Dear forum members,

I am in the process of assembling a new distro which is light weight appealing, easy to use and less number of application. In general a Linux flavor with only nice desktop, task bar with a launch menu and the whole distro will fit into 50 - 100Mb and this will be a base for any people who wish to create there own distro.

The application can be added from repositories, which will be maintained by community and myself.

Despite this idea I find difficulties, where to start, I have a good knowledge of software and also the piece of software like kernel, Driver modules, Libraries, X window, Desktop environment, Linux applications.

So I am seeking the help part by parts In this part I am in need of clarification of Linux kernel. The list required are given below

1. Hardware & software requirement
2. How to compile the kernel
3. Load the kernel to the HDD, Flash or bootable CD

Feel free to provide your suggestion, critics and help, thanks in advance

Part2 will be hardware detection and configuring the kernel.

Rajamohan

Why another distro? There's 300+ out there already, to suit every possible need.

If you want to start a distro, that is great and I would like to encourage you and thank you for investing in the community. However, there are much better ways to give back to linux, especially if you aren't all that experienced yet.

I would suggest you get on some mailing lists for other distros that come closest to your idea. Help them for awhile, learn from their processes, and work to improve their work.

If after this you still want to create your own, you will have learned many valuable lessons that will help you on your way, and you will be much less likely to fail.

There are alot of distros that do this already, Debian and Arch to name a couple

brianL, AceofSpades19 I accept your comment, but I had used fedora, opensuse, ubuntu, pclinuxos, vlos, yoper, sidux, vector, puppy, arch, all this distro are based on some purpose, Though the distribution are becoming more usable, they lack some key points like
1. Not keeping it simple
2. Not utilizing the full resource like processor speed, memory, graphics hardware
3. packing all underutilized tools
4. No out of box platform for developer
5. Not providing a standard set of libraries

Example DSL is light weight but not appealing (no good graphics icons, layout, etc) and not usable for a common man who is not used to computer (usually a retail shop owner), If I need to get a good finished layout or graphics user need to go with low level or configuration.

Similarly, Fedora, opensuse are good but are resource hungry and have so many other service running behind, so to tune it to my taste I need to again go through a learning curve

So I felt there should be a core system with only base library required and system should support out of box JAVA and .NET (mono) so developer can deploy there application Java or .Net .

The user should easily compile or specify the details of the hardware like chipset, graphics card, wireless card and generate a iso boot files which make a graphical system with network connection to internet from where they can add additional feature or software which should be easy for them

Kahless, your idea is great I will try to join the mailing list for arch & vector, so I make have a good understanding of the distro process and may be I can identify more area where I can contribute

I also got this link form a forum member which put some light to my part1 idea http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

Zenwalk is a fairly lightweight distro, and comes with a lot of development tools out of the box.

Zenwalk statement seems interesting, I am downloading it, I will test it by today

I hate to remind everyone that this is a linux community. If rajamohan wants to build a kernel that has a pink splash screen, so be it. If he wants to make a new distro, so be it. We shouldn't stifle a person's ideas cause there are 400+ distros out there.

Something that may be helpful would be to base it off another small distro. Short list would be Austrumi (based on Slackware), Damn Small, Puppy, and Feather. There are others of course, but if you want to build your own, go right ahead.

I didn't say that he couldn't, I just said that there would be little point to it, considering there are other distributions out there that do the same thing. I really don't care if he goes ahead and does it

Yeah, I never said don't do it, I just wondered if another distro was necessary. If you can find some niche that isn't filled by an existing distro, rajamohan, that would be ideal. Good luck anyway, don't let me put you off the idea.

The idea is simple, late in 1995 when win95 was launched, user of it where happy with it then, came 98, me, 2000, xp now Vista (require major hardware change). But still win95 is enough, if it would have include only changes needed (I am not making a justification point here, it is taken to express my view).

I felt a similar feeling with some distro, Every time if I need to upgrade a system there a bulk of download to be carried out (for a common man he does not know what upgrade is needed for him though many may not be required).

The distro I am planning is to address is not to make huge change in the base unless otherwise required and confirm to the user that the system is safe to use even without the new enhancement or update (unless the hardware or new software environments changes).

Now Linux has matured, so we need to consider a usable system where a user has to stick in to it for a long time for his day to day use, No bother about changes, updates, etc.

phantom_cyph, Austrumi is looking great, I will surly test it, If it satisfy my ideas I will join with it

It sounds like you are trying to create another Arch.

may be my distribution idea closely follow arch but more usable to any common(non-techie) user and system integrators, and retail application deployers with more user friendly installation