Small, on purpose

Null Linux is a from-scratch distribution built on Buildroot with a BusyBox userland. There is no desktop environment to strip out and no upstream distro underneath it — every binary that ships is there because it was put there on purpose.

Right now it's genuinely simple: a set of install tools to get the system onto a disk, and Bit Studio, a small text editor for writing code directly on the system. It's a solo project, actively developed, currently in beta — more tools land as they're built, not before.

Base system

Buildroot + BusyBox

Kernel

Linux 6.18.7

Architecture

x86_64

Init

BusyBox init

Status

Beta — actively developed

Minimum system requirements

Null Linux Dyson T 0626 — Minimum System Requirements
(Official Technical Specification)

1. Absolute Minimum Requirements

2. Recommended Requirements (Stable Server Use)

3. Notes

• The system is currently terminal-only (no graphical interface).
• Measured peak RAM usage in current builds: approximately 150 MB.
• ISO size: 67 MB ~ 70.3 MB.
• Designed as a lightweight foundation system suitable for servers, embedded devices, and infrastructure use.
• USB booting and hard disk installation are both supported.

Document version

1.0

Edition

Null Linux Dyson T 0626

Classification

Foundation / Server / Lightweight Infrastructure

Get the files

Grab the bootable Live ISO to run the manual install steps, or pull the individual kernel and rootfs images if you're building the disk yourself.

usr/bin/

A handful of purpose-built commands ship with the system, written for the Buildroot/BusyBox environment specifically — no external dependencies, nothing assumed to already be installed.

Manual installation

Null Linux Dyson installs manually from a Live environment with fdisk, extlinux, and a plain filesystem archive — no guided installer, just the disk tools directly. Replace <target-disk> (e.g. /dev/sda) and <target-partition> (e.g. /dev/sda1) with your own device names — run lsblk first to confirm them.

Prerequisites

• Kernel image — the compiled bzImage binary.
• Root filesystem — rootfs.cpio or rootfs.ext2, containing system binaries, libraries and init.
• Bootloader binaries — syslinux / extlinux utilities and mbr.bin.

1. Partition the disk. Launch fdisk on the target drive.

   fdisk <target-disk>

   Inside fdisk:

   # clear the partition table
   o
   
   # create a new primary partition, using the full disk
   n
   p
   1
   
   
   # mark it bootable
   a
   1
   
   # review, then write and exit
   p
   w

2. Format and mount the new partition as ext2.

   mkfs.ext2 <target-partition>
   mkdir -p /mnt/null
   mount <target-partition> /mnt/null
   mkdir -p /mnt/null/boot

3. Install the bootloader. Write extlinux to the boot directory, then write the MBR code to the disk itself.

   extlinux --install /mnt/null/boot
   cat /usr/share/syslinux/mbr.bin > <target-disk>

4. Deploy the kernel into the boot directory.

   cp bzImage /mnt/null/boot/bzImage

5. Extract the root filesystem into the mounted partition.

   cd /mnt/null
   cpio -idv < /path/to/rootfs.cpio

6. Configure the bootloader by UUID, not device name, so it survives hardware changes. First look up the partition's UUID:

   blkid <target-partition>

   Then write extlinux.conf using that UUID:

   cat > /mnt/null/boot/extlinux.conf << 'EOF'
   DEFAULT linux
   LABEL linux
     LINUX /boot/bzImage
     APPEND root=UUID=<YOUR-PARTITION-UUID> rw
   EOF

7. Finalize and reboot. Flush writes, unmount, and restart.

   sync
   umount /mnt/null
   reboot