Ragnarok 01 (dev): Live Iso and miniroot.tgz available now

If you’ve read even just a few posts from this site then you’re obviously not going to be shocked to learn that I’m a big tinkerer. Over the years I have heavily customized the distro I call home, Debian, and found a way to easily use this custom system anywhere, any time, without effort thanks to a custom live iso.

Full disclosure, I’ve been wanting to create my own distro since about 2015. Creating and building stuff is just part of who I am, and I’m a strong believer in the old French adage “you are never served better than by yourself”. So it’s only natural that this custom iso would eventually turn into an actual distro.

If you’re looking for some justification as to “why yet another distro”, though, you’re not really going to get one. I do this because I want to, I enjoy doing it and the result is convenient for me. These are also the reasons why it’ll keep on existing whether I’m its sole user or not.

The Rundown

First things first, it is highly recommended to read the relevant documentation before trying out the iso.

[1] Project Goals: https://ragnarokos.github.io/goals.html
[2] Ragnarok-live Manual Page: https://ragnarokos.github.io/manpages/ragnarok-live.8.html
[3] Development Notes: https://ragnarokos.github.io/logs/logs.html
[4] Known bugs: https://ragnarokos.github.io/logs/bugs.html
[5] On regenerating the machine-id every boot: https://ragnarokos.github.io/docs/machine-id.html

I will gladly answer any question (especially since links 1 and 2 are still incomplete) provided they do not already have an answer in the links above (yes, that is a polite way of saying RTFM).

There is still a lot of documentation that remain to be made however. Luckily, I like writing docs. You can re-check this page every once in a while if you want some updates (at least until the Ragnarok site is finished).

Development

The iso and miniroot.tgz are for Ragnarok 01, codename “dev”. This version is more a beta/alpha version for Ragnarok 02 (Stable) than a full fledged development version. The development version will be named -current, and will come to life once stable is released.

When will 02 be released? It technically could be released right now but I will try to restrain myself. However, the reality is that I have no way of knowing how many people will test it (or even be interested in it, as I gather no data whatsoever) so I can only count on my own experience to judge if its ready to be released. One bonus is that I have three separate computers, each with their own hardware and firmware needs, to test it on so at least there’s that.

While I can’t guarantee when stable will be released, and I can’t be 100% sure that it will be free of any odd bugs once released, I can still guarantee that since this is my daily driver, stable will never include anything I’m not comfortable having installed on my own system. I can also guarantee that everything included in 01 (minus hardened malloc – see note at the end of this post) has been thoroughly tested and confirmed to be free of bugs.

Another certainty is that there is still a crap ton of work to be done with the infrastructure, even if Ragnarok itself is perfectly usable already.

Notes on the Live ISO and miniroot.tgz + Download

The live iso for Ragnarok 01 serves as a means to easily test the system in a way that is non-destructive. By “system”, I mean both a full Ragnarok install and the iso itself. The live ISOs will be first class citizens, as they are a perfect medium for systems that strive to be as secure as possible by default, and as privacy-respecting as possible (can’t get much better than a system that gets reset to its OG state when powering off/rebooting).

Note that there is no installer for Ragnarok 01. This version isn’t really meant to be installed. An installer and proper dist-upgrade mechanism will be present starting with Ragnarok 02, though.

On the other hand, miniroot.tgz contains a Debian minbase, with Ragnarok branding, ksh, hardened-malloc and signify included. Its primary purpose is to provide small development chroots, e.g. to build packages and whatnot.

You can visit https://ragnarokos.github.io/download.html to download either the live iso or miniroot (or both), and read the instructions on verifying their signature, among other things. The policy is to rebuild the iso when an update which requires a reboot occurs, but for 01, you can expect much more frequent rebuilds, so it’s not a bad idea to check the download page/upload date every once in a while if you want to always use the latest iso.

Missing from the download page are base.tgz, x11.tgz and boot.tgz. More info will be provided once they’re ready.

Contributing

Contributions are always welcome.

The best way to contribute currently is to use the iso and report any bugs. There are various repositories where relevant issues can be opened, but for the sake of simplicity, any issue can be reported in the iso’s issue tracker here: https://github.com/RagnarokOS/iso/issues.

If you’re skilled with apparmor you can always look into creating/sending profiles for base programs which may need them.

If you’re skilled in C and have an interest in the Kernel’s Landlock API, we may get along real fine.

Submitting patches for anything else, or throwing ideas at me is also more than welcome. You can also send a small donation in order to help with Ragnarok’s future maintenance costs.

On the subject of contributing, one thing needs to be made clear immediately (and this will be added to the Ragnarok site as soon as possible): contributions and ideas will be judged solely on their technical merit. The contributors and their opinions on subjects unrelated to Ragnarok development are of no consequence whatsoever. I’m not here to babysit thin-skinned people. On that same note, Ragnarok does not, and will never, have a code of conduct.

Note on hardened_malloc

Ragnarok 02 will differ from 01 in only one way: hardened_malloc will still be installed, but won’t be enabled by default. This is because it hasn’t been tested in enough situations and enough workload types to know what sort of impact it has. It will be enabled in Stable’s live iso, and in -current however, and it’s still recommended to enable it even on Stable.