Lunar Linux is a source-based distribution for AMD systems with simple, yet powerful package management and system administration tools.

Lunar is a source based Linux distribution with a unique package management system which builds each software package, or module, for the machine it is being installed on.

Though it can take a while to do a complete Lunar installation it's worth it as it tends to be quite fast, once installed! In the beginning Lunar was a fork of Sorcerer GNU Linux (SGL).

The fork occurred in late January to early February of 2002 and was originally made up of a small group of people who wanted to collaboratively develop and extend the Sorcerer technology.

The original name for the project was Lunar-Penguin but the group decided to re-christen it Lunar Linux while the Lunar-Penguin name has become a sort of umbrella which the team could use if they decide to collaboratively develop something besides Lunar Linux.

The installation disk installs a complete bootstrap development system first. After the user tells the Lunar manager which packages will be required, it automatically builds the software by downloading current source code and locally compiling an optimized package. On the downside, compiling software from scratch may be time-consuming and complicate the task of keeping the packages up to date.

Currently, Lunar supports the i686 and x86-64 architecture, but has been implemented by users on SPARC. No install support is planned for non-x86 architectures at the moment.

Lunar Linux began as a software fork of Sorcerer by a small team of people led by Chuck Mead; another distribution derived from Sorcerer Linux is Source Mage GNU/Linux. The distribution leadership for Lunar Linux was handed over to Auke Kok on April 22, 2004.

Updates:

Stefan Wold has announced the release of a new set of installation CD images for Lunar Linux, a source-based distribution: "The Lunar team proudly announce the final release of Lunar Linux 1.6.5. The last known issues with the ISO image have been resolved. We added support for hybrid ISO images in the last minute, which means that it's a lot easier to install it from a USB stick. New features in 1.6.5: based on Linux kernel 2.6.35.3 and glibc 2.11.2; hybrid ISO support; added support for the ext4 file system; added option to change preferred /etc/fstab style; UUID, LABEL or device name; OpenSSH and Screen are now part of the live CD to allow remote assistance during install. Summary of changes since 1.6.4: isolinux updated, all modules refreshed...."

More details can be found in the release announcement.

Download: lunar-1.6.5-i686.iso.bz2 (354MB, SHA1), lunar-1.6.5-x86_64.iso.bz2 (368MB, SHA1).

Recent releases:

• 2010-08-23: Distribution Release: Lunar Linux 1.6.5
• 2010-07-10: Development Release: Lunar Linux 1.6.5 RC1
• 2008-12-28: Distribution Release: Lunar Linux 1.6.4
• 2008-10-18: Development Release: Lunar Linux 1.6.4 Beta 1
• 2007-07-30: Development Release: Lunar Linux 1.6.2 Beta 1
• 2007-02-18: Distribution Release: Lunar Linux 1.6.1

Screenshots.