Kwort is Still Around?

by Susan Linton - Oct. 27, 2011Comments (1)

kwort I've always liked those smaller more obscure Linux distributions. The good ones usually offered a unique personality and the atmosphere around those projects were friendly and accessible. Kwort was one of these. However, it had faded from my memory since my last tests until I noticed on Distrowatch.com that a third release candidate for 3.2 had been released. Because it's been four years since my last look, I thought another was waaay overdue.

The first thing I did was look back at my old reviews of Kwort. Back then it was based on Slackware (a big plus in my book) and featured Xfce as the desktop. These days it appears Kwort is now based on CRUX and uses Openbox for the desktop. Well, CRUX is cool I hear. Openbox is a little too minimal for my tastes usually, but let's take a look anyway.

It seems Kwort is still using a modified Slackware installer (or else CRUX has one very similar). Install was fast and easy, booting the new system not so much. Beware, Kwort is still using LiLo. After boot I added a user and tried to run X -configure. That shot an error - my dual monitors confused it I guess. So, I cheated and found a basic single display config, copied it over, and started X.

A very minimal desktop and sparse menu were available. I don't know much about Openbox and the "Reconfigure Openbox" in the menu did nothing. The package manager kpkg, which usually works very much like APT, seemed to have issues as well.

I'm not sure when or why Kwort made the switch from cute little desktop system to minimal "need for speed" system, but I liked it better in the old days. I'm sure its target audience and loyal users like it just fine, but that's not me.

So all in all, not a wasted evening, but Kwort has certainly changed since I last looked. For those that like that kind of environment I'm sure the bugs will be ironed out by final.