Short answers, pulled from the story.
CRUX is a lightweight x86-64 Linux distribution targeted at experienced Linux users. It is delivered through a tar.gz-based package system with BSD-style initscripts and is not based on any other Linux distribution.
Per Lidén chose the name CRUX because it "sounded cool" and ends in the letter X, placing it alongside other Unix-flavored names like IRIX, Ultrix, Mac OS X, and IBM AIX. The fact that crux is the Latin word for "cross" played no part in the naming decision.
CRUX has no graphical installer. Users boot the kernel from a CD or diskette and then complete the entire installation through shell commands, including partitioning the disk with fdisk or cfdisk, creating file systems, compiling a new kernel, and installing a bootloader.
CRUX uses a ports system similar to BSD-based operating systems. Packages consist of a Pkgfile shell script, required patches, md5sum hashes, and a footprint file. They are compiled and installed using the prt-get frontend, with source code fetched directly from upstream project websites.
CRUX 1.0 was released in December 2002. The project has continued releasing steadily since then, with version 3.8 arriving in April 2025.
Simone Rota, reviewing CRUX for OSNews, noted that because users compile their own kernel and modules, the hardware compatibility list is essentially the same as the Linux kernel itself. On the tested release, that was kernel version 2.4.21.