Mentalnet GNU/Linux

A light, TTY-only GNU/Linux distribution for 90s Intel Pentium-class (i586) machines, built with Buildroot.

The ISO is a live CD: the entire system runs from the CD with a read-only root filesystem, and the same CD carries a built-in hard disk installer (mentalnet-install).

Current release

R1 "FirstStorm" — named after DECO*27's Chūlán First Storm (初嵐～First Storm～).

Versioning

• Major releases bump the R<n> number (R1, R2, ...).
• Minor releases keep the R<n> base version and use the codename as the minor version.
• All codenames are taken from Vocaloid, Hatsune Miku or Kasane Teto songs.

Release	Codename	Song	Notes
R1	Mesmerizer	Mesmerizer — 32ki (Hatsune Miku & Kasane Teto)	Initial release
R1	FirstStorm	Chūlán First Storm (初嵐～First Storm～) — DECO*27	Current — swap-free installer, true i586 support, terminal/input hardening, interrupt-storm fixes

Quick facts

Login	root / mnlinux
Hostname	mentalnet
Kernel	6.12.104-mentalnet-intel32
Media	Live CD with built-in installer
CPU	i586 (Pentium / Pentium MMX) or any newer x86
RAM	128 MB minimum (64 MB usually works)

Security after install

The default root password is mnlinux — please change it after installing:

passwd

Then, for day-to-day use, create a regular user and give it sudo privileges (sudo is included in the build):

adduser myuser

You have two options to grant sudo:

• Add the user to the sudo group, which the shipped sudoers file already trusts:

  addgroup myuser sudo
  

• Or, if you prefer the classic wheel group, enable it with visudo (uncomment the %wheel line) and add the user to it:

  visudo
  addgroup myuser wheel
  

Verify that sudo works for the new user before locking root — log in as the user and run, for example, sudo ls /.

Once sudo is confirmed working, lock the root account so it cannot be accessed (SSH included):

passwd -l root

Documentation

The full install and test guide — hardware requirements, QEMU testing, the install walkthrough and troubleshooting — lives in board/mentalnet/INSTALL-GUIDE.md.

License

Mentalnet GNU/Linux — the scripts, configuration, documentation and artwork added on top of Buildroot (board/mentalnet/, logos/, README.md, LICENSE, and the modifications made to Buildroot files) — is

Copyright (C) 2026 Mark Robillard Jr (MARKMENTAL)

SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-3.0-or-later

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. See LICENSE.

The underlying Buildroot tree remains under its original license (see COPYING, GPL-2.0-or-later); we claim no rights over it.

The OS image produced by the build is an aggregation of many components, each of which keeps its own license (the Linux kernel is GPL-2.0, BusyBox is GPL-2.0, and so on).

Logo credit: the Mentalnet logo is part of this project and licensed under GPL-3.0-or-later with the rest of it. Credit to the GNU project and the Buildroot project for their logos, which appear in logos/mnlogo-gpl-buildroot.png.