Build your own Linux distribution the easy way


Many people want to create their own Linux distro, perhaps for fun, perhaps to help them learn more about Linux, or perhaps because they have serious neds to solve. But the secret is this: it doesn't need to be hard to get the perfect distro for you. In fact, we've put together several ways that everyone - yes, even you - can make your own perfectly customised distro that suits your individual needs, applying as many or as few changes as you want - it's your Linux, your way.

Mainstream Linux distro developers have to make decisions that affect thousands of potential users. Should they include or remove a particular package? Should they apply a patch that may break compatibility with older machines? These matters are discussed fiercely in forums where trolls growl, flames burn and project leaders defend their decisions against an onslaught of dissidents.

But as an individual you have none of these issues. You can install and remove packages as and when you want to, and you can choose whether to install free or non-free software on your system. Why should you have to live with community decisions when you can make Linux work your way? However, the distribution you install will likely contain drivers and components that you don't really want or need on your system. Not only that, the software you always install on every new system has to be downloaded and installed separately each time, which is time-consuming and inconvenient.

That's where we come in. If you spend more time programming than you do playing games, you could replace the game packages with your favourite IDE. Or why not remove drivers for hardware you'll never need and save disk space? Those of you who found useful speed increases in our guide to making Linux faster could even apply those tweaks automatically from the install stage.

We've talked about how to build your own Linux distro from scratch before, but this time we're more interested in how to respin existing distros in various ways to get the end results you want, starting with the very easiest and ending with the hardest. Sound good? Let's go!

Ubuntu Customisation Kit

Difficulty: easy; Time required: 30 minutes; Customisation: low

If you're fed up with installing the same components each time you install Ubuntu, you'll find this is by far the easiest way to customise your install CD to include those packages. You'll need 5GB spare space on your hard drive, an Ubuntu install ISO and Ubuntu Customisation Kit installed from your package manager.

Once you have these resources available to you, simply launch UCK and follow the on-screen instructions. You'll find that most of the usual steps you would have had to take in the past to edit your live CD are all automated. Add this to the intuitiveness of the GUI and it's easy to see that anyone with the inclination can customise their copy of Ubuntu quickly and easily. You can edit Ubuntu as much or as little as you like (see boxout) but you'll be the one calling the shots.


Decisions, decisions

In our example (cunningly called BobBuntu) we installed the Medibuntu repository (see our tutorial on installing third-party software in Ubuntu for more insight on this) by opening the terminal from the dialog, and ran the following command:



apt-get update && apt-get install medibuntu-keyring && apt-get update

This third-party repository gives us access to all kinds of non-free software such as Adobe Reader, Skype and codecs for restricted media formats. Firing up Synaptic from the dialog should now show Skype packages available when you search for it (you may need to reload the list of packages).


You have free reign over your choice of packages to include or dismiss with Synaptic.


Once you have committed your changes by clicking on Apply you can then proceed to the build stage, which will produce your live CD image in the ~/tmp/remaster-new-files/ directory as lived.iso. When the build is complete you can burn this to CD or try the image out in a package such as VirtualBox to try your own personalised Ubuntu respin.



Ubuntu variants

Ubuntu is renowned for being easy to customise, and for this reason you'll see ridiculous numbers of variants dotted around the internet such as nUbuntu Xubuntu, and even a Satanic edition.

Some of these variants contain specific enhancements that add to the user experience. Ultimate Edition, for example, has extra tools such as GDM Maker and USplash Maker for users to create their own themes for the login and splash screens, and there's also a separate version specialised specifically for gamers with many titles pre-installed. The themes and the choice of installed applications (both free and non-free) are all considered in an effort to build 'the ultimate distro'.

Then there's the other end of the scale. Mundus OS, for instance, bundles Alien to install non-Ubuntu packages and a bespoke solution to mount .dmg files, and the rest is simply the vanilla Ubuntu ISO you can download from the community website.

