How to Built a Distributation based off slackware?
 

me and r3d5pik3 (google him ;)) have decided to built a linux distributation built off slackware, what i'd like is some info on customizing the slackware installer and what basic packages built a distributation.

You can start by taking a look at: http://slax.linux-live.org/ & http://www.amigolinux.org both are Slack based distributions. There was a document exactly telling how to create a live cd using Slackware but I can't find it right now, if I do i'll post it here.

I'm not personaly interested in builting a Bootable Slackware, I want to mainly customize the installer.

Edit: Anyone know where i can get the Installer's Source?

The best (or easiest) way is probably creating custom tagfiles. I personally haven't tried it, but the next time I install, I plan on creating custom tagfiles to automate the installation. And possibly a set of tagfiles for a barebones firewall or dhcp server setup. I remember running across a step by step guide somewhere--it sounds pretty easy. Here's some basics:
http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php...06-06-NW-HL-SL

the only thing with tag files is, i plan on removing alot of packages (most notely KDE and GNOME, along with some other software) and including alot of new packages like security tools.

Oh yeah, I guess custom distribution does imply new packages, etc. I wasn't really paying attention to the question. I wish I could find that tag file howto I read... It seems like if you have the correct package format for the new packages you want to add, you could include them in tag files the same way as for existing packages. Pure speculation, as I really have no clue how the slack installer works. Good question though--I'd like to know how this works as well.

Well, My good friend Loki has joined the development team. me, him and r3d5pik3 have decided to built a new ncurses based installer from scratch. i'l post back with some more details on the distro.

My family is planning to do something similar: build a custom Slackware-based distro with end-(Redmond)-users in mind. I played with the tags and removed some pkgs, but I also want to add pkgs.

2 questions:

1. Are you going to make your ncurses-based installer an open source project and post it some where? Please say yes. That is, of course, unless somebody has found the source to work with slackware's SETUP.

2. Where the heck are the ramdisk contents stored on the CD? Is it in initrd.img? And, how could I explode the image to make changes and then repack it?

Yeah, We plan to release the ncurses installer under the GPL on our sourceforge site (we are currently awaiting aproval on this).