Hi ALL,

I need a lightweight Slackware distribution at my workplace. For this reason I want to build custom distribution seprately for both server and desktop versions based on Slackware.

Being new to Linux I am seeking all your help . Please guide me how should I proceed further and any links to online reources is appreciated.

Changing the Installer to suit my needs will be sufficeint as of now. Please brief me how can i achieve it .

Thank you in advance

Kanthi kiran

Changing the install can get a bit difficult, but not impossible. What you end up having is dependency issues more than anything else.

If you need a decent desktop, light version of Slackware for general tasks, why not use Slax? It seems to work on most hardware, and has an ability to be installed on the HDD.

Server side? Depends on what you need. You may have to do a regular install, pare down what you need/don't need, mostly because you start running into RAID/Power/LAN issues. Fairly easy to overcome, but full of pitfalls. And recompiles. And test.

At least on the server side, you could start with not installing all the 'candy' on disc2. Why have KDE taking up space if you don't want/ need it. That can easily be accomplished thru the regular install. Just choose not to install them.

I've never investigated changing the install scripts, tho. Should be easy to do. As a matter of fact, I was just reading about them, I think, on the Wiki FAQS, might be in the magazine articles. That should, at least, get you rolling in the correct direction.

Sorry if I'm not helping much, but maybe I've steered you in the correct direction.

Take a look at http://slax.linux-live.org/

That's what I thought! I unselected KDE from my installs. But /opt/KDE is full of unwanted @#$!

I checked /var/adm/packages and KDE is not there. pkgtool doesn't know about it. Does anyone know how and why this stuff got installed or if it's needed?

Another possibility is using Vector Linux which is a lightweight Slackware derived disribution. I have used Vector Linux briefly in the past and it is optomised for slightly older hardware and seems to be somewhat desktop oriented. A recent review metioned using either KDE, Gnome, or Enlightenment DR17 as the desktop environment in Vector Linux. If I am not mistaken I believe Vector Linux can usually use the Slackware pakages which come from linuxpackages.net. Here are a couple of Links:

http://www.vectorlinux.com/
http://madpenguin.org/cms/index.php/...ntable&id=6190


I haven't ever tried Slax. If that does not meet your needs then perhaps you will able to modify Slackware to meet your needs, although, I have never tried doing anything that drastic myself. Perhaps slapt-get might be useful when adding missing packages. I have rarely used slapt-get but, my understanding is that it will usually resolve some or most of the depenencies in Slackware automatically. That might possibly be useful when having to install many of the packages yourself. I believe slapt-get is supposed to be somewhat like the Debian apt-get tool. Of course a person could always download the Slackware packages from somewhere like Slackware.com or linuxpackages.net and then install the packages with pkgtool. Althernatively, they could be compiled from source and then installed.

But anyway, I am not exactly sure what you want to do or how best to do it. Perhaps someone else has some other suggestions.

About building custom installation, you can read in slackbook.org.Another lightweight Slackware based Linux distro is zen linux.

This thread will help: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=360753

If you're new to Linux, it's really going to give you a lot of work, you may want to try to get on with Linux before modifing stuff

there used to be a website called CUSS (Cook your own Slackware or something) anyways, I can't seem to find it anymore. They used to tell you how to add and remove stuff and make your own custom Slackware CD.

Also, see the Amigo linux website.

There is also http://users.piuha.net/martti/comp/s...slackware.html
which is slackware + pkgsrc from netbsd

or http://portpkg.berlios.de/

Portpkg is a project, that provides a community based SlackBuild collection ("the ports") and a package manager ("portpkg") for Slackware Linux. Right now the ports collection is continueously growing. The conception for the administration tool is nearly finished, and definitely ready to use! However we have to mention that this software comes WITH ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. Portpkg requires at least Slackware Linux 10.

Why not check out Zipslack at http://www.slackware.com/zipslack/. This is a minimalist Slackware system which occupies about 100MB. It can be run from within any FAT32 filesystem or installed and booted with Lilo. As packages can be added on, it could provide a base system for you to build on.

There is also Zenwalk www.zenwalk.org, it is based on Slackware and has kernel 2.6.15.4, udev 084, along with a lot of other stuff and it is very minimal(fits on one cd 420mb). Has mostly everything you need for a desktop.

There is also a core version without X, and other graphical utilities.