Create a distro like DSL?
 

For learning purposes and fun, I am interested in creating my own distro that would be similar to Damn Small Linux.

Years ago I was a user and fan of Damn Small Linux. I thought it would be fun to build something like it, but modern of course. I don’t think it would need to be extremely small, just small enough.

I thought about basing it on Ubuntu minimal or possibly Debian or possibly a small distro that would provide the small base needed. I’m looking for suggestions on this. See below.

However, I have never attempted this before, so I was wondering if any of you could give me tips, suggestions or advice on working on a project like this?

Also, do you have any suggestions on what I should start with?
I know I have a lot to learn so any advice would be appreciated.

Thank you!

I think making your own custom Ubuntu spin (based on Ubuntu minimal) is a great place to start. :)

Another idea, your profile says you use Source Mage GNU Linux, is that accurate? I wonder, does Source Mage provide tools for this kind of project?

A third idea, is have you ever heard of Linux From Scratch?

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

If you want the ultimate learning experience and custom distro, create it from Linux from Scratch. The ultimate in custom installs (literally whatever you want with whatever kernel you want), you can choose to use whatever package manager you like (or none), and obviously there's no greater learning experience than building it from scratch!

I used to use Source Mage, yes. No, I do not believe they provide the tools for this. Yep, I have thought about Linux from Scratch.

Yes, thinking about that. Thanks for the reply.

Maybe worth taking a look at Tiny Core Linux. :)

You could recreate it easily with Debian, which is what DSL is/was built on. Go to the DSL website, see what packages it uses, grab yourself a Debian netinstall iso, and go nuts. From there, there's tools to master your own iso from the result (forget what they're called).

That's the beauty of Debian: it makes stuff like this super easy.

Good point. I think I am going to do this.

Sounds like a cool project. If you need any help finding/building lightweight applications, I'd love to help out. I'm always looking for interesting, portable, lightweight software. I've built several programs from source and I patch them as needed to deal with bugs, memory issues, library updates or just to add missing features. Would be nice to share some of my finds with others who are interested in lightweight applications.

If you're looking for a good base system to build your own project with, you might want to look at AntiX. It's Debian based and has some really nice remastering tools for creating your own ISOs or bootable flash drive images. If you're interested in getting involved in an on-going project that's trying to produce a lightweight distribution for older or low resource systems (similar to DSL), check out ToriOS. I believe they'd be happy to have more volunteers to help out.

Would be very interested to hear how your project progresses.

I'm basically doing the same thing with Linux Live Kit, Debian Stretch/Buster and Slackware using aufs patched kernel- very easy to remaster your install, boot with persistency and toram ability etc.
See these links
https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...sb-4175650800/

https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...ng-4175650368/

https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...it-4175651243/

https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...un-4175651204/

Tiny Core is the actual continuation of DSL, so it's about as close to DSL as you can get.

But if it seems too modern or too customised, you can always try Puppy or Slitaz.

NanoLinux is built on Tiny Core. It's very lightweight. It uses nano-x in place of X Windows. It includes several FLTK and a few X11 applications and includes a webkit based browser. I've been corresponding with the developer. He's done a great job trying to limit memory and size on the system and still include useful applications and features.

Never heard of nano-x. As someone who still uses and promotes IceWM (and first relied on DSL and Xubuntu, on very different hardware) to get away from Windows, it sounds very interesting. But will it run Firefox?

Actually, I do remember some older versions of Firefox that worked with nano-x. Don't know if the latest version would work or not. You can find more information about nano-x at:
https://github.com/ghaerr/microwindows
Used to be a mailing list as well, but not sure it's that active anymore. nano-x development is active though. I've been hearing about some of the updates.

NanoLinux uses netrider as its main browser. There's also fifth browser which is available on TinyCore. Since it's FLTK based, it would probably be easy to port to nano-x as well. Both use webkit, so they handle JavaScript, CSS, etc. and can be used to view more modern web sites than many of the standard lightweight browsers (such as lynx, links, dillo, netsurf, etc.) can handle.

Nice to hear that you use and promote IceWM. Always nice to hear from other Linux users who are interested in lightweight efficient systems. I currently use JWM on my computers.

Brilliant stuff. Some of the names are really confusing, the new name of the API is "Win32," at first I thought this had some kind of WINE layer to it. "You write applications in Win32?"

Can't believe I haven't heard of this, very cool.