Slashdot Mirror
Making Your Own Linux
jjr writes: "Have you ever wanted to make your own Linux distro? Now at www.linuxfromscratch.org
you can teach yourself how Linux works and even make your own Linux distro from the info they have at this site." This looks like a cool resource especially if your school or place of employ (or coven, biker gang, hunter-gatherer tribe, etc.) wants to create a site- or affinity-specific distribution.
There's been a Linux from Scratch HOWTO for a while now, very interesting reading.
Pablo Nevares, "the freshmaker".
Pablo Nevares, "the freshmaker".
I can think of a gzillion. Custom network, X, shell, and software package configuration all pre-done, kernels set up for particular machines or combinations of peripherals, stuff you *don't* want to put in every desktop machine but is typically included in the other distros (like httpd, ftpd ...). The advantage goes up and up the more times you have to do it. Makes sense for a site where you have to administer > 50 machines. You aren't missing anything at all, really, it's just a matter of reducing the number of steps needed to configure a box.
I am quite civilized, and I should be brought a beer immediately. -- Bruce Sterling
Now this is something I have wanted to do for a long time, but did not know where to start. Now if there only was some way to easily add national language support for many languages (Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese etc.).
I know slangsoft (http://www.slangsoft.com) has a library you can link with your java applications to accomplish this. But there are a few drawbacks to this toolkit.
1
this toolkit is a commercial product and therefore hard or impossible to integrate with a linux distribution whithout violating the GPL (correct me if I am wrong).
2
It only works with java.
3
It only works for webapplications
Wouldn't it be neat if there was some sort of an open source alternative? I think this would help spread linux usage worldwide because people can have an operating system in their native language. Maybe Slangsoft can be persuaded to open source their product.
There are 10 kinds of people. Those who understand binary and those who don't
This is pretty useful for web hosting companies and the like, as they get to customize every aspect of it and make it as secure and reliable as possible.
I'm currently discussing this with my boss, but there's one thing that's missing from that howto: how to burn the new distro onto CD and how to install it on other computers. That is the thing which is preventing us from implementing this reliably (there is always the possibility of using a boot disk and copying it using NFS, but that isn't for the faint of heart.)
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
What is the main reason you'd like to assemble your own Linux distro?
- It's a good learning experience for people who want to know exactly how the different parts fit together.
- It allows total control over what you put into your system.
- The standard Linux distributions are too bloated for my tastes.
- I just like re-inventing the wheel, especially square ones.
- 'cos RedHat sucks.
- 'cos CmdrTaco rules.
- Yuck. I prefer to stick with an existing distro.
- What, you mean anybody from highschool can actually assemble their own Linux system?!! God forbid! This is a security hazard! We better report this to the FBI!
.Poll Mastah
I heard Rob was going to release SlashLinux after reading this site, but then somebody asked him about it so he delayed its release 24 hours.
It seems to be suffering from a little bit of the /. effect, so I put up a mirror of the actual document at http://www.pdavis.cx/HOWTO/LFS-BOOK/in dex.html. This not the whole site, just the document (the development version).
This looks like a cool resource especially if your school or place of employ (or coven, biker gang, hunter-gatherer tribe, etc.) wants to create a site- or affinity-specific distribution.
I'm employed, I'm wiccan and I'm a biker. Looks like I'm going to be very busy creating distros!
HH
Yellow tigers crouched in jungles in her dark eyes.
Yellow tigers crouched in jungles in her dark eyes.
She's just dressing, goodbye windows, tired starlings.
I've been building a "fast install" of Linux based on Slackware 7.0 with many of my local mods (including a total rewrite of the sysinit rc scripts). The full install takes less than 8 minutes (when started from a HD based rescue partition) which is faster than some systems can even get booted up. Smaller configurations should go even faster. And this even includes repartitioning and reformatting. The configuration to be installed is entirely separate from the configuration of the system that serves the installation.
There is no concensus on what proper configuration management tools is, yet. What I am aiming for is less need to actually do any configuration. Right now the configuration I actually do involves editing files because there are no configuration tools around that know how to configure a collection of modularized installation feature groups as I have now. For those who prefer menu and/or graphical based central configuration, such tools will be needed. Since I'm not one who uses such tools, I would be a poor choice to program that part of the project. Maybe you could do that part?
I'm also currently looking at basing this from Debian 2.2. I would have to figure out how to change dpkg/apt so it can install into the installation repository instead of the host system, or run on the target machines and obtain configuration preferences from the central machine (e.g. what to install, etc).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Bryce