Technical Distinctions
A somewhat distinctive feature of Sorcerer is the fact that it is based almost exclusively on source code. While many other operating systems generally make use of a package that contains pre-compiled (executable) programs, Sorcerer compiles source code on the machine prior to installation.
A new "grimoire", which is a catalog of software supported for immediate installation, is made available daily. When new sources are available, the spells in the grimoire are updated. One's desktop is updated by first installing a current grimoire. If necessary, the installed Sorcery is updated. Finally, any and all installed software can be updated according to the user's decision.
Sorcery automatically recompiles installed software as necessary to ensure continued compatibility and usability when installed libraries are updated to newer or older versions. Unlike a pre-compiled binary-based distro that must always download new packages, Sorcery most often recompiles installed software from previously downloaded sources. When a new source is required and an older source was previously downloaded, then Sorcerer will download a tiny patch that transforms the old source tarball into a current source tarball. The practice of keeping old source tarballs and downloading patches for updates allows Sorcerer systems to be updated using less bandwidth than distributions that provide pre-compiled packages.
Users can add new spells to the grimoire on their local machine and can submit the new spell for inclusion in the general distribution.
The minimum system requirements are given as 1 GB of RAM and 20 GB of hard disk space. This is suggested because compiling some sources will consume large amounts of resources. Sorcerer has recently started using cgroups to limit the impact of software compilation has on the system performance. Therefore, Sorcerer installations are normally updated while still in multi-user mode while causing no interruption to services or downtime. Changing to single user run level mode for updating is not recommended.
Read more about this topic: Sorcerer (operating System)
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