How To Create And Use A Personal Linux Distribution?
In this article, we will show you how to create and use your own personal Linux distribution based on common distributions.
Before you begin, let’s look at the prospects for this process.
A lot can be done thanks to open-source software’s internal flexibility, scalability, and adaptability. For example, it is possible to decide to build a new product based on your specific needs.
The world of operating systems
We use computers daily and often have enough information about Windows and Mac. However, are you aware of the capabilities of the Linux operating system?
It is true that Windows and macOS are the marketplace operating systems in the Desktop domain and are in third place behind the Linux operating system. Still, some of Linux’s capabilities go beyond these two operating systems.
Microsoft Windows accounts for about 80% of the market and macOS for about 16%, so we see that Linux has a small market share, but wait, the reality is something else.
These numbers only reflect the use of Desktop operating systems. Did you know that Android runs on the Linux operating system? When you use Facebook, Instagram, or Google, you are using Linux.
Interestingly, in the world of server operating systems, Linux is a leader by a small margin.
What is the exact definition of an operating system?
An operating system connects the hardware you interact with to the software you want to run. When you press a key on the keyboard or look at the screen, you are communicating with the hardware in an intangible way.
When you run your web browser and use it to interact with the web, it executes code on the central processing unit.
However, these processes are not done directly because you interact first with the operating system and then with the hardware. The operating system translates and manages hardware conversations so the software can use them.
To better understand this issue, pay attention to Figure 1.
figure 1
As you can see in Figure 1, there are three abstract layers of hardware: kernel mode, user mode, and system mode. These layers combine to allow you to use the system hardware properly. The operating system interfaces hardware, applications, and system applications.
The operating system allows applications and developers to interact with hardware through its libraries.
What is Linux?
Some users misunderstand Linux as an operating system. This notion is incorrect because Linux is software that communicates directly with the hardware, while a real operating system does far more than interact and includes software libraries, a runtime component, and typically a set of default executable tools.
Most Linux distributions use GNU, designed by Richard Stallman for free and open-source, as the operating system. GNU The title GNU’s Not Unix is a pseudo-Unix operating system developed by the GNU Project and released as open-source software.
GNU includes everything from compilers to system libraries and system applications.
In the world of Linux, we often use the term GNU + Linux, more colloquially than GNU / Linux, to indicate that the Linux operating system combines the two.
Many Linux distributions today are often lightweight and used in embedded systems. However, most Linux distributions are based on popular distributions such as Debian and Ubuntu.
Open-source software versus free software
The Linux kernel is known as open-source software because its source code is available to users. Any user can read the code and make changes to the source code.
In this case, developers can find bugs as members of the Linux community or add new features to the intended distribution. Open-source software based on the developer community concept has more flexibility than proprietary and closed-source software such as Windows.
Developers worldwide can view and edit code, improving software quality, troubleshooting, and software Security.
Open-source software is usually free, and the most popular ones are VLC, MediaWiki, and Firefox.
That is why the open-source Development model has become a widespread and vital ecosystem.
On the other hand, there is more free software than open-source software. Free software provides interesting ways for developers to make money through this Development model.
Developers can benefit from the free model by offering advertising-based solutions or in-app purchases.
In contrast to these two models is proprietary software, such as the Microsoft Windows operating system, which does not own the software with the user; the user is only allowed to use it.
In this case, users are unable to view the code and any reverse engineering, editing, or republishing of the code by illegal users. That’s why open-source software and operating systems have come to the attention of developers.
Why do we need to create a Linux distribution?
With so many Linux distributions out there, you might be wondering why we should look to build a new distribution while existing distributions offer different capabilities.
No operating system in the world can be completely user-friendly. For example, some organizations prefer to use an operating system that inherently blocks access to specific ports, or parents choose to use an appropriate operating system for their children, in which case you may have to create your own Linux distribution.
Building a Linux distribution is not as difficult as it sounds, but it is a time-consuming process if you use the right tools.
There are many tools for this purpose, some of which are well known. In this article, we will get acquainted with eight of these tools.
Linux Respin
Linux Respin is a branch of the popular Remasterys tool that has stopped updating. Remasters was one of the most popular tools for building Linux distributions or backups. However, Linux Respin is a good alternative to this tool. Although it offers more limited capabilities than Remasterys, it has acceptable performance in building Linux distributions.
Linux Respin is only available in conjunction with Debian, Mint, and Trisquel distributions, which has limited its use. The downside to the above tool is the not-so-powerful documentation provided for it.
Linux Live Kit
The Linux Live Kit is a tool for building a custom Linux distribution or backup system. It supports Debian by default but can be used in conjunction with other distributions, provided the distribution supports aufs and squashfs kernel modules.
The Linux Live Kit provides the user with a short, efficient tool that is far from the usual complexity, allowing the user to create the desired distribution without any problems.