Whether you want to add some radical way to distribute new packages or just an interesting wallpaper, you can change things as much or as little as you want. And who knows - if people like what you're doing you could soon see your efforts could be on Distrowatch in the not-so-distant future...

Whatever your needs, there's an Ubuntu variant for you.

Whatever your needs, there's an Ubuntu variant for you.

SUSE Studio

Difficulty: easy; Time required: 30 minutes; Customisation: medium


Even in beta this is a powerful, easy-to-use tool. The primary aim of the service is to enable you to generate virtual appliances using SUSE as a base for almost any purpose, but for our purposes we can also use it to create our own distro respin. From the outset there is a lot of potential to tailor your distro. You have a choice of which version of SUSE to use, and then you choose a base package that defines which desktop and hardware platform you're likely to be running your respin on. This could include choosing Gnome, KDE or LXDE as your desktop, or deciding that you're going to run it on a server. We recommend you choose OpenSUSE as your platform choice with this service as this tends to be more appropriate for home users, though you do have the option to choose SUSE Enterprise if you so wish.

Further options allow you to define which software is included or rejected using a search tool towards the bottom of the page, and you can also add repositories and custom RPMs by simply clicking on the relevant link. In each case the interface works logically as a browser-based service and is surprisingly intuitive.

Creating a SUSE Studio Appliance


Appliances: You can choose the desktop, hardware platform and version of SUSE here with a simple click in a radio button.

Choose a name

Choose a name: The current statistics about your machine are available in the left-hand pane and update with each choice you make.


Software: Here you can search for packages using the search tool to add or remove them, and also add additional repositories or upload your own RPMs by clicking the relevant links.


Configure: Feel free to change the nuts and bolts of your system, including which users are added, locale, startup applications and any scripts you want to include.


Design: In the same Configure tab you can choose a logo and a wallpaper, or upload your own. The windows at the bottom of the page show what your appliance will look like.


Build: We chose to build an ISO image, but you can also build virtual appliances for use with VMware Player and images to run your appliance from a memory stick.

Custom file storage

You can then customise the look and feel by selecting from the logos and wallpapers provided, or you can upload your own to give your respin that personal touch. Uploading files to include from the /home directory of your respin is also a painless exercise, which is an added bonus if the idea of transferring a large music collection every time you reinstall your distro fills you with dread.

The configuration options are also fairly extensive, enabling you to define your locale, whether you want 32- or 64-bit operation, any apps or services you would like to run at startup, and even a virtual hard drive if you are creating an appliance rather than a live CD. The flexibility and potential of the service is excellent, and is one of the easiest ways to create a SUSE respin customised to your particular needs.

And despite all the options available to you, SUSE Studio sets up appliances with a sensible set of defaults depending on which base package you choose, so you can simply make the changes in the areas you want to rather than worry about the formalities. SUSE Studio is no more difficult to use than any other standards-compliant website, and the navigation enables users to easily to cycle back and forth through the creation stages simply by clicking on the right tab.

An excellent service?

Compared with Ubuntu Customisation Kit SUSE Studio gives you far more freedom to customise your respin, especially as you can run the service on any host through a browser. However, if you don't have a particularly fast internet connection then downloading your finished appliance or live CD may be a major downside, which you'll feel especially keenly given that there are other offline tools that you can use to accomplish much the same purpose.

Even if you do have an internet connection fast enough to use this service, you may feel stymied by the fact that you can only create SUSE respins, though this is to be expected from a service that has been developed by Novell (which owns and maintains SUSE). However, the code behind SUSE Studio will be released under an open source licence once it moves out of beta, so we may yet see similar services spring up for rival distros in the not-so-distant future. SUSE is enterprise-hardened and well-supported by the Linux community, but if you're dead-set on respinning another distro then an good alternative is Instalinux (see box, below).

