Creating Specialized, Custom Linux Distributions

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Pyroflea

Pyroflea

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Mar 18, 2007
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Hey everybody,

I've recently been considering taking on a project that is way out of my comfort zone. 😀 Basically, I'm wanting to learn to put together custom Linux distributions for specialized applications. I have a few ideas at this point, but nothing is set in stone. I'm basically just wanting to learn how to do this for my own self satisfaction, and to expand my current knowledge of Linux/Unix in general. Also being back in school, I'm just irking to find some programming projects 😀

What I'm looking for are some resources on how to go about doing this. Most of the results I've found are just LFS, or guides on modifying current installations. I can't really find much on starting from scratch. I just honestly have no idea where to start.

Any suggestions, links, etc. are very greatly appreciated. I look forward to discussing the feasibility of this all with you guys :)

Thanks,


- Jesse
 
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So basically upon doing some more research, I will need to do less work that I originally thought to get it to simply work. However, to get it to work how I want it to will be a lot more work 😀

Basically their demo was running Debian + LXDE. Neato, we know it's powerful enough to do what I wanted. What I want to do is just streamline my installation as much as possible (it's still between basing it off Debian and Arch), and remove EVERYTHING that isn't required. I wouldn't mind doing some tweaking for various other things as well.

From what I've gathered, the trickiest part will just be getting it to boot properly. [According to my current understanding], some code on the ROM directs the board to boot off of a FAT32 partition on the SD card, which holds a module that they have developed. From there, it will load a boot loader on another EXT2/3 partition, and we go from there.

Slowly figuring things out 😀 I'm mostly just going to read up on modifying things to suit my needs at this point, as well as cross-compiling to support ARM.

Thanks,


- Jesse
 
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Write a blog about your project?

Attract some Linux experts...

Mmm... had a dream Linux_0 made a custom spin of Linux for me which had a really cool interface, like GNOME 3 but tabbed and every programme I like was integrated into the 1 programme with all the Adobe CS tools as well.

That was a cool dream.
 
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I may just do that 😉



LOL, no comment 😀
 
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I just assumed it was a drawn out toaster upgrade 😉

A quick note on the RPi. It's boot loader is a little strange in that it actually uses the GPU for initial boot before resetting and passing control back to the main CPU. There was a little discussion about it on the forums but it RPi is your intended target then take a good look at the HW before you start shaping your solution to much.
 
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That you were able to visualise Linux_0 working with closed source shows the volatility of that overly creative imagination of yours... Mind you it's probably a safer mental image than him becoming your custom GIMP master 😱
 
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Oh no.

You get me wrong.

He made a fully open-source alternative with more features than the Adobe Suite.

It just resembled the CS interface. I think.

Weird dream.

I guess this rules out me telling you all about the second part of the dream that involved Linux_0, open souce pistols and katanas, CERN, the GDI Ion cannon network, scientfic linux, lightsabres, the Microsoft Windows-Apple OS X "icloud", blue terminal and the red command line.
 
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[looks at documentation]yeesh, a true engineer's solution to a problem forced on you....

I guess the good part is that it could conceivably chainload onto a u-boot such that the only difference from TI's offerings is the location and content of the closed bits (ROM image on actual SoC -> firmware blob that is loaded by GPU)
 
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I was aware of the... unconventional boot method. From what I've read however, you're still able to use a bootloader.

From what I understand (which I believe to be true), the GPU boots to a FAT partition on the SD card, which holds a module developed by the RasPi team. From there, the module points to the EXT2 partition on the SD card. You can have it load a boot loader at this point if you so wish.

At this point I'm just working on deciding on which packages to remove, keep, or add. Gonna start working on a theme as well, since that's easy enough to do without having the hardware.

Also, I got the armel version of Debian running in Qemu, and it only uses 9MB of RAM for the base installation! Just thought that was pretty amazing 😀
 
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The RasPi dev team posted a video from Maker Faire, and they've confirmed the boot sequence. So at least I can worry about the OS itself and then just have the boot code point to a boot loader; neat.

Got LXDE installed and running in QEMU. It's a tad slow with 256MB of RAM, but still entirely usable. This is great news. I'm working on just slimming things down, and installing the applications that I want. I'm also starting to work on a theme.

Also, for amdfangirl found this for you if you're interested 😛
http://www.raspberrypi.org/2011/08/logo-competition/
 
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I already read that interview, but thanks for sharing it anyways!

What isn't adding up to you? Just out of curiosity. I don't think this project is perfect by any means, nor am I convinced that it will succeed how they're planning, but I just think it will be a neat toy. I've been looking for an ARM board for quite some time, just for something to fool around with, but they're all in excess of $100, often much more.
 
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As I said on SA it's about the target market. When you read the /. interview Eben states that they expect the first batch to go to enthusiasts like yourself. If that is the case then why are they a charitable foundation as clearly the market is for enthusiasts? Next the HW itself. I've followed this from the start and the early device was flash drive sized and fitted with a camera, this has evolved to a credit card size device with rather limited connectivity. OK, so you get USB but where is the I/O without having to use USB bridges? Same with the video output.

Given that you need a whole load of peripherals and an SD card to do anything useful with it the price is really a little misleading. For yourself you have the KB Monitor etc but as an educational tool it just seems to miss the mark. As I said in my ramblings on SA there are quite a few Chinese tablets out there that have similar RAM/CPU specs but include a touch display and PSU for not a lot more. For education this seems to me to be a more flexible solution.

To my mind its a toy, a really cool little toy, but it just doesn't quite seem to know what it wants to be when it grows up. If you used it as the basis for a 2012 C64 like solution with a range of TV Monitor connections (I still think VGA would be the best option with composite for a bit of flexibility) and a couple of serial ports then it's a whole different ball game. How they expect a non boxed solution to survive students I don't know.
 
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That's entirely understandable, and I agree with basically everything you say. I still just want one 😀 For $35, I can just plug it into my monitor/TV to fool around with. Not a huge investment.

I have a tendency of obsessing about things for a short period of time, and getting distracted anyways. Who knows if I'll even still care by the time it's out 😀
 
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This is where I swallow my own argument and agree.

Not working at the moment my PC is on more hours a day than is healthy. I've disconnected unused drives, underclocked and dropped the voltages but it's still pulling ~110W of power. Most of my use is just surfing job sites and e-mail, all of which the Pi could do. But then I come back to where I started as I look at my PS2 KB and VGA only monitor (I don't own a TV) 🙁
 
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