Ubuntu Imager
Ubuntu Imager is the ideal tool for building Ubuntu-based Linux distributions. Although it is not the only option available to Ubuntu, because of its many good features, it is an ideal option.
Linux from Scratch
If you want to monitor the features and applications added to a custom distribution when building one, I suggest you use the Linux from Scratch tool. Fortunately, detailed documentation for LFS is provided, and not only is it ideal for creating a Linux distribution, but it is also an excellent resource for learning Linux.
Linux From Scratch lets you build your own custom Linux system entirely from source code. Although LFS has different functionality than the other tools we introduced in this article, it is ideal for building a personal Linux distribution.
Slax Modules Tool
If you are looking for a simple Slax-like tool that is a Slackware-based distribution, the Slax Modules Tool is for you. The above tool is especially suitable for people who want to create a live and light version to run a system. Slax Modules Tools are based on Slackware and allow users to call different modules.
Note, however, that the above approach is somewhat outdated. For newer versions of Slax, it is recommended that you use apt to install software instead of modules.
Live Magic
Live Magic is another tool designed to build Debian-based distributions. However, the tool has capabilities far beyond building Debian-based distributions. Live Magic can create CDs, flash drives, and netboot images. This tool is easier to use than the options presented in this article; however, it cannot create an image of the distribution you are using.
However, the tool wizard allows you to apply the configurations you want. This program can fetch packages from repositories and place them in your desired image.
Revisor
Revisor is another powerful tool for building custom distributions. It lets you create personalized Fedora-based distributions.
Revisor allows you to create a Media Installation for the permanent distribution installation on the computer, preparing a live version that can boot a system. This solution is beneficial when recovering data and solving operating system problems.
Customizer
A customizer is a tool that allows you to create an Ubuntu-based distribution, although it also supports Xubuntu and Kubuntu. The only major drawback of this tool is that when building a distribution, your hosting system must have the same architecture as the operating system you intend to rebuild.
Real experience building TOS Linux distribution
You probably haven’t heard of the TOS distribution, which is a personal distribution designed by Tom Meyer based on the Ubuntu distribution.
“When I decided to create this distribution, I got a lot of information about how to use Linux, and I was able to use a stable distribution,” he says.
The distribution I use today is for everyday activities.
When I started the build process, I was curious to test different distributions like Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Fedora, Manjaro, and Arch Linux to see what functionalities are in the other distributions that can be used in TOS. When I installed Arch Linux on my laptop, I installed it on my Desktop computer.
To do this, I wrote a shell script that would automatically install Arch Linux with all the dependencies and applications I needed. I quickly identified and fixed the installation script bugs. During this time, I added new features that I needed to the above script, which created a huge amount of usability in a short period of time.
“Eventually, I was faced with a script, so I decided to create application components and infrastructure that could communicate with each other, and thus TOS GNU / LINUX was born.”
TOX Linux has a graphical installer responsible for installing the operating system on the hard drive. It is in charge of installing various processes, such as hard disk partitioning / solid-state memory, creating groups and users, installing the necessary packages from the TOS repository, operating system configuration (keyboard, permissions, support repositories, etc.), setting up the boot process, and preparing and validating the environment.
Each of these components has its configuration. For example, users can specify how to configure the environment, what file system to use, and how to encrypt data. TOS uses packet signatures to prevent middleman attacks.
In other words, each package is compressed (in a zip file or zstd), signed with a private key after compression, and placed in the appropriate repository. The Desktop environment of the TOS distribution is shown in Figure 2.
The Desktop environment is the central part of the operating system, which provides a graphical interface for managing daily activities.
In other words, each package is compressed (in a zip file or zstd), signed with a private key after compression, and placed in the appropriate repository.
Figure 2 shows the desktop environment of the TOS distribution. The desktop environment is the main part of the operating system and provides a graphical interface for managing daily activities.
In other words, each package is compressed (in a zip file or zstd), signed with a private key after compression, and placed in the appropriate repository. The Desktop environment of the TOS distribution is shown in Figure 2.
The Desktop environment is the central part of the operating system, which provides a graphical interface for managing daily activities.
figure 2
The most important tasks performed by this Desktop environment are managing applications/windows, providing a set of default applications (word processor, file manager, settings, and similar examples), managing communication modes (WiFi, Bluetooth, screen settings, keyboard layout), management Mentioned permissions (request for password or fingerprint), visual effects management of icons, templates, folders, mouse pointer, background image, and login management. The TOX bootloader supports multiple operating systems.
In other words, it can be used with other Linux, BSD, macOS, and Windows distributions. Therefore, it is possible to use TOS Linux alongside the Windows operating system. Figure 3 shows the architecture of this distribution.
Figure 3
last word
These tools help you build personalized Linux distributions by providing various solutions. However, the level of complexity and capabilities they provide are not the same.
In this article, we have tried to introduce the tools that allow you to prepare a distribution tailored to the needs of the work.
