Xiange Linux

Xiange Linux is a free, open source, lightweight, portable and extendable GNU/Linux operating system built using the LInux From Scratch (LFS) project and using gpkg as its default package management system.

Distributed as a 64-bit Live USB image

The Xiange Linux operating system is distributed as an IMG file that has approximately 4 GB in size and it’s archived with the XZ compression method to obtain a downloadable archive of only 800 MB in size. It contains software packages optimized only for the 64-bit instruction set architecture.

The user must extract the tar.xz archive on a location of his/her choice and write the IMG file to a USB flash drive of 4GB or higher capacity, which can be later used to boot the system from the BIOS of a computer. Please note that it cannot be written on a DVD disc!

Offers a very minimal boot menu

From the Live USB boot menu, which is powered by the GRUB bootloader, you can only choose to boot the live system with normal configuration. There are no other boot options, but advanced Linux users can add extra parameters to the kernel, if needed.

Features a lightweight desktop environment

Xiange Linux’s graphical desktop environment is very lightweight and requires as little as 512MB of RAM to run properly. It uses a traditional layout with a panel located on the upper part of the screen, allowing users to quickly access frequently used applications and the system tray area, cycle between virtual workspaces,as well as to interact with running programs.

Default applications

Default applications include the LibreOffice office suite, Mozilla Firefox web browser, GIMP image editor, MPlayer media player, WireShark network analyzer, Celestia planetarium software, Wine to install various apps and games designed for Microsoft Windows OSes, as well as various other useful graphical and command-line utilities.