Other customisation tools


Revisor: If you liked the look of Ubuntu Customisation Kit but prefer Fedora, you're in luck. Simply download Revisor using your package manager and you can start creating respins straight away. Revisor does not require a source ISO in order to work, because the package automatically generates a new ISO image to burn to disk or a boot image to install your respin on a live USB, though this does mean you need an active internet connection to download the core packages.


Instalinux: If you like the idea of SUSE Studio but can't wait for your invitation, you could try The interface is not quite as polished as SUSE Studio, and you might miss the facility to add your own design touches and the ability to create virtual appliances. Unlike SUSE Studio or Ubuntu Customisation Kit, however, you can base your respin on almost any distro on the net, and the images generated tend to be much smaller by comparison.

Arch Linux

Difficulty: average; Time required: 90 minutes; Customisation: high

Arch Linux is designed specifically for its users to customise it from the ground up. "Big wow", we hear you say, "so is everything else in this feature". Of course that's true, but unlike projects such as UCK and SUSE Studio, Arch Linux experiences rolling updates to cover bugs and security issues, so you can spend more time considering which desktop or office suite you're going to use rather than what order each package and its associated dependencies need to be compiled.

This also means that Arch Linux doesn't have set releases, as each version is automatically upgraded to the next, so it's brilliantly stable, which is a very important consideration when you're choosing a base for your distro. For this reason the Arch Linux base package is a great starting point if you want to make more fundamental decisions about your distro than you can with either Ubuntu Customisation Kit or SUSE Studio.

The initial kernel installation tends to be fairly uniform from system to system. You get the chance to set which base packages and drivers are installed, but the rest of the kernel setup is primarily concerned with setting time zone and locale, as well as installing the kernel and bootloader to a hard disk partition. You are also expected to manually set up several configuration files but if this is your first build you can safely use the defaults in the Arch Linux wiki entry mentioned in the step-by-step guide. The advantage of using the wiki entry is that you can always edit the files again later to better tailor Arch Linux to reflect your decisions.

Arch Linux offers a blend of stability and choice that's ideal for the intermediate distro builder.


After rebooting from the kernel install (see below), there are a few steps to take before we can have the fun of installing a desktop, window manager, file manager, etc. First, type adduser into the console screen and follow the instructions to add a user to log in with an associated password. Then we need to upgrade the system by running the following:

pacman -Syu

You can probably guess from this that pacman is our package manager, but this stage should not take too long, as you only have a minimal environment at this stage.

Arch Linux uses su by default, but if you'd rather use sudo to gain root privileges, we can install it and add our user to the list of sudoers by using the following commands:

pacman -S sudo

Just below root(ALL)=(ALL)ALL in the file that appears, add :


replacing user with the login name you chose during the configuration steps.

Setup Xorg

Now we can start setting up a GUI, and a vital component is the Type in the following to install the binary package:

sudo pacman -S xorg

If you have an Nvidia graphics card, use the following commands to install the driver, configure it then apply it to your installation:

sudo pacman -S nvidia
sudo nvidia-xconfig
cp /etc/skel/.xinitrc ~

Users of ATI graphics cards will find extensive information about setting things up from, as each card tends to use a different driver or needs some additional configuration. Once this step is complete use the latter two lines, replacing nvidia-xconfig with ati-xconfig to achieve the same result.

Install Gnome

You can install any desktop manager you care to mention on Arch Linux. To install Gnome and the various extra utilities, for example, run the following two lines:

pacman -S gnome
pacman -S gnome-extra

Each time you'll be asked if you want to install the lot or fine-tune what you install. Either way, simply follow the on-screen instructions to install a Gnome desktop.

