Caos Linux NSA

Caos Linux NSA is a light-weight, fast, efficient, secure and stable Linux distribution that is appropriate for servers, network appliances, compute nodes and even the latest desktop and laptop computers.

An innovative design focusing on efficiency and performance, CAOS starts with a lean core and extends to a robust and streamlined, powerful operating system. Our industry experienced developers were inspired by the need to create an operating system combining efficiency with serious power that maintained the constant ability to recreate itself.

This focus on high performance and scalability in our build model translates all the way down to our system management and user interface, making CAOS not only the distribution of choice for clusters, servers, and appliances, but also a solid choice for graphical desktop workstations and the latest laptops. CAOS Linux is based on the best aspects of GNU/Linux, designed to run out of the box on all x86_64 and i386 based hardware.

Features:

• The Linux 2.6 kernel (with 2.6.26)
• Perceus 1.4
• Warewulf-3
• OFED (Open Fabrics for Infiniband support)
• Slurm (Cluster Scheduler)
• GCC 4.3.2
• XFCE and X11R7
• KVM enabled
• GRSecurity enabled
• PAX enabled
• Sidekick system configuration toolkit
• RPM Package Manager version 5.1.4
• Smart Package Manager 1.1
• File systems: ext2, ext3, xfs, reiserfs
• and jfs at install
• Local java support, and integration with the "jpackage" project
• Apache
• PHP (hardened)
• Postfix
• Cyrus IMAPD
• MySQL 5

What is new in this release:

• The Caos team of developers and contributors from Infiscale are proud to announce the public release of Caos Linux NSA version 1. Caos Linux is a community-managed and openly-maintained distribution of Linux focusing on areas where Linux naturally leads and excels: high performance computation (HPC), servers (especially LAMP and general Web), and custom appliances (such as file servers and firewalls).
• This release identifies the stabilization and validation of the core operating system, fully tested on some of the world's fastest public and private systems and architectures.
• While Caos Linux NSA signifies a new focus in Linux distributions, it also represents a return to what got people involved with Linux in the first place. It is built using known standards and good practices of the open source community with the end users' input and needs taken into consideration. Features are never held back or forced in solely for monetary reasons; technical decisions are always made by technical people for technical reasons. Caos is clean, simple, solid, and fast while still maintaining the level of stability and resilience demanded by enterprise and high-performance computing.
• Many distributions no longer focus on the core competencies that always made Linux so proficient, choosing instead to emulate Windows on the desktop and commercial Unix vendors on the server at the same time. In stark contrast to these diametrically opposed goals, the Caos core operating system has been tuned using very large and tightly-coupled HPC cluster systems. Careful tweaking and optimizations have resulted in a very streamlined, lightweight operating system still suitable for a large spectrum of uses, from simple desktops to petaflop supercomputers. Future development also includes a release for embedded systems.