DIY distribution

[sluthy]

Given the space constraints of my 2GB CF HDD, and the sluggishness of it's current SUSE install, I'm looking at wiping it altogether and doing my own tiny Linux install. I'll need:

* RAID support - it'll be primarily a file server with it's 4x320GB RAID5 setup.

* VNC/Remote Desktop/etc - it'll be running headless in a small studyroom, and I'll be administering it through another network PC, like SUSE currently has with VNC.

* Apache - I would like to use it to store my iCalendar so I can use the one calendar at home, at work and on the go with my Portable Sunbird, so I'd like to set up CalDAV, and maybe other Apache goodness.

* CUPS - for sharing printers, specifically a HP Laserjet 1200 (fine) and a Canon PiXMA iP5000 (not so fine).

* some kind of firewall obviously.

* Bittorrent - self explanatory.

Gnome and KDE might be too big and I'll be fine with XFCe or anything, but I'll live with a CLI if it comes to that (would VNC still work?).

How could I go about setting up a custom distro like this? Do DSL or Puppy Linux have all of these features?

 

[Netopia]

I would switch from VNC to NX. NX is MUCH more responsive, and you can run it all over port 22 along with SSH. Once I tried NX, I've never really bothered with VNC on Linux boxes again. I guess the one caveat to that would be that if you need to get to your box from a web browser, then VNC does have that one advantage, but other than that, it's night and day.

Joe

 

[sciencewhiz]

distrowatch.com will show you what software and versions are included with just about any distribution.

I use debian for all my servers. It has just about any package imaginable. I do a minimum install, and then apt-get install whatever I need.

 

[Nothinman]

VNC/Remote Desktop/etc - it'll be running headless in a small studyroom, and I'll be administering it through another network PC, like SUSE currently has with VNC.

That alone will increase the space required by many orders of magnitude because you'll need X + all of the libraries needed to run whatever X tools you want. Just skip that part and use ssh and do everything from the command line.

How could I go about setting up a custom distro like this? Do DSL or Puppy Linux have all of these features?

Frankly I'd just do like sciencewhiz, do a minimal Debian installation and add on whatever I wanted with aptitude after that.

 

[DaiShan]

Ubuntu is very easy to set up and has fantastic hardware support. I've got 7.10 installed on a a 2gb usb drive so that I can boot up my laptop, desktop etc and save my changes to the drive, works pretty well (albeit the usb drive is a little slow) but with your setup you should be able to run Gnome fine.

 

[DaiShan]

Originally posted by: sciencewhiz
distrowatch.com will show you what software and versions are included with just about any distribution.

I use debian for all my servers. It has just about any package imaginable. I do a minimum install, and then apt-get install whatever I need.

Debian (and derivatives) is my personal favorite, and aptitude is a LOT faster than yum at package installation etc. