Anyone made their own linux distro?

What does it take?

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I haven't done it myself but you could always work through a LFS install:

linuxfromscratch.org/

Not exactly making a distro so much as combining elements from other distros. If you want to make your own package manager and other applications like that it obviously takes a bit more work.

Really, just want a distro with certain software installed by default (preconfigured the way I want it). How easy is that?

Gentoo or Arch?

If you're not satisfied with you could take a look at NixOS.

Patience and your own servers, if we're talking about a real distro with userbase, forum, devs, packagers and so on.


This OTOH is pretty easy. Take an existing LiveCD image, extract it, mount its filesystem, use chroot and edit the config files in /etc then make an ISO out of it using mkisofs or similar. I admit I haven't done this in a while so it's probably even easier to do nowadays with new tools.

That's what I was looking for, thanks.

How about if I want, say, Firefox to be preconfigured with certain addons by default? Is that possible?

cont'd
To be specific, you use chroot is for installing/uninstalling packages as you would normally, but remember to mount /sys and /proc for that to work.

From what I remember, default user settings are in /etc/skel. Basically copy your Firefox profile there and it will be copied to the live user with addons and all. But as I said, this is how it used to be years ago, nowadays paths and tools may be different.

I think the hardest part would be keeping track of security fixes in various packages. Although It should be possible to automate (at least for common programs like firefox). I suppose if you went with a rolling release, you'd try to be uptodate all the time, but then suffer inevitable breakages.

Look at that image. Each of these distributions has thousands of people actively working on it. But they're not actually developing software: they just package and distribute the same exact software in slightly different operating systems which are just different enough to be incompatible but not different enough to be distinct from a technical standpoint. Think about how many man-hours have been wasted because Linux people think that this kind of duplication of effort is necessary.

What GNU/Linux sorely needs is some integration. It should be developed like the BSDs are, as a "base system" to install additional software on top of.

Remember what Rob Pike said: "Microsoft succeeds not because it’s good, but because there’s only one of them."

The base system is GNU

Maybe the duplication isn't necessary, but the current distros simply SUCK. That's why I wanted to make my own. They install too much shit by default, and don't even bother to configure those programs properly. Salix comes the closest (so I use it) but it has some flaws. What I wanted to do was to modify Salix to include some software that I think it lacks, and replace some software with what I think is better.

Just write a gentoo installation script.
If you want more control, or a different package manager / basic tools, write a lfs script.

Is not a script the best way to build what you need?

...

That's not how BSD works. *BSD (OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD) systems are not at all interchangeable.

It has a kernel, the kernel is the Linux (well, Linux-libre) kernel

Make a custom Debian distribution. I think they call them 'blends' now. You can reuse a lot of their security support and maintenance that way. For packages you need to change rather than just select, you can set up similar project infrastructure to Debian's. I use reprepro to maintain a handful of customized packages for my company's firmware, and use a custom kernel that is just patches against Debian's. Be warned that customized Debian kernels for single targets require some degree of autism to manage.
All the goo required for how you want your distro to run is available, like liveCD support, but I find it easier to just write the initramfs scripts myself as it's only like 20 lines vs an ocean of config settings. I strongly recommend extlinux over grub if you're just on x86 as it avoids the nightmare of getting grub to find boot when the drives names might differ.

it's going to be
systemd-apt or systemd-packaged or something stupid.

Linux is a kernel.

I never said they were. They’re actual operating systems with distinct codebases. Debian, OpenSUSE, Fedora, Arch, etc. are not separate operating systems.

eh it takes distributing whatever wallpaper you installed... oh yeah and a logo.


LFS is just a book.

Microsoft succeeds due to marketing, professional easy to use bloated software support, paid hardware support, coming preinstalled with every new system and having built a culture around it for decades

Sure distro integration might be a good thing but adjust your expectations. It'll never surpass Microsoft.


No they don't. You haven't even looked into installing Arch or a debian minimal install.