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About Kwort

Kwort is a modern and fast Linux distribution that combines powerful and useful applications in order to create a simple system for advanced users who finds a strong and effective desktop. Kwort is based on CRUX, so it's robust, clean and easy to extend.

Kwort 3 final

As some of you might have noticed, Kwort switched direction. In case you don't (I blogged about it a couple of weeks ago) I'll try to explain the reason of this.

Since Kwort 1.4, we tried to provide an easy to use system with a nice desktop and lots of new features with every release. Kwort 2.4.1 kinda was our "best" effort trying to achieve that. One year back in time when Kwort 2.4.1 was released we were convinced that doing simple things was the right way (as we always thought) but some things didn't allow us to do things in "the simple and best way".

That really pissed us a lot... There are some things that didn't work in a generic way. A simple example of that is the ability to set up wireless drivers. Though the kwort network manager did a great work with this issue we couldn't handle all the available firmware files and kernel options or even patches to get a stable and compatible system running all possible wireless chips. Our team is just too small to handle the big amount of testing that will be needed to ensure things are behaving like expected.

So we decided to target a different user group which is able to get their hands dirty when it comes to system configuration and kernel compilation. This way we can concentrate on a more specific and lighter system where advanced users can build their desired system on.

So Kwort is aimed at advanced users now, we dropped Xfce and bring now openbox plus some desktop tools, like tint2 and wbar (the last one is optional). And we couldn't do that without having a good Documentation. The documentation wasn't an issue back when Kwort kinda did everything by itself but now it is, so there's a Documentation section in the left pane where there is info related to kpkg, the init system, setup, etc.
There is also a FAQ that needs to be populated with questions and answers, so we would like you to send us your questions in order to help others, too. But please, check the documentation first to see if your question isn't already answered in there before sending us one.

We are very proud of what Kwort 3 has become. This version includes a completely new toolchain and the 2.6.31 vanilla kernel as a base system. The init system was completely rewritten (based now on the CRUX one), so now is it is simpler, faster and easier to setup. We are not providing a desktop environment anymore, just openbox+tint2 with some applications already known by the Kwort users (firefox, epdfview, xchat, pidgin, amule, audacious, mplayer, openoffice, etc). kpkg has improved thanks to user testing and now some features that were broken in the past does work (like upgrading). The kwtools were stripped in this version, as only kpkg and makepkg are included, while the kwort network manager and the kwort user manager were left out.

As always, I would like to thank the people who helped in this release of Kwort, some in more ways than others, but everyone putted their effort:

  • Andreas Schipplock as always for making and maintaining the website (as you can see now, the website is completely different adjunsting more to our needs), mirroring the Kwort iso image.
  • The mirror providers as usual, the people from PGHosting and Ricardo Brisighelli for the package mirror in the UNR.
  • A big thanks to the CRUX people for developing it, as Kwort is based on CRUX now.
  • The people who develop every project Kwort makes use of. I hope I didn’t forget anyone.

As usual, if you need support, help, or you just feel like talking about Kwort (or anything else), or you just want to meet the people who is behind Kwort, you can join us on IRC or our Google group:


You can download the ISO image and the MD5 checksum from the Download section: