Pizlix, an experimental operating system based on Linux From Scratch (LFS) 12.2, is unveiled. A key feature of the project is userland compilation using the Fil-C compiler, which, according to the author, provides the most memory-safe Linux-like distribution available today.
The development of Pizlix was made possible by Fil-C's high compatibility with traditional C and C++ code. Most of the packages in the LFS book were able to be built without changing the source code or with minimal patches.
Key features and technical details:
The core build utilities (e.g. ld, make, ninja) and all user applications are compiled with Fil-C or Fil-C++.
The memory-safe OpenSSH daemon is running.
Graphics support: The distribution includes the Weston (Wayland) composite server and the GTK 4 toolkit, which allows for a completely memory-safe graphical interface.
To build the Linux kernel, the system retains the traditional GCC (located in the /yolo/bin/gcc prefix), since the kernel is compiled in a mode that the author ironically calls "Yolo-C" (that is, without the memory safety guarantees of Fil-C).
The distribution's architecture uses the "libc sandwich" concept: a stripped-down version of glibc ("yolo glibc") is used by the Fil-C runtime to make system calls, while the main user-space glibc 2.40 is fully ported to Fil-C.
The distribution is designed for the x86_64 architecture. The images have been tested with QEMU (recommended), VMware, and Hyper-V. For those wishing to build the distribution themselves, a set of scripts is provided for step-by-step builds within privileged containers (Podman) running Ubuntu 22 or 24.
Source: linux.org.ru
