RESISTOS by rado84

[rado84]

@rado84 , can you indulge me again? Resist OS does make itself clear to me, with searches.

Is that just a customised (by you) name you placed in grub.cfg, or is there a real Arch/Arch-based distro that applies to?

I would like to take it for a spin, and shake off the rust on installing under MBR conditions.

TIA

Wizard

Sorry for the late answer. It's summer now and I'm rarely at home, hence at the computer. Most of the time I'm out there somewhere doing stuff with other humans, anything your imagination can think of.

RESIST OS is of my own making and you won't find it anywhere because it doesn't exist in the form you'd expect - ISO and everything. It started as an idea to resist against every piece of software that is being forced upon the users, regardless of whether they're Windows or Linux users. But with time I realized I already had that OS bc I've been modifying Arch in any way you could think of. Eventually the changes became so many that if you ask me now what they are, I won't be able to remember them all. Suffice to say ALL of the modification are hundreds, if not thousands of files by now with a total size of 1.8 GiB. Even some services are disabled and masked in accordance to RESIST's ideals - "no forced software". Then I realized that wasn't Arch anymore, it was something else that needed a new name and a new logo.

The only thing I still haven't found out how to change (without breaking the whole system, that is) is the host name when I open terminal. I'd very much like it to read

[rado@resist]

instead of

[rado@arch]

but for the moment I haven't found a safe way to change it without reinstalling.

So basically RESIST OS in a highly modified Arch Linux. I even came up with a logo which resembles the anarchy symbol, only instead of an "A", it's an "R":

 

[Perpetual Padawan]

I love it! My own MX-Linux mixture is a "protest" form, free of everything Big Tech and their minions are trying to force on users:

• XLibre instead of Xorg / XWayland
• Runit instead of systemd
• No Rust
• No bloat

Getting there took a bit of research and time, but it's as "ideologically pure" as I can make it. I just wish I would thought of that cool name!

 

[piorunz]

I love it! My own MX-Linux mixture is a "protest" form, free of everything Big Tech and their minions are trying to force on users:

• XLibre instead of Xorg / XWayland
• Runit instead of systemd
• No Rust
• No bloat

Getting there took a bit of research and time, but it's as "ideologically pure" as I can make it. I just wish I would thought of that cool name!

Well done on your setup!
I use Devuan, which comes with sysVinit instead of systemd by default, and makes it very easy to ditch systemd. On top of that, I installed XLibre. Very lean system.

 

[f33dm3bits]

RESIST OS is of my own making and you won't find it anywhere because it doesn't exist in the form you'd expect - ISO and everything. It started as an idea to resist against every piece of software that is being forced upon the users, regardless of whether they're Winblows or Linux users.

Eventually the changes became so many that if you ask me now what they are, I won't be able to remember them all. Suffice to say ALL of the modification are hundreds, if not thousands of files by now with a total size of 1.8 GiB. Even some services are disabled and masked in accordance to RESIST's ideals - "no forced software". Then I realized that wasn't Arch anymore, it was something else that needed a new name and a new logo.

So it doesn't have an installer in your iso or an install script? Are you going to replace systemd as it seems you are defining your "distribution" as a protest distribution? Please just call Windows by it's proper name, as mentioned in the posting guidelines written by @KGIII. Thanks!

Don't call people or things names. Instead of using a pejorative, use the proper names/abbreviations.

 

[wizardfromoz]

The only thing I still haven't found out how to change (without breaking the whole system, that is) is the host name when I open terminal. I'd very much like it to read
[rado@resist]instead of
[rado@arch]but for the moment I haven't found a safe way to change it without reinstalling.

Is this the sort of thing you want to see?

For example, I am writing this from my Linux Mint 22.1 'Xia' Cinnamon, and Terminal shows with

When I change it using the instructions I can provide on my tomorrow, I can make it say

Let me know, and goodnight

Wizard

 

[osprey]

The only thing I still haven't found out how to change (without breaking the whole system, that is) is the host name when I open terminal. I'd very much like it to read

[rado@resist]

instead of

[rado@arch]

but for the moment I haven't found a safe way to change it without reinstalling.

Maybe the following works. It works with bash on debian here as shown on the command line. For persistence the PS1 code can be placed in .bashrc.

