Grml is an operating system

Operating system

An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

 based on Debian

Debian

Debian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software primarily under the GNU General Public License along with other free software licenses. Debian GNU/Linux, which includes the GNU OS tools and Linux kernel, is a popular and influential...

. It is primarily designed to run from a Live CD

Live CD

A live CD, live DVD, or live disc is a CD or DVD containing a bootable computer operating system. Live CDs are unique in that they have the ability to run a complete, modern operating system on a computer lacking mutable secondary storage, such as a hard disk drive...

, but can be made to run from a USB flash drive

USB flash drive

A flash drive is a data storage device that consists of flash memory with an integrated Universal Serial Bus interface. flash drives are typically removable and rewritable, and physically much smaller than a floppy disk. Most weigh less than 30 g...

, as well. Grml aims to be well-suited for sysadmins and other users of text tools. It includes an X server

X Window System

The X window system is a computer software system and network protocol that provides a basis for graphical user interfaces and rich input device capability for networked computers...

 along with a few minimalist window managers such as wmii

Wmii

wmii is a tiling window manager for X11. It supports classic and tiling window management with extended keyboard, mouse, and filesystem based remote control...

, fluxbox

Fluxbox

Fluxbox is a stacking window manager for the X Window System, which started as a fork of Blackbox 0.61.1, with the same aim to be lightweight. Its user interface has only a taskbar, a pop-up menu accessible by right-clicking on the desktop, and minimal support for graphical icons...

, and openbox

Openbox

Openbox is a free window manager for the X Window System, licensed under the GNU General Public License. Originally derived from Blackbox 0.65.0 , Openbox has now been totally rewritten in the C programming language and since version 3.0 is not based upon any code from Blackbox.Openbox is designed...

 in order to use the graphical programs like Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. , Firefox is the second most widely used browser, with approximately 25% of worldwide usage share of web browsers...

 which are included in the distribution.

Features

In addition to the sysadmin tools, security and network related software, data recovery and forensic tools, editors, shells, and many text tools included with grml, the distribution focuses on accessibility by providing kernel support for speakup and software like brltty, emacspeak, and flite.

Another feature Grml is its use of the Z Shell as the default login shell. The customized zsh configuration used by Grml can be retrieved from the project's repository.

Since early 2009, Grml ISOs come with MirOS bsd4grml, a minimal MirOS BSD flavour. After the release of Grml “Lackdose-Allergie” 2009.05, daily ISOs and later releases, such as Grml “Hello-Wien” 2009.10, use the manifold-boot technology to provide ISOs that can be written directly to a USB stick, CF/SD card, hard disc, etc. and are immediately bootable. Since Grml 2010.12 the ISOLINUX loader is used in all cases by default, providing a consistent menu.

Further reading

• Chirurgisches Besteck - Live-Werkzeugkasten für die Shell (Author: Michael Prokop, article in German)