Punkbuntu is a live Linux system that runs only on old hardware. Thorough tests  determine during the boot-up process whether Punkbuntu will or will not work on your computer hardware. An example punk machine is comprised of following components: CPU: Pentium II 233, Memory: 64mb, video: S3 Trio 64, preferably no HDD! Punkbuntu is a critical statement on our gadget-driven world where faster release cycles of hardware are taken for granted and are exemplifying planned obsolescence at its best.

If your computer has been manufactured by Apple or is comprised of state-of-the-art hardware components you’ll be simply confronted by a message and a single interaction button. Once pressed it will automatically restart your computer. Nonetheless, your experience will be accompanied by the Sex Pistols playing in the background.

When you use an operating system, you want it to last. And Firebuntu will.

Firebuntu instantly turns any computer into an epic ASCII fireplace. Shipped with up-to-date video drivers it guarantees that it will run on most available TFT screens in highest resolution (preferably in 1920×1080). Once booted you can enjoy endless hours of a more than mesmerizing fireplace. We made sure that no silly screensaver or power option will blank out your screen.

Unlike a Windows or OS X, Firebuntu comes with everything you need to relax and have a nice and enjoyable evening with your relatives and friends — all in just a few moments after you take it out of the box. Place your TFT close to your real fireplace for an even more authentic experience. It’s like Zen for your computer!

Experience an Ubuntu operating system augmented by an endless stream of vuvuzela drone-music (loud monotone; usually the b below C3). Trying to turn down the volume will make it even more louder. Unmuting the audio will immediately be reverted and there’s absolutely no way of stopping the computer vuvu-ing.

Vuvubuntu comes pre-installed with a South-African GTK-theme to ensure that every user feels visually related to the home country of the vuvuzela.

Rotterdambuntu is a homage to the city we’ve spent an immersive period of time in conceptualising and reflecting on the success of Ubuntu as an Operating System. Upon arrival we were still emotionally connected to Gentoo but we were quickly seduced by the ease of maintaining one’s computer system using Ubuntu on an everyday basis. In the past years we’ve seen the uprising of Feisty Fawn, the comfort of Gutsy and we were more than excited to welcome the release of Karmic Koala. Recent events made us move away from Rotterdam and leave the Ubuntu platform.

However, with Rotterdambuntu we made an effort to squeeze the best parts of this city into a solid desktop system. Users can visually experience rain drops all over the screen and listen to a fine selection of Gabber tunes while being monitored by an all-watching system icon that represents the strict law & order policy of Rotterdam. The system automatically shuts down after 6pm and is not usable before 8am the next morning preventing users from writing drunken mails or browsing offensive content outside of office hours.  The GTK-theme is adapted to the city’s (Gemeente Rotterdam) corporate design.

Why get a new Mac and just upgrade your computer, when you can get Macbuntu and upgrade your entire computer experience? ”Think different similar” is the slogan we have chosen for the most glossy Ubuntu modification we could probably think of. The whole GUI and even the start-up screen are disguised as a fresh OS X install. Applications such as Finder, Dock and Spotlight are neatly integrated into the overall look’n'feel of this distribution; guaranteeing that the user will never miss their rich-user experience.

Macbuntu is a pun on Ubuntu’s endless aims of pushing its graphical representation into a fancy dress. The mimetic transformation is another strong example of how one can seamlessly and simply change any graphical attribute within a standard Ubuntu distribution. “Feels like being home”, was one of the comments we’ve received from a Mac-enthusiast.

AAbuntu renders the whole graphical appearance of the operating system into colourful ASCII code. It focuses exclusively on graphical representation by the means of characters rather than individual pixels. Through the abstraction of visual layers of the standard operating system AAbuntu uncovers new patterns of user interactions and enhances the perception for text-aficionados.

AAbuntu is a homage to all the netart projects done in 90s involving aalib; a library which turns any image into an ASCII artwork.

AAbuntu “down-samples” modern and fancy graphics back to puristic and classic text-mode. Yet, this obfuscating transformation is useful – it allows to run AAbuntu on outdated, underpowered/embedded computer hardware.  As well it enables one to access full desktop environment via a faint remote connection.

Suicidebuntu represents the open source release of the popular web2.0 suicidemachine project. After a tedious journey of hosting this service on our server and several juridical problems caused by Facebook lawyers, we decided to offer a downloadable release of the suicidemachine that offers a client-side execution of this deletion service.

Suicidebuntu brings you all the functions which were offered by the web2.0 suicidemachine after its launch. This distribution lets you delete all your energy sucking social-networking profiles, kill your fake virtual friends, and completely do away with your Web2.0 alterego.  Sign out forever!

“The Suicide Machine is a clever Web site out of the Netherlands. Like taking that first step off the Golden Gate Bridge, once you click to start the process on the Suicide Machine, you can’t stop it!”

Los Angeles Times, January 2010

Play it your way. Shufflebuntu automates most of the everyday tasks a computer is scheduled for and lets you experience all its applications in a refreshingly random way. The Linux random number generator is part of the kernel of any Linux distribution and is based on generating randomness from entropy of Operating System events.

For Shufflebuntu we are using this feature to confront the user with a truly autonomous system. This self-operating-system starts and ends applications unpredictably while scheduled system tasks are being triggered spontaneously. Hence, Shufflebuntu runs on its own and doesn’t need continual input from its user.

Artists have been intrigued by the nature of the perception, and by optical effects and illusions, for many centuries. In Crunchbuntu [crunch as in crunching chips] the screen is interlaced in such a way that the interface is only clearly visible while eating crunchy food; i. e. your skull must be vibrating in order to see the image. The interaction between this operating system and its user fulfills itself; a desktop experience that not only entails a physical effect in the form of flickering light but affects the entire consciousness.

Crunchbuntu plays with the viewers sensory premises and makes us see things through the active involvement of the user and thus provides a critique of consciousness. The perception of this distribution is highly experimental and varies from person to person as well as it depends on the food you eat (we’ve reached pretty good results with cashew and other types of nuts). This effect can also be achieved by shaking your head in the right critical fusion frequency or by using an electrical toothbrush.

Banja (“Banya”, “Баня”) is a typical Slavic word for sauna. Banjabuntu employs a similar, high-temperature idea and turns your computer into a heat generator. Numerous, resource-hungry applications and programs are set to run parallel next to your familiar desktop environment. These heat-making applications load 100% of your computer hardware – processor (up to 16 cores supported), hard disks (SSD is supported but much less heat-efficient), graphics and wifi cards; this makes your computer produce warmth as if it was loaded with red-glowing coals!

Beside being useful during cold winter days, Banjabuntu is a great stress-testing suit for all computer components. Next time before acquiring a new computer check first how it handles Banjabuntu!

ATTENTION: DO NOT INSTALL UNLESS ABSOLUTELY SURE!

Dadabuntu follows the route laid down by Hugo Ball, Tristan Tzara, Johannes Baadel, Marcel Duchamp and others involved into anti-art, anti-bourgeois and otherwise anarchistic movement of Dadaism.

Dadabuntu is an anti-OS OS – by all means, it liberates its user from the burden of modern-life computing.

Dadabuntu provides an ultimate data abstraction concluded in the absence of any data. It is an abstraction superior to any other possible abstraction.

Dadabuntu removes meaningless and ridicules any information that is not a boolean zero. The new surface provided by a ground zero is the ultimate beginning of true data.

Your Data is Dada

Once the installation process has begun it won’t end until Dadabuntu had completely wiped out any information stored in the computer. It fills any writable medium found to be attached with zeros – hard disks, USB-sticks, RW-CD/DVD/BR, ZIP-disks, magnetic disks or tapes and even reusable punch-cards – all storage mediums will be reset to their once original factory state of an absolute zero.

ATTENTION: DO NOT INSTALL UNLESS ABSOLUTELY SURE!

Dadabuntu is very useful if you would like to sell an old computer or hard disk without risking your privacy and exposure of personal data. Once installed, Dadabuntu removes any information including all personal traces ever contained on a storage medium.

Uberbuntu is a version of Ubuntu that contains … everything. Every program and every package available in Ubuntu repositories is installed and functional (with the exception of just a few due to unresolvable dependency problems).

All programs that come with a graphical interface (GUI) are linked in the Applications menu (over 5000 entries). The rest of the classic GNU software is available from the command line. Uberbuntu is a very unique computer OS – because it contains all possible software it is compatible with any other (existing or not) software and OS. Uberbuntu is the most future-proof Operating System.

This 80Gb distribution also is a true “swiss army-knife” in the world of Ubuntu. Uberbuntu can serve as a repository – you can use it to install and maintain other Ubuntu systems without any Internet access.

Are you a procrastinator? Procrastinationbuntu can do the job of procrastinating even better – it can open web browser for you, automatically switch pages, click random links, remind you to check new posts on social networks, write some comments, answer old emails, make a coffee or tea and much more.

For moments when you feel like doing nothing, Procrastinationbuntu can help you archive it to the fullest potential. All useless and unnecessary things that one can do behind a computer are completely automated! You might even explore something new on Wikipedia or get in contact with a random person – all without having to move a finger.

In some households, a computer running Procrastinationbuntu can even replace a TV!
No need to spend money on expensive cable or be confronted with the choice of TV channels. Just run this system and watch your world unfold (and important tasks will fail … tomorrow)!

Rebuntu is an illustration of a system making decisions by itself, committing to self-maintenance and self-destruction. The system is continuously reloading a copy of itself within itself until the memory runs out. When no free memory is left the system needs to decide which one of the copies of itself it shall kill in order to reproduce itself again, again and again…

- He’s not any kind of program, Sark. He’s a User!

Rebuntu is an OS intervention. Its rather ironic tone sets an accent on the fact that machines and Operating Systems are incapable of “rational” or “human-like” thinking and thus shall not be ultimately relied on.

Mondrianbuntu operates in the colorful domain of non-representational user interfaces. It deconstructs the familiar WIMP (window, icon, menu, pointer) model of a modern UI and turns it into a computer-aided, primitivistic painting – a heritage of Piet Mondrian. This painting is not as static as it might look – every mouse click generates a new graphical structure, transposing the viewer into a new dimension of Neoplasticism.

Mondrianbuntu places its user into a simplified and harmonized world of geometrical utopia. Not being destructed by taskbars, widgets, applets, menus and other UI-annoyances the user finds peace and solitude while working with this system.
Seemingly constrained, Mondrianbuntu environment provides head-space and stimulates imagination – values traded for anxiety and hecticness of contemporary user-interface implementations.

On a more practical level, Mondrianbuntu is a very versatile tool for system administrators and programmers; no other UI is so well-suited to run multiple command-line applications at the same time! Thanks to the tiling model, the applications never overlap allowing the user to have a full picture of what’s going on the screen, at any time.

And once a new working environment is needed – it’s just one click away.

Lowresbuntu is a system to be installed on your smart phone! Well, not really. Rather it is a simulation of a GUI (graphical user interface) grown out of proportions. The result of such a transformatin is a very self-centric system – most of the display “real-estate” is occupied by knobs, buttons and other control levers of the system itself. Subsequently, user data – documents, images and applications simply have no place there; User data becomes suppressed by the Interface.

Instead of letting you work with your content Lowresbuntu insists on providing the Interface; all despite the fact of it [the Interface] being useless when there is no content to work with. The system which originally was created to support productive workflow of its user, turns into a narcissistic Domina.

Lowresebuntu demonstrates and ridicules the tendency observed in contemporary User Interface design when the level of abstraction reaches a point at which the Interface fails to enhance usability; instead it patronizes its user, often to the degree of prevailing over the user’s desires.

Tempestbuntu uses your computer monitor to send out AM radio signals which you can hear through your radio. Erik Thiele provided the software “tempest_for_eliza” which is used for this distribution. Once booted, your screen will display certain black and white patterns. Those are programmed in a peculiar way. If you tune an AM radio into the 10Mhz range and put it close to the monitor, you’ll be able to hear some music.

Tempestbuntu is suited for educational purposes and to showcase potential security threats caused by electromagnetic information leaks.

Muslimbuntu is an out-of-the-box Linux system which is spiced up with Islamic flavour. Through a precise geo-location acquisition and database mapping, the exact prayer times are determined and being played at maximum volume settings. Your desktop is transforming into “burka-mode” and all interface elements are inaccessible during prayer times.

Muslimbuntu is perfect for Muslims who speak and read Arabic. Many useful language tools are pre-installed, right-to-left writing direction is a system default and is fully supported.

Comparatively strict and dogmatic life-style is depicted through scheduled events that take place on the Desktop of Muslimbuntu; it is a useful companion for any contemporary Muslim – automatic reminders will keep you aligned to the religious calendar, visual esthetic will help to preserve the unique style. Additionally – prayers collection can be updated via a RSS subscription.

Whitecubebuntu is designed for curators and the like. It lets you emerge into a full whitecube Operating System by rendering the graphical user elements into a white void with slight grey shades for menu bars and contrast text. Keep tilting the screen in unorthodox positions to navigate through this system. This reflection on the white cube phenomenon itself reminds us not to fall into precipitate judgements regarding the validity of the White Cube as a given example of ‘good contemporary art gallery’.

Whitecubebuntu is expanding the curatorial vacuum of the world of famous commercial galleries into conceptual software-art which eventually will unite art, life and software; very much in the same tradition as “expanding cinema” from the 1970s was required for a new consciousness. It works only on Apple computers!