Then you need to open /etc/rc.conf, look for the part that says DAEMONS and ensure it includes portmap, fam and hal somewhere within the brackets. If you've installed GDM as your login manager (the package name is gdm), you can set it up by opening /etc/inittab and looking for these lines:

# Boot to console id:3:initdefault: 
# Boot to X11 #id:5:initdefault:

and changing them to:

# Boot to console #id:3:initdefault: 
# Boot to X11 id:5:initdefault:

Then scroll to the bottom and uncomment the following line by removing the hash:


Save and exit. If you would like Gnome to run applications and scripts at startup, run the following command:


Install KDE

To install the basic KDE 4 desktop, do:

pacman -Sy kde

If you like the idea of more eye-candy and plugins for your KDE environment you can also install the following packages:

pacman -S kde-extragear
pacman -Sy qtcurve-gtk2 qtcurve-kde4

You can then set up KDM by installing the following packages:

pacman -Sy kdebase kdebase-workspace

then open /etc/inittab and alter the file in the same way as you would with Gnome, this time replacing gdm with kdm. Finally, to ensure KDE can run applications at startup, do:


Extend and improve

Now you have a base install of Arch Linux that automatically updates and upgrades, you can install any package you care to mention on your system. Will you install OOo or choose AbiWord and Gnumeric instead? You could install Firefox with your own custom branding (as mentioned here: Another bizarre possibility is to replace your entire desktop with Openbox and use Avant Window Navigator to launch applications. If you would like to create a live CD version of your efforts, you could use larch, a script that will produce an ISO from a hard drive image of your install. It is available for download at

Arch Linux does take more effort than UCK and SUSE Studio, and you don't have complete control over how packages are managed, but the end result is a great deal more flexibility and control. This is the closest you can get to building your own distro without recompiling every component from source...

How to install an Arch Linux base

Main menu

Main menu: Welcome to the world of text-mode installers! Work your way sequentially from option 0 to 7 following the on-screen instructions to install the Arch kernel.


Locale: After defining your method of installation, just hit the correct numbers to select your country and define your time zone.


Partition: You can partition your drive using the built-in GUI tools included in the installer, or you could use cfdisk if you prefer to do things manually.


Packages: After selecting which categories of package you want, you can choose which individual packages you want. Press Space to select/deselect and Enter to proceed.


Configure: Select your text editor (we recommend Nano for newer users). You can get some example scripts from the Arch Linux wiki at


Boot: Select which partition you want Grub to boot when you're installing the bootloader. Once all is complete with the kernel installation, you can start on the desktop installation!

Don't panic!

A frequent problem people have during the building stages is to get a blank screen with no visual feedback on whether your keyboard or mouse are correctly handled. Although this can be scary, it's not a show-stopping problem, and is well documented.

One of the big changes to the X server in recent times has been the decision to remove the background pattern that you may have seen in distros such as DSL before the desktop is loaded. You can solve this by setting up a white background:

X -wr -config

and if your keyboard or mouse aren't detected, try adding the following code to xorg.conf:

Section "ServerLayout"
  Option "AllowEmptyInput" "off"

You'll see a load of strings between the first and second lines prefixed by a hash (#) - simply add the second line near the bottom.

A further annoyance is the recent removal of Ctrl+Alt+Backspace to restart the X server, which is something you'll probably need to do eventually. To restore this, add the following snippet to the end of your xorg.conf file:

Section "ServerFlags"
  Option "DontZap" "False"

Linux from Scratch

Difficulty: high; Time required: 200 minutes; Customisation: extreme


The ebook itself (available on this month's coverdisc) details everything you need to know, from building a cross-compiler to using chroot to set up the user environment. However, there are a few gotchas to watch out for when you are creating your own LFS system. Naturally though, we've put the hard yards in so you don't have to. What follows is the LXF refinement of the ebook, and every one of these tips was bought in blood, sweat and sleepless nights. Our tests followed LFS 6.3 as this was accompanied by a stable live CD with all the tools, packages and patches we needed, but if you would prefer the latest and greatest LFS available (6.5 as we went to press) then all the ebooks cover how to use your mainstream distro to build an LFS system. Whichever way you go, these tips should help you to a hassle-free install!

The Linux from Scratch ebook contains clear formatting and keeps each stage precise and to the point.




