A Lubbock LUG Custom Distribution

Community Outreach
1

We started a project like this (and by we, I mean one of the members who hasn’t been to a meeting in a long time) when the group was first forming.

I think it’s a great idea, and over the past few weeks have been looking into and experimenting with several options to try an accomplish a bery basic, customized distro.

I’ve made some headway with each method, but continually hit barriers that make the effort involved in the “simpler” methods lead me more toward the Linux From Scratch Project instead. I think this might be a great group project for us to take on here and there. It would be nice to get a customized distro built that we could then burn to CD / DVD, or put on some inexpensive USB drives to give out at any community gatherings we attend or host.

One of the things, once the base system is created, that I’d definitely like help with is deciding what applications we should include in our base distro.

To date:

  • I don’t know what base distro we will use
  • I don’t know how long it will take

I have tried solutions including:

  • Debian Live Build (error after error after error after error using their exact tutorial online - so un-maintained documentation.
  • Remastersys (no longer supported - hard to even find)
  • Ubuntu Customization Kit (just locks up and does nothing)

So, I’m looking into Linux From Scratch. It looks daunting, but may be worth the effort in multiple ways.

I’m looking for feedback from the group as to whether this is something we would like to pursue. I don’t mind doing the learning and sharing at the meetings what I’ve done and acomplished (if anything).

Thoughts?

2

Brian,
Last week, when I was at SCALE 13X, I sat in a SUSE presentation and they were talking about SUSE Studio was an easy way to create a customize distro. I haven’t looked into to it yet, so I am not sure if it is only offered in the Enterprise SUSE or if you can use it in OpenSUSE. They talked about how easy it is to create a customized ISO and make changes on the fly. They also made a comment that no other distro can do this like they can.

I think it is a great idea for a project.
Let me know I I can help.
Terry

3

Excellent. I’ll look into it and see how it looks. I appreciate it. Would be great to see a post from you about all of the thins you learned at SCALE @tbaugh.

4

I was planning on review the event at our next meeting, but I know you will not be there.

I will post a couple ideas that I got from SCALE 13X to the forum.