Granular, or Granular Linux, is a

Linux distribution A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro) is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one ...

targeted at the common

desktop A desktop traditionally refers to: * The surface of a desk (often to distinguish office appliances that fit on a desk, such as photocopiers and printers, from larger equipment covering its own area on the floor) Desktop may refer to various compu ...

users. Granular is based on

PCLinuxOS PCLinuxOS, often shortened to PCLOS, is an x86-64 Linux distribution, with KDE Plasma Desktop, MATE and XFCE as its default user interfaces. It is primarily free software operating system for personal computers aimed at ease of use. It is con ...

and comes as an installable

live CD A live CD (also live DVD, live disc, or live operating system) is a complete bootable computer installation including operating system which runs directly from a CD-ROM or similar storage device into a computer's memory, rather than loading fro ...

. The CD version of Granular features two

desktop environments In computing, a desktop environment (DE) is an implementation of the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs running on top of a computer operating system that share a common graphical user interface (GUI), sometimes described as a graphica ...

KDE KDE is an international Free software movement, free software community that develops free and open-source software. As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that allow collaborative work on this kind of software. Well-know ...

and a development version of

Enlightenment Enlightenment or enlighten may refer to: Age of Enlightenment * Age of Enlightenment, period in Western intellectual history from the late 17th to late 18th century, centered in France but also encompassing (alphabetically by country or culture): ...

. Where KDE is a full-featured desktop environment, Enlightenment is a lightweight desktop shell which is markedly faster than KDE.

History

Granular has its roots in India. The Granular Linux Project kicked off in October 2006, when its first demonstration was given to some college students. The first release that was made available for download on 30 December 2006. The main idea behind the birth of the project, was to redefine the application set included in

to some extent and to introduce the idea of having more than one major desktop environment on a single

LiveCD A live CD (also live DVD, live disc, or live operating system) is a complete bootable computer installation including operating system which runs directly from a CD-ROM or similar storage device into a computer's memory, rather than loading fro ...

. The latter idea was implemented beginning from the second version release of Granular - version 0.25 - where two desktop environments (KDE and Xfce) were included, KDE being highly customizable and feature-rich but resource heavy, and Xfce being a light-weight yet feature-full desktop environment. After v0.25, came out v0.90, and finally v1.0. Granular 1.0 (code name Esto Vox) was the last of the "Esto" series; the first was 0.90 (Esto Vello). In October 2007, a special DVD edition of Granular 0.90 was released with the name "FunWorks", which featured the LG3D desktop environment along with three others and a host of many other software and games. Granular utilizes the PCLinuxOS repository and its own as well for software/package management. Granular's own repository was opened in March 2008, and since then, it has been a source of all Granular-specific

RPM Revolutions per minute (abbreviated rpm, RPM, rev/min, r/min, or with the notation min−1) is a unit of rotational speed or rotational frequency for rotating machines. Standards ISO 80000-3:2019 defines a unit of rotation as the dimensionl ...

packages, some of which are not available in the PCLinuxOS repository.

Features

Granular comes as a

, which means you don't have to install it to try it. The standard CD version of Granular includes two desktop environments -

and

17. Like PCLinuxOS, Granular uses Synaptic Package Manager, a GUI frontend to APT, for package management (installing, updating, or removing packages). Granular comes with a

Perl Perl is a family of two high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it also referred to its redesigned "sister language", Perl 6, before the latter's name was offici ...

-based script

mklivecd mklivecd is a script for Linux distributions that allows for one to compile a "snapshot" of the current hard drive partition and all data which resides in it (all settings, applications, documents, bookmarks, etc.) and compress it into an ISO 9660 ...

which makes it possible to

remaster Remaster refers to changing the quality of the sound or of the image, or both, of previously created recordings, either audiophonic, cinematic, or videographic. The terms digital remastering and digitally remastered are also used. Mastering A ...

Granular or create a backup CD/DVD out of the installed system. It also included Granular StartPoint, which is a HTML-based and acts as a primer to the various major software included in Granular.

Official website

In the beginning a news website was launched on 5 December, under the domain http://www.granular-linux.com/main/. Later, the main website was shifted to another server under a new domain name. The present website address is: http://www.granularlinux.com/. Later, the main website migrated once again to https://web.archive.org/web/20150211172703/http://linux.granularproject.org/

References

External links

Granular Linux website

Granular Project website
* {{Linux distributions Live USB RPM-based Linux distributions Operating system distributions bootable from read-only media Linux distributions