Easiest Linux distro creation

Question

I have been trying to create my own customized distro of Linux (preferably some kind of Debian system like Debian, Ubuntu, Knoppix, etc). I want to make it specifically for playing games. This is just a pet project for me and while I know Linux pretty well (bash, gcc, g++, gdb, etc), I'm not that great with knowing the kernel. So that puts making my own distro from scratch out of the question.

I went on to trying to create remasters of Knoppix and it worked for me but it was a very long process since knoppix is meant to be a live CD and I was running it in VirtualBox. So what is the easiest and fastest method of making your own distro?

Also, can I install Ubuntu or some kind of Linux to a computer make changes to it, and then make a distro off of that installation?

Answer 1

Linux From Scratch, is often the first choice for such an attempt, well documented and resourceful.

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

Answer 2

It isn't exactly Debian based, but SUSE studio is great to start with if you aren't very familiar with Linux internals yet.

Answer 3

Fedora has some tools called Pungi, LiveCD Creator, and Revisor to help build "spins" of their project, which are customized distributions of Fedora with different sets of packages. You might want to try that out as a relatively easy way to create your own custom distribution.

Answer 4

Ubuntu and UCK works well, install UCK, run apt to install apps from your console, and it makes a livecd.

Answer 5

This is a pretty old post, but I'll put in my two cents anyway:

Remastersys is really easy to use with Ubuntu. I customized an Xubuntu installation in a virtual machine (using VirtualBox, like you) and then copied it over to an ISO with Remastersys, and it works great.

So yes, you can install Linux and make whatever changes you want and then turn it into a distributable ISO using Remastersys. It's a great program; I just wish it worked on non-Debian-based distros too.

Answer 6

as John T stated

It isn't exactly Debian based, but SUSE studio is great to start with if you aren't very familiar with Linux internals yet.

SUSE Studio is a very great tool: could worth the hassle to give a try also to [SLAX][1]?

Ubuntu and UCK works well, install UCK, run apt to install apps from your console, and it makes a livecd.

This, IMHO, is also a good choice: UCK it's easy to use and meets some of your requirements. But as for "reactivity" (I don't know if it's a good choice of terms - I hope that you'll understand what I meant) you could find a bit heavy and slow Ubuntu.

Linux From Scratch, is often the first choice for such an attempt, well documented and resourceful.

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

Last but not least, the option that could lead you to the real success! If you have a solid (ok, also "not that solid") GNU/Linux background and you want to build your own GameDistro, LinuxFromScratch should be what your searching. The documentation is INCREDIBLE! Every single step of the creation is not just written, but it's explained as well: in that way you'll improve your understanding upon the matter and you'll get further knowledge of the whole system.

But, if you don't want to read the whole manual, and you want a basic LFS installation instead, there's a liveCD that do the dirty job: its name is [QLFS][2] (QuickLinuxFromScratch) liveCD. Then I would take [BLFS][3] (BeyondLinuxFromScratch) to do the rest of the distro (for example adding some GUIs, DE, WM, and so on).

Regards