Tools to roll your own distribution

[Posted February 8, 2006 by ris]

Creating live Linux CDs has become a fairly common pastime. Many of the distributions added to the distributions list in the past year are live CDs tailored to specific purposes. Many people start with a live CD that they like and then add and subtract packages to create the CD of their dreams. Debian-based KNOPPIX remains one of the most popular distributions to use as a starting point.

Many major vendors will create a live CD to showcase a current snapshot of a release, and often a live CD is used to showcase some other software package. IBM developerWorks takes a look at how to distribute your software packages on a live Linux CD.

The Slackware-based SLAX-Live CD is another popular starting point. SLAX and many variants use shell scripts from the Linux Live project to tailor their favorite distribution into a live CD.

Canonical Ltd. created Launchpad, a suite of tools (some proprietary, some free) that allows Ubuntu Linux to be easily turned into Kubuntu, Edubuntu, and a host of other variants.

Fedora fans now have the Kadischi Fedora Live CD Project, which has recently created Fedora Core 5 Test 2 live CDs.

This is only a quick view of the growing number of tools for rolling your own Linux distribution.

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Tools to roll your own distribution

Posted Feb 9, 2006 2:42 UTC (Thu) by ewan (subscriber, #5533) [Link]

This is only a quick view of the growing number of tools for rolling your own Linux distribution.

No kidding :-) Not that this isn't welcome, but I'd greatly appreciate a more indepth version; maybe a 'Grumpy Editor' style comparative review. The have been times when I could really have used a customised live CD, but just haven't had the time to compare the options. A guide as to which are quickest/most flexible, which are good for small tweaks/total rebuilds, etc would be most useful.

Tools to roll your own distribution

Posted Feb 9, 2006 11:51 UTC (Thu) by smitty_one_each (subscriber, #28989) [Link]

distrowatch.com can be a useful source.

Tools to roll your own distribution

Posted Feb 10, 2006 17:56 UTC (Fri) by jabby (guest, #2648) [Link]

I'll second that motion.

I've been tempted to create special-purpose live CDs in the past, but I don't have the time to dig in and evaluate all the options. I know that Jon usually reviews more user-oriented categories of software for the "Grumpy Editor" series, but, as he just said himself, creating custom live CDs is becoming a real pastime.

Author

Posted Feb 10, 2006 17:58 UTC (Fri) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

Actually, I didn't say that - this lead was written by Rebecca Sobol, the Distributions page editor.

Tools to roll your own distribution

Posted Feb 16, 2006 10:44 UTC (Thu) by Segora (subscriber, #8209) [Link]

The idea has been picked up: http://lwn.net/Articles/171325/

Tools to roll your own distribution

Posted Feb 10, 2006 13:40 UTC (Fri) by alfille (subscriber, #1631) [Link]

I can recommend Damn Small Linux (http://www.damnsmalllinux.org)

It is Knoppix-based, actively developed, and has a base design of a 50MB graphical system, which makes adding your own code and posting an iso easy.