Lilblue Linux

Lilblue Linux is an open source Linux operating system based on the Gentoo distribution. It is designed to be used on embedded system and provides a security-enhanced, full-featured Xfce desktop environment, built on uClibc. Actually, Lilblue Linux is Gentoo. It is not a separate distribution, as its target audience is experienced Gentoo users with a passion for installing Linux on embedded system.

Patched with Gentoo's hardened toolchain

It is patched with Gentoo's hardened toolchain and uses the Grsec/PaX-patched kernel. As mentioned above, it is built on top of the uClibc C library, which is optimized for embedded systems, and designed to support only the 64-bit computer architecture.

Xfce is in charge of the graphical session

The distribution uses a feature-rich Xfce desktop environment. It includes various open source applications, such as Epiphany for web browsing, AbiWord for word processing, Claws-Mail email client, SMPlayer for watching movies, and GQview for viewing image files. In addition, HexChat provides a very good IRC (Internet Relay Client) application, the Gcalctool and GText utilities are there for common office tasks, and Transmission allows you to download BitTorrent files.

Comes with a security-enhancement feature

The main attraction of this project it the “security-enhancement" feature, which comes from a toolchain that creates all of userland. It includes stack-check and stack smashing protection, position independent executables, hardened linking, and a non-executable stack. The Grsec/PaX-patched kernel included in Lilblue Linux provides several memory protection features for processes, including MPROTECT, RANDMMAP, PAGEEXEC, and EMUTRAMP. In addition, it comes with enhanced address space layout randomization, and various kernel-userland and internal surface hardening functionality.

Distributed as a binary archive

Lilblue Linux is distributed as an archive of 1GB in size, and in order to be deployed on an embedded system, you will need to the official Gentoo install ISO image. The installation will involve some advanced Linux knowledge, for creating the root, boot and swap partitions, formatting and mounting the partitions, preparing the chroot, and configuring the system.

What is new in this release:

• This version updates the kernel to Gentoo's hardened-sources-3.14.4 to address CVE-2014-0196.
• It also bumps uClibc from 0.9.33.2 to the latest 0.9.33 git branch from upstream to backport 81 patches addressing various issues.
• Many other packages were updated to pace with mainstream Gentoo.

What is new in version 20131223:

• The GNOME applications integrated into the XFCE4 desktop were updated from GNOME version 2 applications to GNOME 3.
• Some important patches were backported to uClibc-0.9.33.2 to add new features and to fix non-atomic pread/pwrite which introduced a race condition into threaded applications like git.

What is new in version 20131107:

• This version updates the toolchain to Gentoo's hardened gcc-4.7.3-r1 and the kernel to hardened-sources-3.11.6-r2.
• Numerous packages were also updated to stay in sync with mainstream Gentoo, including python-2.7.5 and 3.2.5, which were previously masked.
• No new packages were included.

What is new in version 20130927:

• This maintenance release updates multiple packages to stay in sync with mainstream Gentoo.
• The toolchain remains the same as the previous release, but upgrades the kernel to Gentoo's hardened-sources-3.11.1-r2.
• It also includes minor enhancements to make sure the new system works well out-of-the-box with Gentoo's recent bump of portage to version 2.2.1.