Hi Julius, On Mon, 2009-01-05 at 03:35 -0800, Julius wrote: > Hello, I need help on how to create a Linux dist. All answers acerpted thanks
Ok, lets start with the broad brush stuff and go from there. What is the purpose of your distro? This is the fundamental question. If you don't already have an answer to this question, give up now. What is the size of the potential userbase? This again is a pretty important question. This help you build the business case for the distro. Even though this might be a spare time hobby project it still needs a business case of some form. What alternatives already exist? You should have spent several days on this. What are their names? What are their strengths and weaknesses? Run each one for an hour or 2 in a VM and see how they go. What is their community like? Why not join an existing distro team and help them? If the answer is "cos I want to do it all myself" then you are in for a rude shock - building a distro isn't a 10 min job. It takes time and understanding. If you just want to change a couple of default packages on a CD, that isn't really building a distro - it is remixing one. Most of the popular distros have tools for doing this. Sorry if I haven't given you a stack of links and said great come back tomorrow with a download link. If you are serious about building a distro, then look at what is already around, in most cases you are better off joining an existing community and building a remix. If you think that you can handle version control, build infrastructure, release management, marketing, security patches, support, community building and working with 100s of upstream projects by yourself then go for it build your own distro, even if it is based off an existing distro. Ubuntu is different to a lot of other distros. Mark was able to use his cash to hire some of the smartest FOSS developers to help build his vision. He was also able to build off the massive base of package provided by Debian and use their tools to make package management simple. Mark was already involved in the FOSS community - he knew what he was signing up for. If you have that kind of money, I am willing to consider work for you :) (as I am sure others on this list are too). If you have made it this far - great! I haven't completely turned you off. Here is my suggestion. Look at building a remix (or a few remixes). Learn how to just put things together a little differently. Next start to learn package building. Start with recompiling existing packages. Find one you really like and join the team that packages it. Now you have got this far you can start running your own package repo. Then start building CDs with your packages and the official builds - watch the licensing requirements for source code and trademarks. Once you are at this point you should be able to work out what to do next :) Good luck with your project. Cheers Dave -- ubuntu-au mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-au