Source location


echo $LFS


The first time you run a build of GCC (using the 'bootstrap' option), we recommend that you go away and make a cup of tea and drink it. Then make another one - this particular stage takes a while, as you're compiling GCC three times, then comparing the third build to the second build. The point of this is to check that the second and third builds are the same, which implies that you built GCC correctly the first time round.

It is possible to skip bootstrapping, but we wouldn't recommend it, as you may encounter strange errors that are difficult to diagnose later. New LFS users scattered over various forums often post wondering why GCC is taking so long to build and whether this is normal. Rest assured that it is, but your patience will be rewarded with a guarantee of far fewer problems in future.


Kernel API headers

A common mistake is to expect the kernel API headers to be in their own package. This is not the case - you will need to extract the kernel source package (usually of the form linux-2.6.x.tar.bz2) and then move into the extracted directory to follow the steps in the ebook.

Shell quirks

It's important to be familiar with the subtleties of Bash before you embark on an LFS build. You'll be creating symlinks and writing multi-line commands (meaning that where you see \ this should be followed by pressing Enter). However, you may be caught out at this point by the ebook formatting. Throughout the ebook a multi-line command will not contain a > on each line (though you will see this in the terminal). However, if you see a > in the ebook, make sure that you type this character in as well with your command. We missed this accidentally while typing this in:

  > `dirname $(gcc -print-libgcc-file-name)`/specs


With plenty of time and dedication, you too could create something as usable as Nutyx.


No typos

If you're using a mainstream distro as a host system, we heartily recommend copying and pasting in shell commands. This is primarily because you are less likely to mistype anything, which may produce an error later on in the process (this usually requires a complete rebuild to solve). For those of you who are determined to type everything in manually or are using the live CD, ensure you double-check every command before you execute it, and that you're using the correct type of bracket. Typing in manually makes sense to start with, but eventually you'll encounter this particular beast of a command:

GCC_INCLUDEDIR=`dirname $(gcc -print-libgcc-file-name)`/include &&
rm -vf `grep -l "DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE" ${GCC_INCLUDEDIR}/*` &&


Avoid complacency


./configure --prefix=/tools
make install


Move to root

You should be logged in as user 'lfs', but as soon as you're instructed you should change to root. You can do this by holding Alt and the right arrow key (you can return to the lfs user by doing the same with the left directional button). Make sure you make a backup at this stage, as the ebook instructs. All it takes is a badly timed rm command in the wrong directory and your hours of hard work will be rendered pointless. You can create an archive (and hence save a bit of space) by running the following command:



Build your dream distro

Linux From Scratch opens a window of infinite possibilities, and its accompanying ebook, Beyond Linux from Scratch, has been created for the purpose of extending and customising a standard LFS-based distro. It discusses package management as well as how to build desktop environments and common packages.

To see the scope of what Beyond Linux From Scratch can do, take a look at Nutyx ( It's in French and there's no option to use English so far, but the distro has a full desktop and application suite, so it's completely usable.

They key thing with LFS is that you have complete control over which patches and updates are applied. Everything is compiled from source so it's lightning fast, and you always get the choice of whether to upgrade the kernel and which software does or doesn't run on your system. It takes some serious time and dedication to achieve this kind of distro-building nirvana and then maintain it, but the results are worth the effort.

Or there's always Gentoo...

If you can't get enough of distros with huge potential for customisation, it's well worth taking a look at Gentoo. Like Arch Linux, Gentoo supports rolling releases, but unlike Arch Gentoo gives you the choice about whether to use a Linux or BSD kernel. It also includes the support of over 300 developers maintaining 10,000 packages, and these packages are distributed through what the Gentoo community claims is the most advanced package manager in the Linux world (named Portage).

Gentoo compiles all packages from source and aims for stability, whereas Arch Linux installs binary packages and aims for the bleeding-edge of free software development. Which you use is dependant on your aims and how much control you would prefer, but if you can't decide between Arch and Linux From Scratch, Gentoo is well worth your consideration.