[ben@computer ~]$ PS1="[rado@resist] $"
[rado@resist] $

 

[f33dm3bits]

The only thing I still haven't found out how to change (without breaking the whole system, that is) is the host name when I open terminal. I'd very much like it to read

What did you change that would cause your system to break when changing the hostname, I have never had that happen when having changed the hostname?

 

[osprey]

I love it! My own MX-Linux mixture is a "protest" form, free of everything Big Tech and their minions are trying to force on users:

• XLibre instead of Xorg / XWayland
• Runit instead of systemd
• No Rust
• No bloat

Getting there took a bit of research and time, but it's as "ideologically pure" as I can make it. I just wish I would thought of that cool name!

Good to hear of such a project. Noble aims. The post raised some thoughts which may be of interest, so thanks for the stimulation.

On the Rust front, the linux kernel has already embraced the programming language. See here for some comments by the kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/26...ll-save-linux-from-ai-says-greg-kroah-hartman. A brief quote:

"The majority of the bugs in the kernel are this tiny, minor stuff," he explained. "Error conditions aren't checked, locks aren't forgotten, unreleased memories leak, and vulnerabilities add up over time. They crash the kernel. This is what we live with in C. This is why we don't like it." Kroah-Hartman argued that the "best beauty of Rust" is catching those mistakes at build time rather than in review.
<snip>
What ultimately sold a number of core maintainers, including him, on Rust was how it "makes reviewing code easier."

There's already a quota of Rust code in newer drivers in current kernels.

The systemd versus "other init systems" debate continues. Often it's the preference for an init system that uses fewer resources which is attractive to users who reject systemd, especially those interested in minimalistic systems. Without being a shill for systemd, I think it's worth reading about some myths regarding systemd published here: https://0pointer.de/blog/projects/the-biggest-myths.html. One aspect of interest is the unit nature of systemd which enables a user to use as few or as many of them as they like. Distros that have embraced systemd use a lot of its units. For example this debian machine has heaps of units:

[~]$ systemctl list-units -all | grep "loaded units"
373 loaded units listed.

There's alternatives for all of them, so choice is available. One can use few, or many. One can be judiciously selective, as it is for so much in the linux world.

On the graphics front, the recent development of xlibre has yet to enter the mainstream repositories, so it's a wait-and-see situation I think. One question that arises is whether it can appeal to enough developers to make a mark in the linux ecosystem. Wayland is still itself in development so the competitive situation is currently live. Most major distros have made a choice at this point to go with wayland, which suggests that the hurdle for xlibre to join the mainstream is higher than if it just had to compete with X11.

On the bloat front, I guess bloat is in the eye of the beholder. What a minimalist might deem to be bloat is likely to be different from what a fully-featured user might see as bloat. As a former minimalist myself, who once deemed anything that didn't run in a virtual console as bloat, things have changed so much, especially hardware, that there is just too much on offer in more fully featured systems to deny myself the pleasures. Living in the text environment with the framebuffer and just using text browsers worked for years, until many websites of interest became inaccessible. As my interests broadened, so the minimalism dissipated over time. That's not to say that I don't think about what might be unnecessary on my systems and not delete packages that the distro maintainers have included.

 

[MikeWalsh]

The only thing I still haven't found out how to change (without breaking the whole system, that is) is the host name when I open terminal. I'd very much like it to read
[rado@resist]instead of
[rado@arch]but for the moment I haven't found a safe way to change it without reinstalling.

@rado84 :-

Hm. Can't you simply edit /etc/hostname to read what you want? (Or maybe that's a Puppy 'special'; I'm somewhat lacking in mainstream experience, so couldn't really say!)


Mike.

 

[rado84]

@rado84 :-

Hm. Can't you simply edit /etc/hostname to read what you want? (Or maybe that's a Puppy 'special'; I'm somewhat lacking in mainstream experience, so couldn't really say!)


Mike.

That's what I did and that's what led to a catastrophe. So I'll have to find another way.

As for systemd, I would replace it, but many programs have been compiled with systemd only in mind and they won't work without it. My coding skills aren't that advanced to change that. But maybe some day...

 

[Perpetual Padawan]

The mere fact that you were able to do what you did on Arch Linux is amazing, given the bleeding-edge nature of that OS. I salute you! I bragged about your achievement on my blog and gave you full credit (and expressed my personal gratitude) for the idea, the name, and the logo. If others adopt this wonderful idea and implement it successfully, I'll point them to this thread.
As the Klingon High Council might say, Glory to you, and to your House!

