Shoutbox

i would like to know if anyone has a good website with a good guide with how to make your own linux based operating system (preferably Ubuntu). I dont want to build it from scratch i just want to modify the OS and make it more suitable for me. I have seen it done (An australian PC Magazine - UserOS Ultra) and would like to know if i am capable of making one myself. help would be greatly appreciated.

Get yourself an in depth APT/dpkg manual, especially if you're starting from Ubuntu. There is bound to be one on the Debian site.

what about xubuntu is that any easier?

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Originally posted by rm rulz
what about xubuntu is that any easier?

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It's the same stuff, just based on another system. If you have no prior coding knowledge (more than just some Plus! scripting) than I doubt you are ready to even attempt to modify an os, let alone build your own.

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Originally posted by .Lou

quote:

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Originally posted by rm rulz
what about xubuntu is that any easier?

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It's the same stuff, just based on another system. If you have no prior coding knowledge (more than just some Plus! scripting) than I doubt you are ready to even attempt to modify an os, let alone build your own.

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"Modifying" an APT based system is extremely easy. Repackaging it takes twenty minutes. I don't know how long it takes to customise the installer, but I'm willing to bet it doesn't take long either.

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Originally posted by rm rulz
what about xubuntu is that any easier?

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Exactly the same, just a different set of base packages (most likely fewer to remove). You can remove them quite easily. If you're clever, you can do that without even looking at the command line. It doesn't matter which you pick if you're only going to remove the DE.

i got 2 works for you: click and click.

ok i think i confused some people here with extremely bad wording lol. i want to MODIFY Ubuntu for my own needs. i dont want to build it again from scratch. i would like to change the default programs on it and some other basic things.

my previous coding knowledge is Visual Basic but i am willing to learn whatever i have to

EDIT: i forgot to thank SupersonicDarky for his brilliant links

The steps for an APT-based (like Ubuntu) system are something like this:

1. Get the packages you want to install. If you've already installed them, they may still be on your system, in the apt-cache, which should be /var/cache/apt/archives.

2. Set up a local apt repository (a good apt manual will explain this).

3. Set up the installer to install all of these packages (and remove references to packages you don't want installed). I've never looked at the Ubuntu installer, but poke around at it.

4. Burn your repo and the installer to disk!

I would suggest that before you do go about removing packages from the original installer, you try removing them on a running Ubuntu system, so you know that you've satisfied all dependencies. In fact, if you have your Ubuntu system the way that you like it, dpkg -l will give you a list of installed packages. Do some reformatting of the list in VB to be the form APT likes, set up your sources.list to point to your local repo, and after your newly installed system is bootstrapped, just apt-get install (the list) in a shell file, chmod a+x it, and reference it near the end of the install script (sometime after the chroot to the bootstrapped system).

It is hard to build your own OS. I've tried and failed. It started to look ok but then i got confused will all my own scripting. It's just to bigger script for one person I might say. I suppose you could be organized with it all, it would probrobly make a deal of differance but I didn't so it got to hard