Making a custom Debian distro?
How hard is it to make a custom Debian-like system from scratch? Can you give
me any suggestions on how to get started? I know a little about Linux from
Scratch, and I have no problem building most software packages from either
debian sources or source tarballs.
What I would like to do is build a custom distribution that could be installed
from CD, but kept updated over the Internet. It seems to me that using the
Debian packaging system would be the best way to do this.
This would be for a software development contract I expect to get.
My clients would sell the hardware and installation CD as their product. Most
likely the clients would actually perform the installation, so the user might
be receiving the PC already installed.
The clients would also maintain the machine that is the central package server.
If an upgrade were made available, the end user would access my client's
server much like any Debian user accesses one of the debian mirrors with apt.
There will only be a dozen packages or so, besides what is necessary for the
base install. Most of them would be existing open souce packages, plus a few
packages that I will write myself.
A complication is that the end users are not expected to be computer savvy.
These would be expected to be pretty self-automated turnkey systems. I think
most desktop user interfaces would be more than they could deal with and a
terminal-based UI as is used for configuration after a package is downloaded
would be completely unfathomable.
The alternative to network updates would likely be to send a field service
engineer out with an upgrade CD. It would be expensive for my client to
maintain the staff for that. Upgrades wouldn't be very frequent, hopefully,
but I want to allow for the possibility.
To the extent that I can do it, I will avoid any user configuration at all, and
where it can't be avoided, I'd set up a full-screen web interface, probably
building a custom web browser out of Mozilla that doesn't have any of the stuff
at the top of the window.
If the machine were rebooted, the startup script would relaunch this browser.
Thanks for any tips you can give me.
Mike
--
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting
http://www.goingware.com/
crawford@goingware.com
Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow.
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