Creating a Linux Distro


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Thread: Creating a Linux Distro

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jun 2010
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    Exclamation Creating a Linux Distro

    I have been using Linux OS since 4 years and I'm very interested to know how to create a Linux Distro. I have heard about LFS.
    I would just like to know, what do I need to create a Linux Distro?
    I'm not a programmer, if I have to create a Linux Distro, what programming languages do I need to know.
    And also, how many people are required and how much time will it take to create a Linux Distro?

    Thanks in Advance.

  2. #2
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    "I was pulled over for speeding today. The officer said, "Don't you know
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  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by CCTC View Post
    I would just like to know, what do I need to create a Linux Distro?
    I think the number one thing you need is a goal or a purpose for it. What will it do that any existing distro doesn't already do? If not, its useless. I've also heard that LFS is the way to go to truly building your own.
    Linux user #367409

  4. #4
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    Jun 2010
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    Thanks for the reply, infiniphunk.

    I have already set up a goal for the distro. Now I will just get involved with a development team first to learn more and then create a different distro all from scratch with LFS

  5. #5
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    You don't really need any programming languages to create your own distro, but learning Bash would be very useful since a lot of the startup scripts use it. You may get some benefit from doing LFS, it is certainly a good educational tool, but if you were just planning to do something simple like creating your own custom Ubuntu version, there'll be a lot covered by LFS that you just won't need.

    Just to satisfy my curiosity, what is the goal for your distro?
    Last edited by retsaw; 06-10-2010 at 06:27 AM.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
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    My own Linux Distro is Kiara (Kiara Is A Recursive Acronym) , which is a live CD based on Slax, which in turn is based on Slackware.

    http://www.thekiarablog.blogspot.com

    It's been downloaded at least 150 times that I know of. I haven't been able to work on it lately because of ISP problems, but that's been solved, so I'll be releasing a NEW version any day now.

    I don't exactly agree that "if your new distro doesn't do something unique, it's useless", I mean, if it does what every Linux distro does, that's pretty useful, right? But still, I can name three things that are unique about Kiara, and I'm damn proud of them.

    1. Kiara is the only live CD that I know of that comes with preset mount points for manual mounting of hard drives. It's a really simple idea, just some empty directories added to the filesystem just below / (root):

    /1 /2 /3 /4 /backup /files

    With most CDs, I have to add them with mkdir, but with Kiara, they're already there. This facilitates:

    2. The KIARA SETUP TOOLS! One of the things I love about SLAX is that it automatically and by default breaks the biggest rule ever, violates the holiest of holies. You are never ever supposed to run X while running as root, but Slax just goes ahead and does that by default, right from jump street. This is a great opportunity for a nonprogrammer like me, a guy who doesn't C++ from Sanskrit, to use Konqueror and some basic shell commands to create simple GUI tools to simplify the process of setting up your Kiara system , creating a normal user, and getting the hell out of that insecure environment, the Root Desktop. One of my favorite parts is a GUI that manually mounts your internal harddrive to a preset mount point. I'll try to get some screenshots up later to demonstrate.

    3. Kiara is completely dedicated to KDE 3. I created Kiara because I was tired of waiting for whatever distro I was using to drop the KDE4 boom on me. Kiara's mission is to continue to run KDE3 by default, by any means necessary, of as long as necessary. These days, I use KDE4 quite a bit, and I rather like it, but Kiara's commitment to KDE3.

    Besides being Unique, I can think of a few ways in which Kiara is definitely sort of unusual. unusual, Kiara is one of a handful of LIVE CDs I know that has emacs installed by default.

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