I’m always astounded by how far the “but can it play Doom?” memes will go and now it’s reached Linux thanks to Shadly:
Anyone can roll their own Linux distribution with the right tools, including [Shadly], who recently created one which only loads enough software to launch the 1993 classic DOOM.
The distribution is as simple as possible and loads no bloat other than what’s needed to launch the game. It loads the Linux kernel and the standard utilities via BusyBox, then runs fbDOOM, which is a port of the game specifically designed to run on the Linux framebuffer with minimal dependencies. After most of that, the only thing left is to use GRUB to boot the distribution, and in just a moment, Doomguy can start slaying demons. The entire distribution is placed into a bootable ISO file that can be placed on any bootable drive.
I guess the next stop would be to build a “Doom Box” to go with it. I’m sure some people would buy it if it was up for purchase.
Check out the GitHub repo for all the necessary files.
(via Hackaday)
