Taproot: Desktop Linux Distribution
Welcome to the official documentation of Radish Linux Taproot. Taproot is a “Homegrown” Linux distribution intended to be used on Laptops and Desktop computers. Its creator views it as their ideal operating system, which, as such, must enable their workflows immediately upon being installed for the first time. The experimental nature of this project implies that most of these pages are subject to change. Therefore, all pages are versioned and available in our Codeberg repositories.
The term distro will be used abundantly in this section to refer to a Linux distribution.
Motivations
A note on advanced Linux distros
The idea of “growing” one’s personal operating system at home was driven by a strong desire to learn, and actual limitations regarding advanced distros:
| Advantages | Limitations |
|---|---|
| Well documented | Requires reading a lot of documentation |
| Good way to learn the ins and outs of the OS | Takes a lot of time both during and after the installation is complete |
| Grants a lot of control over the insides of the OS | Highly error-prone and unstable |
| Helps when debugging is needed | Often non-standard |
Existing coping mechanisms
Dotfiles + symlink manager
- The user stores their configuration files (usually
~/.config) in a versioned repository and saves it in a forge (usually git + GitHub). - Pros: saves time in postinstall
- Cons: not meant for system configuration
Installation scripts
- The user/admin writes a script to automate the installation process of the distribution per their needs.
- Pros: saves a lot of time during the installation
- Cons: requires proper version control and documentation
Custom-made ISOs
- The user/admin installs the desired OS, with apps and configs on a machine, and they use its file system to create a new installation medium.
- Pros: saves a lot of time during the installation and configuration processes
- Cons: requires rebuilding as apps are updated (at least for security) or a script to automate the first update; requires documentation.
Taking the advanced distro model to new heights
Given the previous assertions, Radish Linux offers to expand on the advantages of by-hand-installed distributions:
- The user becomes the owner of their distro (radish), managing it from package sources to system configuration;
- All tasks that were previously done during installation and shortly after may now be done when building (growing), before the installation begins;
- The building and package compilation steps can be achieved on any reasonably sized machine (planter) running an OCI-compatible container runtime.
As such the distro is effectively homegrown by its users, like radishes.
Outline
AI policy
As with every page on this website, this project is written by hand. Radish Linux views AI (esp. LLMs) as tools and may only use them for mundane tasks, such as checking spelling mistakes throughout the codebase. Further uses will be reported in this section if they arise. We ensure the producs is AI-slop-free.