Sabayon Linux. I’m not sure if it’s still releasing updates, the main website is dead. It was based on Gentoo and later funtoo, but had a package manager of precompiled binaries. You could still use emerge if you wanted to. Definitely a weird and interesting distro
Blend OS is trying to do the declarative nixos thing but with an arch base. That’s pretty cool.
ClearOS was Intel’s attempt at an immutable os. From what I remember it was really fast.
Edit: actually it clear Linux not clearOS.
One of the coolest distros, ever. It’s like a mix of Alpine Linux and Slackware without dangerous firmware payloads.
There was this distro that stuffs everything of a package in one folder, instead of /usr/lib & co. What was it called again?
Gobolinux?
Right, thanks!
If being usable is a metric, Slackware
Hardly obscure.
Of those I’be personally tried, certainly chimera linux or mageia
I used to run Reborn OS at around 2017 for a few years. It used Cnchi installer, just like Antergos, and when Antergos died, I saw Reborn as its successor. But the title went to Endeavour (why?) and Reborn never got popularity.
2 days ago my friend found an old SATA hard drive and gave it to me to check what’s on it, and me, not having a disk station or anything, and against all better judgment, I just swapped the disk in my laptop for my friend’s, and instead of my laptop being fried it turned out the disk was running something called Crunchbang Linux
Shark Linux
Limiting to those I have used daily and treated as Linux (used the terminal for example) probably Maemo. I used to carry my Nokia Internet Tablet 770, and then my N800 everywhere with me.
Maemo is also an ancestor of both Tizen and Sailfish OS
I see no one has mentioned Bedrock Linux yet. Not sure though how others would rate its ‘obscurity’ though. It’s definitely a standout among distros.
No one mentioned Bunsenlabs or Crunchbang Linux here, but they aren’t really that obscure.
Archbang maybe more?
SLiTaz
It’s an obscure originally live usage oriented distro that you could also install. It was the first *Nix I ever used.
it was for a time a distro i was really big on on account of how small it could be on live media. absolutely fantastic for very old pcs and netbooks, too
Wow, I just realized it was the first Linux I ever used
Oh jeez. I forgot about that. I had that running on my DS back in the day from a GBA flashcart with a big-ass CompactFlash card sticking out the bottom. Good times.
