seek referrals on distro howtos

[Claude Jones]

On Saturday 22 October 2005 12:36 pm, Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Sat, 2005-10-22 at 07:30, Claude Jones wrote:
> > I've been looking, and there are lots of pages on how to create a distro.
> > Sometimes, it's hard to separate the competent from the wannabes. Do any
> > of you who have actually created distros have some reading suggestions
> > for a beginner?
>
> The k12ltsp project rebuilds the fedora and Centos distributions
> with addition packages and install options.  The procedure must
> work well because their rebuilt isos have always been available
> very soon after the underlying code releases and included all
> base system updates up to the time of the rebuild.  See
> http://www.k12ltsp.org/phpwiki/index.php/Technical%3ADeveloper%3ABuildHowto
> for the procedure.
>
> > I'm interested in creating a distro that is oriented to graphics
> > artists/media professionals - that comes up with the cutting edge
> > packages that are being developed, installed and basically configured,
> > and provides easy methods for keeping those packages updated as they
> > develop. I'm thinking of packages like Cinelerra, Jahshaka, Cinepaint,
> > etc, when I say cutting edge, though I'm also open to any suggestions on
> > this front. Packages like Inkscape, and the Gimp would be fairly simple
> > to include, I presume.  I'm welcome to being told, also, that this is too
> > ambitious, but if you could give reasons for why this is so, that would
> > be great.
>
> Note that you really don't have to rebuild the base disto to
> add packages.  You can just put the new packages and any
> modified base libraries in a yum repository, add those
> to the client yum configuration after installation and
> issue a 'yum install ...' command.   Subsequent yum updates
> will also do the right thing.  There are already several
> such repositories on the net.  However, it is a nice touch
> to have a canned package group on the install set and
> a yum preconfigured for the additional repository like
> the k12ltsp version does it.  If you see any educational
> value in the packages you want to add, maybe you should
> combine forces and maintain packages to for that distro.
> Inkscape and scribus are already there and the ltsp part
> (to netboot thin clients) doesn't hurt anything even if you
> don't use it.
>
Thanks for the ideas - I'll take a look.

-- 
Claude Jones
Bluemont, VA, USA