Building my own linux distro and need a team?

Question

I want to build my own linux distro and need a team to help me. I'm sort of new at the coding, designs, and everything else, meaning I have no coding skills.

- This distro does have a main point, which I have yet to find support for in any other distro.
- I can't write a program to patch another distro, b/c I don't know any coding, and I believe it would go down into the core of the OS, which means I might as well write an new OS anyway.
- It's going to be open sourced
- I'm hoping to offer support for DEB packages.
- I'm reading a Linux From Scratch book right now.
- I'm needing a name, Artwork, desktop design, translations, the works
- Because I've just started the Linux From Scratch book, I don't know if it'll take years, months, or even decades for me to learn all this stuff LOL

** MY BASIC QUESTION IS, WHERE DO I FIND A TEAM TO WORK WITH ME?

Answer 1

I had this idea too before! I have gathered some info also but I give it up cause of financial matters;



your team can be found in 2 ways :



1-you are a rich man => or supported as well and you employ some developers and engineers and you do it with you plan;



2-you are not a rich man => collect your teammates on the web and try to create it in net with some spacial programs like team suit systems that you web mates develop inside that;

Answer 2

You don't need a team you need experience. You are customizing your distro right now, whether you are aware of it or not. Doing a distro doesn't have to be such a big thing. Here is the distro from Fab Scherschel of Linux Outlaws:



http://lamerk.org/katian



You should have some understanding of programming and of deb packages. To toot my own horn for a minute I advocate the use of the command line too and while my disorganized excuse for a website has some real problems I went in and threw up a new page yesterday I think you should read:



http://www.angelfire.com/nh/greatgodpan/programlinux.html



There is nothing about deb packages there but they are definitely worth learning about. I even used dpkg and apt to compile a program on my system I couldn't get to work either before or after recompiling it. I hope I gave the debian maintainers the information they needed but it didn't look like it -- dpkg ignored my switches. Ah well, I switched from Debian years ago -- I said I'm going to try Slackware for a few months because this is so crazy and I'm still on it, though I'm typing this on Gentoo.



I was turned off finally by Debian's interminable ideological wars and I wasn't entirely satisfied with dpkg. Shuttleworth is worth commenting on. He was a guy in business school who was handed a set of slackware disks when he got a computer and couldn't afford a legal windows system. Slackware being slackware he learned to program on it and when Ian Murdock launched Debian he became a developer for it. For money he had a bunch of slackware and debian boxes in his parents garage which provided security certificates to web pages (he eventually sold it to Verisign for close to a billion Rand as he is south african). When he decided to give back, he intentionally kept it as close to Debian as possible -- that is where the deb packages come from -- while the ideological wars (my understanding is that Murdock and the Debian developers haven't been on speaking terms for years) were preempted by his declaring himself "Benevolent Dictator for Life" -- a position also held by Patrick Volkerding at Slackware. It's so good that I've known "Debian Developers" who use Ubuntu for its saner build environment.



You don't need to get a team together to build a distro because to get it right you need the knowledge more. Here is a good page about it:



http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205917063



I also advocate installing Gentoo before you do Linux from Scratch -- it's easier, but not much. However you can (mostly) do it from any live cd you have around:



http://linuxreviews.org/gentoo/Installing_Gentoo_Knoppix/



Though for the kernel you need either the install cd or one of the Slackware distributions:



http://zoonek.free.fr/blosxom/Linux/2006-01-01_Gentoo.html



Mr. Zoonekynd describes copying the configure file used by the relevant kernels to the directory used by a program called genkernel which will compile the kernel for you. I've tried listing his trick here but whatever I do Yahoo answers always cuts it off. I've gotten a working kernel from a Knoppix disk (similar to Ubuntu but less easy to use) however I replaced the config file with one from dyne:bolic (which has a kernel too old for installing it):



http://www.dynebolic.org



because the configuration file from Knoppix (which I found in the /boot directory) was NOT GOOD. It was just workable.



The biggest problem I've had was when gcc stopped working.



http://forum.soft32.com/linux/gentoo-Problem-updating-gcc-ftopict329019.html



I've always just typed gcc-config, gotten a list of compilers available then typed gcc-config # with the # being the number I thought would be the compiler that worked, and it always did. It takes hours rather than days as Linux from Scratch does, but it is worth trying.

Answer 3

i have been fiddling with Mint on an more suitable laptop I actual could study it out. i love it and would commence utilizing it as my major operating device. thanks for the information. and historic past lesson. i'm no longer positive what you mean by "Linux Mint does no longer adhere to the principles of software freedom". i presumed Mint became open source?