Joe wrote:
On Sat, 23 Jun 2012 12:30:55 -0500 Richard Owlett<rowlett@cloud85.net> wrote:Richard Owlett wrote:I did not use the term "alternate" as that already has a specific meaning in this context. I also used "contrarian" instead of "experimental" to emphasize I'm looking for something aimed at a different target audience. My experiments have demonstrated that the Debian installer team has producer a very robust product which meets the needs/desires of a very large percentage of its intended audience. Having recently read the announcement of apt-offline version 1.2, I think something I'd like would be possible. What I would like to have: CLI, dial up on a full analog modem (USB connection), WiFi connectivity, apt-offline. Options I would likely download almost immediately: X11, a very simple GUI (NOT a 'desktop _environment_), Tcl/Tk& gnuplot (I've existing projects). TIAIt appears that I can reach my goal using netinst.iso. I doubt that few, if any, would recommend my goals or route. From my reading, I suspect that I'm headed down a path similar to an old/abandoned project for a highly customizable small footprint Linux install. [Can't recall the project's name.] I any case I'll learn the guts of Linux. I'm retired so I've time and no _outside_ constraints. Thanks to all.If you really do have plenty of time, you might want to look at Linux From Scratch.
As you wrote I was telling Neal that was the project I was trying to recall.
I built a couple of systems in its early days, before I
settled on Debian, mainly to try to get some understanding of what is
really necessary in a Linux system. It's all very well to say 'just
remove the packages you don't need' but which are they?
Even if you don't fancy the fairly tedious slog of actually compiling a
Linux system completely from source (and I gave up at the command
line, I didn't go on to add X), the documentation ('The Book') contains
information that might be of interest to you. The current one is:
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/downloads/stable/LFS-BOOK-7.1.pdf
There are various references on the Net to 'Debian From Scratch' but
they seem to refer to installing Debian using various methods rather
than actually compiling it from source. I think (c)debootstrap has
already been mentioned in this context.
"debootstrap" had not been mentioned that I recall. It will save me from reinventing wheel. Useful pages may include: http://wiki.debian.org/Debootstrap http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/426 http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/debootstrap http://wiki.debian.org/EmDebian/CrossDebootstrap http://www.digriz.org.uk/debian/debootstrap