 

[rado84]

The mere fact that you were able to do what you did on Arch Linux is amazing, given the bleeding-edge nature of that OS. I salute you! I bragged about your achievement on my blog and gave you full credit (and expressed my personal gratitude) for the idea, the name, and the logo. If others adopt this wonderful idea and implement it successfully, I'll point them to this thread.
As the Klingon High Council might say, Glory to you, and to your House!

Just one thing about your blog post: replace "her" and "she" with "his" and "he". Just because I've put the most beautiful woman on the planet as a profile pic, that doesn't mean I'm a girl. If you click on my profile name, then click on tab "About", there it reads "Gender: Male". "Rado" is short for "Radoslav" which is a Bulgarian male name.

Otherwise, thanks for the credits. As for the logo, feel free to use it for your MX Resist. RESIST OS is an idea, not a specific distro, thus no copyright BS. Everything I do or share (mostly on github) is and will always be FOSS. So feel free to do with the logo and the idea whatever you want.

Btw, IDK if I mentioned it, but my RESIST OS doesn't use pipewire, it's dead here. Meaning, the packages are here (uninstalling them breaks the desktop) but pipewire.service is dead and buried (masked), so systemd can't start it, thus I'm back to the good ol' and working combo of ALSA + PA.

Another "btw": the idea about resistance against unwanted software came from... CtOS - the OS in the game "WatchDogs 2". But I didn't like that name (plus I suspect CtOS is a copyright of Ubisoft), so I came up with one of my own that better expresses the idea behind my modifications.

@feedmebits, @wizardfromoz , why don't you "split" the topic? Put all posts about RESIST OS in a separate topic with that name. That way the current topic will remain... on topic. I didn't know my idea of resisting against unwanted software will reach such... dimensions, when I mentioned it for the first time. I thought I'd be alone in this resistance and everyone else would simply "go with the flow".

 

[f33dm3bits]

@feedmebits, @wizardfromoz , why don't you "split" the topic? Put all posts about RESIST OS in a separate topic with that name.

Done! I would still be curious to hear your responses to these?

So it doesn't have an installer in your iso or an install script? Are you going to replace systemd as it seems you are defining your "distribution" as a protest distribution? Please just call Windows by it's proper name, as mentioned in the posting guidelines written by @KGIII. Thanks!

What did you change that would cause your system to break when changing the hostname, I have never had that happen when having changed the hostname?

 

[Perpetual Padawan]

I will correct the blog post immediately, and thanks!

 

[rado84]

Sorry, I was outside when I responded to some. I hate typing messages on the phone. But now I'm home, so:

So it doesn't have an installer in your iso or an install script? Are you going to replace systemd as it seems you are defining your "distribution" as a protest distribution?

What did you change that would cause your system to break when changing the hostname, I have never had that happen when having changed the hostname?

Nope, no traditional installer. No scripts either. Well, unless you count the modified steam_setup.sh which tells steam to install itself outside of the root partition. Just a regular Arch upon which later I'd apply my changes. The most of these are just files and are easy to replace. But in the process of getting rid of pipewire I learned a bit about working with systemctl, so the rest of the modifications shouldn't be too hard - in case that some day I decide to reinstall (which is highly unlikely). Plus, a big percentage of my personal settings are in a dconf dump file, so it's easy to restore them, if necessary.

I edited a file but it was long ago and I don't remember which one. All I can remember is that about 5 minutes after the change and the system reboot, 90% of the system stopped working properly, something was always crashing, even the internet was "come and go". So I restored the system from a clonezilla backup and left the change for another time.

 

[f33dm3bits]

Nope, no traditional installer. No scripts either. Well, unless you count the modified steam_setup.sh which tells steam to install itself outside of the root partition. Just a regular Arch upon which later I'd apply my changes.

So what's it then called just a customized Arch install which you call ResistOS as hostname, as it doesn't seem to be a distributions because you can't distribute it to others. It might be worth documenting what you do in case you ever needed to do a new install?

 

[rado84]

So what's it then called just a customized Arch install which you call ResistOS as hostname, as it doesn't seem to be a distributions because you can't distribute it to others. It might be worth documenting what you do in case you ever needed to do a new install?

