nickbearded

Trying to build a GUI Linux distro with Buildroot. Just Buildroot. No Debian, no Arch. Just pain 🫩

Xorg? Black screen. Wayland? Sounds like a fantasy novel. Kernel panic? Oh yeah, got that too 🫨

But I will make this work, because minimalism deserves a desktop 🤟🏻

#Linux #Buildroot #KernelPanic #WaylandOrWhatever #DIYDistro #WhyAmIDoingThis

Mar 17 at 10:03pmMastodon for Android
Show thread2rad01d ago

@nickbearded

The only reliable way I've found to boot linux is with the root filesystem as an initrd, and a custom init to handle loading modules and then switching to the main system. With a cmdline containing 'rootfstype=ramfs rdinit=/custom_init' the downside being you always have to include an initrd with the kernel.

Show threadnickbearded1d ago
@2rad0 Thanks for the tip! I appreciate it, but diving into an initrd‑as‑root setup feels like entering a dungeon I’m not ready for 😅
I’ll keep it in mind if things get truly desperate, though!
Show threadnickbearded13h ago
@2rad0 Thinking about your suggestion again, I might have been going in the wrong direction 🤔🤷🏻‍♂️
Turns out my main issue is hardware: modern laptop, Intel + NVIDIA (Optimus), which makes things messy on Buildroot.
I’m starting to see the bigger picture now: it’s not just booting, it’s building for a specific machine.
I’ll probably try on simpler hardware (or maybe a Raspberry Pi) and go from there 🤞🏻