About Ragnarok

Ragnarok is a Debian-based Linux® distribution whose purpose is to be small, simple, Unix-like and hardened by default. One of its core principle is to provide a fully functional base system while remaining as minimal as possible.

To that end, Ragnarok is built upon a Debian 'minbase' variant and the full system is divided in "sets" (or metapackages) which can be cherry-picked upon system installation. Only the 'base' set is mandatory, while all others (devel, xserv, xprogs, xfonts, virt) are optional.

Note that the base system does not include extra programs such as web browsers, video players, files managers, etc. It is up to the user to install what is desired.

Development Guidelines

The project is developed while abiding to the following guidelines:

• Ragnarok's stable branch follows Debian stable, but new security features may be added about every six months, provided they were thouroughly tested.
• The build infrastructure should be as straighforward as possible, and easily extendible so that it can be used to create customized installs.
• Use packages from the Debian repository as is, as much as possible, but rebuild if necessary.
• If a package needs to be rebuilt, fetch the source from Debian whenever possible, but don't hesitate to fetch from upstream if necessary.
• Document any changes made to Debian sources, including if/when a patch was reverted.
• A lack of documentation should be considered a bug.
• Treat security as a first-class citizen and don't hesitate testing new security features in the development branch (-current).
• Support for packages which cannot (or will not) be made compatible with the base system should be removed swiftly.
• All tools developed by the project should be usable either together, or on their own.
• Decisions are made, and contributions accepted, on the basis of their technical merit alone.

Ragnarok's Infrastructure

Soon...