Making own distro of linux

[Dude500]

I was thinking of making my own distro of linux, I want to make my own distro becuase none of the other distro's seem to fit my needs. I need a fast and easy to use linux, I also need a good emulator to run window programs. I have used wine, but it does not run every windows program, I would like to make a windows emulator that could all windows programs. Also, I would make my distro of linux small. It would also be powerful. Flexible and all that other stuff. If there are any linux distros that are similar to what I need I would like to hear about them.

[Ethyriel]

Since you seem willing to heavily configure things, you might give Arch a try. Here's an experience article which got published at OS News today.

It sounds like you'd be most happy with a distro that lets you build your package set, so something like Gentoo, Debian, Slackware, Rubyx, Onebase, or again, Arch would be up your alley. Check Distrowatch if you haven't already.

If you really want to build your own distro from scratch, check Linux From Scratch (LFS), but remember it has no package management to keep you up to date. In my opinion, that makes it a good learning experience, or a good system if you only rarely need to update software. Otherwise it would likely get old fast.

[valan]

http://linuxfromscratch.org

[bryansmith]

You could also try modifying a distro you like already to the point where it suits you...thus making your own distro based off of another. As long as the software you use allows you to redistribute it, go ahead and distribute it.

Bryan

[Dude500]

They all seem like good ideas, but making a distro is still kinda of hard

[jaboua]

If you read the guide you find here: http://lfs.scarlet.be/lfs/downloads/stable/ it all gets easyer... I'm planning to do it myself as soon as I have time... Gonna finish up the last needed apps on my gentoo-install first

[Fallen Angel]

Yeah, I think LFS is good too, I'm planning to build my own distro on summer.

[Dude500]

Well I will have an idea for a linux distro sometime soon

[HumanPrototype]

How hard is it to build a base distro which you can easily build custom distros from? For example, a friend wants an os for a custom media centre pc he is building and asks how good linux would be. you take the base system and add the required apps to give him a system designed for his needs.

Ideally it would include a package manager (apt seems the best choice - yum takes too long downloading the headers and has no gui), X, a window manager (set so you can install the window manager depending on the system - so for old systems you can get a lighter WM like fluxbox or icewm), and a standard directory tree so its easy for users to edit settings manually?

Then from the base system develop a set of "hats" for it to wear to suit it for a purpose (like the media center, a gaming pc, a office workstation etc). As all the hats work from the base system they are compatible so packages for one work with another. Also a set of config tools could be developed which work on the base so they are universal accross the "hats".

What do you all think? Where would I start if I wanted to attempt this?

[Ethyriel]

Human Prototype

All you really need is a roll your own style distro like Debian, Arch, or Gentoo (or Rubyx, or Caos I think, or Onebase...). They'll give you everything you talked about without the trouble of building the base and getting it to work with the package manager.

Then you can just write a script to sync all the packages you want for various systems. With rolling currents you could make a CD with various package groups, but it would be rather pointless if you'll be staying up to date.