New Distribution Idea Part1 (Kernel)

[rajamohan]

Dear forum members,

I am in the process of assembling a new distro which is light weight appealing, easy to use and less number of application. In general a Linux flavor with only nice desktop, task bar with a launch menu and the whole distro will fit into 50 - 100Mb and this will be a base for any people who wish to create there own distro.

The application can be added from repositories, which will be maintained by community and myself.

Despite this idea I find difficulties, where to start, I have a good knowledge of software and also the piece of software like kernel, Driver modules, Libraries, X window, Desktop environment, Linux applications.

So I am seeking the help part by parts In this part I am in need of clarification of Linux kernel. The list required are given below

1. Hardware & software requirement
2. How to compile the kernel
3. Load the kernel to the HDD, Flash or bootable CD

Feel free to provide your suggestion, critics and help, thanks in advance

Part2 will be hardware detection and configuring the kernel.

Rajamohan

[techieMoe]

Creating a new Linux distribution is a ton of work. The first thing I would do is re-evaluate whether or not you really need to do this. Do you mean to tell me that out of the thousands of Linux distributions available today (including ones you build yourself like Linux from Scratch) you couldn't find a single one that worked for you?

Next, you need to more clearly define exactly what it is you want your distribution to do. It has to have a specific and unique purpose. So far the guidelines you've put out there already apply to several distributions, namely Puppy Linux and Damn Small Linux. It could also apply to Linux from Scratch. You need to look very closely at what's missing from those distributions that you need for yours.

If you have no experience working with Linux source code, you will also need to find a team of experienced Linux developers to help you maintain and develop your kernel and applications. You will not be able to learn everything there is to know about the kernel and have a release within the next 5 years.

To get a good idea what you're in for, I'd suggest installing Linux From Scratch, which will take you through the steps of compiling your own kernel and building your own system from the ground up.

Welcome to Linux From Scratch!

[rajamohan]

Dear techieMoe,

I had used fedora, opensuse, ubuntu, pclinuxos, vlos, yoper, sidux, vector, puppy, arch, all this distro are based on some purpose, Though the distribution are becoming more usable, they lack some key points like
1. Not keeping it simple
2. Not utilizing the full resource like processor speed, memory, graphics hardware
3. packing all underutilized tools
4. No out of box platform for developer
5. Not providing a standard set of libraries

Example DSL is light weight but not appealing (no good graphics icons, layout, etc) and not usable for a common man who is not used to computer (usually a retail shop owner), If I need to get a good finished layout or graphics user need to go with low level or configuration.

Similarly, Fedora, opensuse are good but are resource hungry and have so many other service running behind, so to tune it to my taste I need to again go through a learning curve

So I felt there should be a core system with only base library required and system should support out of box JAVA and .NET (mono) so developer can deploy there application Java or .Net .

The user should easily compile or specify the details of the hardware like chipset, graphics card, wireless card and generate a iso boot files which make a graphical system with network connection to internet from where they can add additional feature or software which should be easy for them

The links you provided is much useful, I hope the search for the part 1 is almost solved.

Thanks techieMoe

[Agent-X]

Make it work on a bunch of old commodores and create some parallel processing programs.

[rajamohan]

Zenwalk, seem interesting, I am downloading it, I hope to test it by today

[rajamohan]

Zenwalk, had done a great job to make it useful for all kind of user, but not on the performance point of view in my amd 4800+ dual core system it performed much slower. all the packages are compiled to i486 (to run well on older PC too)

I found another distro austrumi it uses enligtened desktop with much low footage of 60MB and good network detection (wired), default Nvidia support, good performance, mostly I plan to take this distro as my initial distro to start with