About CRUX-ARM

CRUX-ARM is a lightweight, flexible Linux distribution designed specifically for ARM-based devices.
Launched in early 2009, CRUX-ARM is a direct port of the original CRUX distribution, maintaining its core philosophy: simplicity, transparency, and a focus on experienced Linux users.

Philosophy and Goals

CRUX-ARM follows the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle, aiming to provide a minimal yet powerful foundation for advanced users who want full control over their system. Like its parent project, CRUX-ARM is targeted at those who appreciate a hands-on approach and prefer to build and customize their environment from the ground up.
Our primary goal is to deliver a robust and adaptable CRUX experience on ARM devices. We strive to keep the system lean, shipping only essential software in the core release, while empowering users to expand and tailor their systems through a straightforward ports system and flexible build tools.

Key Features

• Minimal Core System: Each release provides a compact, core environment with only the essential software needed to get started.
• Customizable Framework: Users can easily build and install additional packages, either natively or using cross-compilation—ideal for devices with limited resources.
• Ports System and Overlays: In addition to the standard CRUX ports system, CRUX-ARM offers specific ports collections called overlays (such as core-arm, opt-arm, and xorg-arm). These overlays contain ports with ARM-specific build options or optimizations and take priority over general collections, making it easy to maintain and expand your system with ARM-tailored software
• Ready-to-Use Root Filesystems: For each supported device, we provide root filesystem files releases, allowing users to get started quickly and reliably
• Transparency and Simplicity: All configuration and build scripts are open and easy to understand, encouraging learning and experimentation.
• Ongoing Maintenance: The CRUX-ARM team maintains the servers, updates the framework, and ensures that releases are available for a variety of ARM hardwar
• Community-Driven: CRUX-ARM is a non-profit project maintained by volunteers. We welcome contributions and collaboration from anyone interested in ARM Linux development.

Supported Hardware

We actively support a range of ARM devices, with details available in our Supported Devices section. If you have an ARM device not currently listed and would like to see it supported, please contact us—we’re always interested in expanding our hardware compatibility.

Getting Involved

CRUX-ARM thrives on community involvement. Whether you want to contribute code, help with documentation, donate hardware, or simply provide feedback, your participation is welcome.
See our documentation for guides on contributing and building packages.
Visit the community page to connect with developers and users.

System Team

• Jose V Beneyto (sepen at crux-arm dot nu)
• Victor Martinez (pitillo at crux-arm dot nu)
• Tim Biermann (tbier at posteo dot de)
• Fredrik Rinnestam (fredrik at crux dot nu)
• Matt Housh (jaeger at morpheus dot net)

Contributors

• Ryan Mullen (rmull at rmull dot com)
• Paweł Kołodziejski (aquadran at users dot sourceforge dot net)
• Tilman Sauerbeck (tilman at crux dot nu)
• Hugh Lavery (hlavery at comcast dot net)
• Alan Beadle (beadleha at clarkson dot edu)
• Luka Vandervelden
• Jay Lanagan (j at lngn dot net)

Project Management

The CRUX-ARM team manages the project infrastructure, maintains the ports system, and regularly provides root filesystems releases for supported devices. As a volunteer-driven initiative, we rely on the passion and expertise of our contributors.
Join us in building a simple, powerful Linux experience for ARM!