Exactly what I was looking for! And easy to configure! But I wanted more, as I said earlier, this should be a "working minimal installation of HardenedBSD"! to spice things up.
The project went well and under HardenedBSD 10 I managed to create a 40 mb ISO. Then version 11 came with the new LLVM and the ISO went to more than 100 mb, which I didn't like much.
First stop was PicoBSD, which is nearly dead. A bright idea came to my mind and it was to use the stable HardenedBSD sources to build PicoBSD. There are a few projects using it as a router but images no longer exist and documentation is very outdated. So I managed to edit and customize all the configuration files required for the build. By some reason it failed. So I dropped the towel.
Some years ago I tried to pick up again the idea and I ended up discovering the mfsBSD project:
This is a set of scripts that generates a bootable image (and/or ISO file), that creates a working minimal installation of FreeBSD. It is completely loaded into memory.--From the website.
Exactly what I was looking for! And easy to configure! But I wanted more, as I said earlier, this should be a "working minimal installation of HardenedBSD"! to spice things up.
The project went well and under HardenedBSD 10 I managed to create a 40 mb ISO. Then version 11 came with the new LLVM and the ISO went to more than 100 mb, which I didn't like much.
Then I started my degree in Physics and dropped the project, cancelled my VPS to save some money to pay the school and focused on more physics-related topics.
What is SoloBSD?
Then a new wave of Live FreeBSDs came into play: GhostBSD, NomadBSD (Which I think is the best of all) and FuryBSD.
I started playing around with FuryBSD, which is super easy to build, and was able to create my own version. At this moment FuryBSD project is gone, so I forked their repo and started doing my own builds.
Right now, SoloBSD still is a small just-for-fun and learning project for me. It is based on the FuryBSD code. Latest release is a version of FuryBSD with a set of science-related software in order to show scientist and students that you can do science with FreeBSD.
What's inside?
Included packages are:
- geany (with autoclose and markdown plugins included)
- geogebra
- gnuplot
- py37-numpy
- py37-scipy
- R
And some cli based tools:
- geeqie
- htop
- mksh
- rtv (Reddit)
- w3m-img
- weechat
- toot (Mastodon)
Download. (torrent)