Gentoo is a capable alternative to the likes of LFS and Arch Linux.


First published in Linux Format

First published in Linux Format magazine

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Your comments

Fantastic article, now Debian please?

That was a very thorough article and I would expect that it will help a lot of people; well done it writing it and providing it to the community!

I have been looking for a way to remaster Debian Testing or Side to ease installations; any suggestions on that front? Currently my installations start with a Lenny net-install, then a change to Testing sources, a dist-upgrade, and then I begin building the system up. I would love to get an installer which gets past all oif that and allows me to customize the KDE desktop as well. The tool 'remastersys' is only advertised to work on current Stable (Lenny), and Debian doesn't seem to have a tool of their own for this.

I do see a point

@filip007: Or may be you want to install the same customized distro in more than one computer, so installing a known distro
in every computer and then customize it each time, would represent a lot of time.

And also, I think it's a great way to know more about how Linux work.

Great article!!


Lunar Linux is good for those things - a nice base and a good source-based operating procedure.

Great article

BTW: Tuxradar still will not let me reset my password


I don't know why I buy LXF, seeing as most of the content is posted here for free!


*All* mainstream distributions are becoming increasingly bloated. AFAIK, none of them provides an easy mechanism for you to only install what you want. The alternative is to create your own set of packages (a.k.a distro, whatever), but that tends to be difficult for several reasons.

This article is *USEFUL* and practical. There are those of us who want to be back in control but don't have good pointers to "where to begin". This article solves the problem nicely. Thanks!

1) Yes, Ubuntu does provide a "minimal CD", but it is good to know the alternatives. Thanks again.
2) You can bet I'll stay far, far away from the Mono crap in my next installations!

Arch is Gentoo without compilation

Good article. I have been using various GNU/Linux distros over the past 10 yrs and must say Arch is wonderful. But Gentoo is even better to give you more control.Slackware worth a try to know GNU/Linux more.

Thanks man .

Great Article

Thanks a lot for these information, I was looking for such thing for long and finally found your excellent post.
Best Regards

This is not making your own

This is not making your own distribution, it's REMASTERING.

Remastering is purely making a custom installation. It is not making a new distribution.

Making your own distribution involves actual programming and original content, not just changing how and what Ubuntu installs.

great info for the beginner . Not exactly creating a new distro.

The tools are basically what you had to do to install bsd ages ago piece by piece which took days sometimes .I miss those days of unfettered net. Now running a script to grab all the packages you want from the net is just pure insanity unless at an isp they would throttle your net so badly you would wish for dial up again.

Their all pretty much

Their all pretty much useless, it all boils down to three distros.

1. LFS
2. OpenSUSE Studio and Kiwi
3. Gentoo

The main stream distros I hate to death:

1. Debian - Non inspirational, boring and useless. On top of that it takes the traditional route of locking you out of root, thus a for "idiots" package. On top of that they claim to be a Universal os, yet non of the tools designed for repackaged distros work out of the box. You are better off picking your nose than trying to spin a distro. And "reconstructor" is the shittiest piece of garbage ever created, mklivecd is a much better tool.

2. Fedora - WTH was Red Hat thinking? The shortest timed releases, no backwards support, crippled yum repositories. Makes it the ugliest piece of horse shit of distros, they claim freedom on their own f'n website. That's until you read the license avoiding all GPL standards, they basically allow nothing but the stripped down bare naked core to be used. *Revisor only works with pre Fedora 12 and below*

Slitaz has built in tool for

Slitaz has built in tool for spinning your own distro.

UCK doesn't work in Ubuntu 11.10

UCK is strangely available in the partner repositories for Ubuntu 11.10 (beta 2) but since Ubuntu 11.10 no longer comes with Synaptic Package Manager on the downloadable ISO that UCK requires to create the base, that also means UCK is no longer customizable without Synaptic Package Manager.

