On Jul 1, 6:18 pm, "jim" <j...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I think I saw something about a Linux package that
> allows you to basically
> take a snapshot of your system and distribute it as a distro.
>
> Anybody got any info on that?
Most applications can be packaged as either .rpm (Red Hat Package
Manager), or .deb (Debian Package) or "tarball".
The "package" typically consists of a compressed archive and a script,
along with some information about the package, such as dependencies,
versions, and other references. The packages can be converted from
one format to the other as well. So yes, you could take any
combination of packages and create your own distribution.
To have a SUCCESSFUL Linux distribution is another matter. Keep in
mind that each package is being updated regularly, often on a daily
basis. Not every update is "golden" and even some that the developer
says are "ready for guvmint werk" need some pretty intense testing to
confirm that they will work with your distribution.
In addition, you will need to provide access to the distribution.
Remember that a popular distribution can be downloaded by 2000 people
an hour, and it can take up to 3 hours to download a large
distribution (Novell full version, for example, is almost 8 gigabytes
including 32 bit and 64 bit versions.
You will also need to test it on numerous hardware platforms. You may
decide that you ONLY want to use the OSS drivers, or you might decide
to use binary modules as well. It's still necessary to test and debug
on all of those platforms. If you don't do it, your customers will,
and they will let you know where the problems lie. If you don't keep
up to date and respond to these issues, you will be one of the
hundreds of distributions that get counted, but don't actually do much
for people.
Many corporations create a distribution based on a mainstream
distribution. Red Hat, for example lets you configure a server that
will do the updates for you, and you can decide which modules you want
supported. You can also add additional commercial applications that
use the same package format. It's still a bit of work, but much
easier than trying to "roll your own".
You can use YUM (Yet another Update Manager) or YAST (Yet Another
System Tool) to manage the update packages.
New distributions come out several times each year, and in most cases,
they even attribute their "base". Keep in mind that the Linux System
Binary level 3 (LSB3) recommends RPM packages, and establishes some
standards which make it much easier to create applications compatible
with multiple versions of Linux, and to create Linux distributions
that can run thousands of applications.
If you still think you want to create your own distribution, and you
think you can create an organization to support it, and you can
execute effectively, let us know about it.
There have been a few members of this group who have created their own
Linux distributions, but they didn't support them very well. They are
an interesting footnote in the list of distributions, but not the
basis of a multi-million dollar business.
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