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.

Yes, I've written applications in Win32 (especially for work). I tend to prefer to use a cross-platform library like SDL though.

nano-x (aka microwindows) has a subset of the Win32 API functions and, with the nxlib library, there's a subset of the X11 functions. That's to make porting from Windows or X11 systems easier. There's no WINE or winelib involved or needed. I also think it's more lightweight than using winelib if you're porting Win32 applications. I have run a few Win32 programs this way. For instance, there's a public domain pyramid card game I like that was written for Win32. It builds and works using the Win32 API from nano-x. There's enough X11 support to be able to compile the FLTK library and build applications that use it with nano-x and nxlib. One of the developers was able to get wxWidgets with the X11 backend working as well. However, that version of wxWidgets doesn't have complete functionality as compared to other builds of wxWidgets (such as the one using GTK as a backend). gtk 1.2 has also worked with nxlib. Am wondering if we should start another thread on nano-x instead of using this one.

To bring this closer to the original topic, nano-x makes a good base for a lightweight operating system if you don't want to run X Windows but console/terminal applications aren't enough. I also looked at DirectFB which can function similarly. nano-x makes it easy to use X11 (or Win32) based applications without too much porting needed, but DirectFB doesn't have similar compatibility. Also, I don't think DirectFB is actively developed anymore. So far, the only Linux distribution I've seen that uses nano-x primarily is NanoLinux. However, some other distributions do offer it as a package. The Debian based INX distribution (which is no longer actively developed) also seemed like an interesting option for a lightweight distro. It's completely console based which probably gave better performance on older systems than DSL's X applications. Another interesting and lightweight distribution is Rogue Class Linux. It also does not need X Windows. It uses console and framebuffer based applications (mostly games though). I've also seen some lightweight distributions that use X Windows but a lighter version of it ( such as https://github.com/idunham/tinyxlib ). I think many of these options would make a good alternative to standard X Windows if one is targeting older computers like DSL did. Also, I've had a few older computers with video hardware that I was never able to get X working properly on. So, a console or framebuffer based distribution might make a nice alternative for some older computers. Wonder how hard it would be to remaster a console/framebuffer based distribution? It should theoretically be easier than a distribution with X Windows. However, last time I tried the remastering tools with AntiX, the X Windows version worked fine, but I couldn't get a remastered console version to install. They do have a console version of AntiX to use as a starting point though.

I created my own 'small' or 'embedded' type linux: https://github.com/boardstretcher/barebones-linux

Seeing how it is done might help you along. Also looking at other small distros will help,.

https://www.minimalinux.org/ttylinux/
http://www.toms.net/rb/

And of course going through a base install of LFS can help you understand what it takes to make a distro: http://linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/

Remember,. there are already a billion linuxii out there. Perhaps making your own is fun and what you need to do -- then again,. spending that time donating your work to another distro might be even better.

My personal favorite home linux over the last few years: https://www.archlinux.org/

Nice that you've been able to create your own.

I've definitely been reading through the LFS site and I've tried out several parts of the BLFS book when building libraries and applications.

I've been thinking more about putting together a respin of an existing distribution, not recreating an entire distribution from scratch. I'd prefer to donate my time to a particular distribution that already exists, but always seem to have trouble finding one that matches my goals. Did some package creation for VectorLinux for a little while, but did not enjoy it. Since I've been working with distributions like Slackware and going through the BLFS book, I have my own package management system (using tarballs similar to but not exactly the same as Slackware). Makes it hard to share anything I've done unless I convert it to the local package management format of a distribution or I need to use a separate package manager in my home directory (somewhat similar to how Homebrew does things). I have a lot of programs that I use that aren't part of standard distributions (like Debian), so that means building a lot of source from scratch. Would be nice to find a better way to share some of the results somehow. For now, I'm just trying to share source and/or patches. (I typically try to send these upstream if possible and if they don't get used or the project is defunct or disorganized, I end up collecting a lot of modifications.) If you know of some existing distributions that might be interested in having some help building lightweight applications, I'd be curious to hear about it. Thanks. So far, I really haven't had any luck when trying to share applications with another distribution. I also highly customize my systems, so nothing works for me out-of-the-box. Guess that's why LFS seems so interesting.