You people really do make an argument of everything

Uses .deb -> Debian based.Uses .tgz -> slack based.Uses .rpm -> Redhat based.

End of story.Thread over.

That's not giving a accurate portrayal of how things work. The package manager used is far less important than the contents of those packages. Suse uses rpm, does that make it Redhat based?

What if I took slackware and created my own distribution of it but the only change I made was to convert it to using the debian dpkg package manager and converted all the slackware .tgz packages to .deb packages. It's still more or less Slackware shaped.

Having said that, I do agree with you that it's a pretty pointless discussion.

Actually Suse did start out as a german translation of slackware

There is a bunch of distro timelines flying around the internet.

Yep, though personally, I'm not inclined to consider the pre Novell SUSE and the post Novell SUSE to be the same animal.

Wow.. you guys totally confused me now..

What if I make a linux from scratch adding .deb dpkg apt and synaptic and all that stuff. Does it mean that now my system is Debian based?

No. Let me simplify everything above your last post. Let's say you want to create QueenZLinux as a distro. You could go with LFS and add things there and create the distro that way. Or you could take Debian and add in what you think your distro should have - this could include changes to the kernel as well as programs and wallpaper/icons. If you do this, your distro would be Debian based. And that's it - the whole package manager argument above is a red herring. A "Debian/Slack/RH" based distro literally takes that distro as it's base and builds on top of it.

Partly. More so if you used a Debian distro's kernel.

So you have the kernel which interfaces with your hardware, the shell (BASH for example) that interfaces with the kernel and then any applications including package management on top of that. all of which is between the user and the kernel, of course.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel

Oh ok.. Just give me 1 good reason to take debian as my base Seriously, at least one reason!

I actually started this thread because i've been looking at this Linux tree and just can't figure out why almost all distros are based on 3 distros - Debian, RedHat and Slackware. I mean why???!

http://www.osml.co.uk/files/linux_timeline.png

Not sure where RedHat comes in but Slackware and Debian were the first two freely available GNU/Linux distributions. Slackware being the oldest by a couple of months or so.

i just had another thought on this question.. take yellowdog linux for example
yellowdog is a 'redhat based' distribution meaning that the creators of yellowdog started with a copy of redhat to create yellowdog

the biggest point where yellowdog differs from redhat is that yellowdog is targeted to run on powerpc and powerpc_64 based computers such as the apple macintosh whereas redhat is for x86 architecture or x86_64

a good non computer example of what you are asking would be found in the kitchen
you could either make your own broth from scratch for soup or start with a bullion cube as a 'base'

hmm.. good point I guess if i really want to make my own distro now, it's better to take Ubuntu as my base, right?

depends on what you are most familiar with
keep in mind ubuntu started with debian as it's base

Not sure that's entirely accurate. MCC Interim and TAMU both pre-date both slackware and debian and I remember them being available via ftp at the time. Redhat was a couple of years later.

Because starting from scratch takes an AWFUL LOT of effort! Starting with one of the big three gives you a known good starting point. From there, it's just adding or subtracting step by step with no real start-up trauma. If you really want to create "your own distro", then you'd probably want to join the Linux From Scratch group and then write your own package manager --- as a start, that is.

what? why? I don't need to write my own package manager, i can just take synaptic and put it in my distro