I think you got it all wrong. RESIST OS is not a distro in the traditional sense. It's a philosophy or an idea, if you like, where the user refuses to be a lab rat for unwanted software - such as pipewire or wayland, regardless of which distro they're using.

I simply chose to call it RESIST OS because:
• that Arch of mine became something else long ago
• sounds cool and... shows individuality.

As for documenting what I do - no need bc I keep backups of every change, including of the system itself (clonezilla backups in several places - locally, some are even online (encrypted, ofc)). Here's a small example of that:

[rado@resist]: /B/PROGRAMS/SYSTEM/SYSTEMD - ESYNC NOLIMITS (MODPROBE), MAKEPKG CONFIG>$ lsr
.:
etc/
usr/
'if NVIDIA is newer than 565 run this file contents.txt'
immutable-files_run-in-terminal.sh*
'PULSEAUDIO CONFIG.7z'
'systemd - ulimits raised (copy as root).7z'*

./etc:
default/
lightdm/
modprobe.d/
pipewire/
pulse/
security/
ssh/
systemd/
X11/
lsb-release
makepkg.conf
mkinitcpio.conf
motd
profile
sleep.conf
sudoers

./etc/default:
cpupower*

./etc/lightdm:
lightdm.conf

./etc/modprobe.d:
alsa-order.conf
blacklist-hdmi.conf
disable-algif-aead.conf
modprobe.conf*
nobeep.conf*

./etc/pipewire:
media-session.d/
pipewire-pulse.conf

./etc/pipewire/media-session.d:
alsa-monitor.conf

./etc/pulse:
daemon.conf

./etc/security:
limits.conf*

./etc/ssh:
sshd_config

./etc/systemd:
sleep.conf
system.conf*
user.conf*

./etc/X11:
xorg.conf

./usr:
bin/
share/

./usr/bin:
numlock.sh*

./usr/share:
pulseaudio/

./usr/share/pulseaudio:
alsa-mixer/

./usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer:
profile-sets/

./usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/profile-sets:
default.conf
default.conf-original.7z

This is just a fraction of all the changes.
All idea(l)s have a manifesto, still working on it, but here's some of it. I'll probably have to work on shortening it but that's just a draft for the moment:

1. Purpose

RESIST OS is not a distribution.
It is a stance.

A declaration that the user — not corporations, not foundations, not “modernization committees” — is the ultimate authority over their own system.
RESIST OS exists to preserve the fundamental principles of computing: choice, control, transparency, and the right to refuse unwanted software.

We do not chase trends.
We do not accept forced defaults.
We do not participate in experiments conducted at our expense.

We choose stability, clarity, and user sovereignty.

2. Core Philosophy

2.1 Opt‑In, Not Opt‑Obey

Software must never assume permission.
Nothing should run, install, update, or replace components without explicit user consent.
The system cooperates — it does not command.

2.2 No Forced Software

Any component that attempts to become mandatory without technical justification is rejected.
This includes service managers, audio stacks, display servers, packaging formats, and background daemons that presume authority.

2.3 Proven Over Experimental

RESIST OS favors software that has demonstrated reliability over years, not weeks.
We value tools that are simple, transparent, and maintainable.
“New” is not a synonym for “better.”

2.4 Modularity Over Monoliths

Every part of the system must be replaceable.
If a component cannot be removed without breaking the OS, it does not belong in RESIST OS.

2.5 The User Is the Root of All Decisions

The system must adapt to the user — not the other way around.
Customization is not a luxury; it is a right.

3. Identity

RESIST OS is not a product.
It is not an ISO.
It is not a brand.

It is a philosophy applied to any Linux system by users who refuse to be passive recipients of someone else’s vision.

RESIST OS is:
a curated set of choices
a rejection of forced defaults
a commitment to transparency
a culture of user empowerment
a reminder that Linux belongs to its users
It can be built on Arch, MX, Debian, Void, Gentoo — anywhere the user has control.

4. Conclusion

RESIST OS is a reminder that Linux is not a playground for corporate experiments.
It is a platform for people who value control, clarity, and choice.

We do not resist progress.
We resist coercion.

We do not reject innovation.
We reject imposition.

We do not fear change.
We fear losing the right to choose.

RESIST OS is not an alternative distribution.
It is the rediscovery of what Linux was always meant to be.