Fenrus Linux: A Distro For Performance, Developers

Written by Michael Larabel in Intel on 24 March 2013 at 04:06 PM EDT. 55 Comments
INTEL
Fenrus Linux is a new Linux distribution being led by a well known Intel Linux developer. Goals of Fenrus Linux include focusing upon an optimal developer experience rather than world domination and also maximizing the performance and power management of the open-source operating system.

Fenrus Linux is largely the work of Arjan van de Ven, a well known Linux developer from the Netherlands who is employed by Intel and its Open-Source Technology Center. Arjan has made -- and continues to make -- many upstream Linux contributions while Fenrus Linux is a new pet project.

Fenrus Linux is self-described as being "a little bit unconventional" and acknowledges its developer-focus with "it's fun to tinker with operating systems and the technologies." World domination isn't an aspiration of Fenrus but to make "unexpected technology choices" for those who enjoy tinkering with the construction of an operating system. "You'll see us do things in ways that few others are doing in this space."

Fenrus Linux is intended for like-minded developers and does seak to drive some innovations to Linux within the areas of software updating, performance, and other low-level optimizations.

Fenrus views apt-get, yum, and other current Linux package management systems as being too slow and consuming of too much data. Fenrus also tries to automate much of the processes, including the packaging of software for the distribution.

Fenrus also aims to get "decent performance and power behavior in an OS" and where there's lots of continuous debug information. For managing the performance of Fenrus Linux over time, they're actually employing the Phoronix Test Suite for automated test execution.

Fenrus is using the Phoronix Test Suite on the client/test side for continually benchmarking the Linux operating system with a wide variety of tests. I've worked with Arjan on ensuring PTS meets their needs and on further work. You can see their performance tests driven by the Phoronix Test Suite on the Fenrus Linux performance page.

For those looking out for other details on the Linux distribution or to try out Fenrus, visit linux.fenrus.org.
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About The Author
Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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