Today I read that Remastersys, perhaps the greatest and best Ubuntu Backup and Distro maker application (scripts) is dead. This one app is something I have installed on every version of Ubuntu I have used since I started using Ubuntu. Now it is no longer available to install from Frag's old repositories, and I am searching for a viable alternative.

So far, I can say, there just isn't anything as awesome as Remastersys. It says on the now defunct Remastersys web site to search for "forks" of Remastersys, but I can't find any that do exactly the same thing as Remastersys.

I just want to take my existing system like I could with Remastersys, and create a distro with it as easily as I could with Remastersys. I'm very bummed that I can find anything that does that task anymore.

I'm starting to get frustrated with how little Ubuntu's design is behaving more and more proprietary in the way it is customizable and without Remastersys I might as well use Debian if I have to always start from scratch each time I install Linux on a new computer. When you do this for a living, and do multiple installations of Ubuntu per day, the lack of support for Remastersys really disheartens me from using Ubuntu as my prefered choice of Distros out there. I don't like Arch, because I install Linux on newbie end-user systems, and that requires more support for them to maintain it and use it initially than Ubuntu.

UCK looks like it might have worked, but without the Synaptic Package Manager on the *.iso files I download from Ubuntu directly to get it to open them, and customize them, there is no customization option that works from the UCK menu.

Basically we are stuck spending 200 minutes completely building Ubuntu 11.10 (and beyond) from scratch, and Remastersys would do it for me in less than 30 minutes from installation, configuration, and the eventual ISO burn to USB LIVE stick.

I'm not happy.


Stuck at 10.10 with my Remastersys made clone sticks with no way of going forward into Ubuntu 11.10 without spending 200+ minutes each time Ubuntu releases a new version of its operating system. UCK is no longer fuctional in Ubuntu 11.10. My end-users aren't competent enough with Linux to use Arch either. And I might as well use Debian from now on to do my installations for end-users, if I have to do everything manually for them by hand each time I do a new installation of Linux. I'm so disappointed that nobody at Ubuntu development appreciated Remastersys for the role that it plays in system engineers lives here in the new-user deployment aspect of Ubuntu. And I really don't like the gumball machine software center either. New users don't know what they need to install to have a comprable Windows or Mac system runnning either. More exclusive. Less flexibility. Now I am beginning to user why users were warning me off of Ubuntu about 2-3 releases ago. What a pain in the ____.

thx bro, I need this !

thx bro, I need this !


Why cant they make an online linux distro maker that creates something that has a "Xerox Global View" like enviroment, But more custom.

Hardware Testing Distro

I'm attempting to build a distro specifically for the smal break fix guy / shop. I'm a huge fan of PartedMagic and the tools they have compiled, I find UBCD over complicated and bloated and wanted to take something like Xubuntu and make it my own (Backtrack) or something simular. I don't mind setting up my own Repo's but the information is so limited. I've already tried with Xubuntu and Remastery but most data recovery, diagnostic tools require root and there are issues there. I'm looking at ARCH as I've never used always been in the Novell, Ubuntu and Red Hat game for 10+ years. I'm open to suggestions on both a platform, and how to customize every part, the boot screen, muli-boot, menus, backgrounds, colors, everything it needs to be a unique and purposfull OS. A tool for all the guys out there needing a point and click solution. I can add all the packages to an ubuntu disc but want something customized, your tutorial is helpfull but really only covers the basics at a low level. For example adding in the Repos to make sue Chrome is installed and updated, I'm happy to chat or post on our twitter @digiground as I want to give back but really don't feel the need to do linux from scratch as Debain / Ubuntu has such a good upkeep already.


nice outline!

great article/starting point for people interested in digging deeper into the os after using default (examplewise) ubuntu (lol).
people complaining that this article lacks infos or a button to create&download the imagefile are just too lazy and lack motivation of learning more. and therefore dont really need a "customized os"...

i personally are happy with arch and pissed about debian and windows (which i have to use for specific actions...)
didnt try gentoo so far.


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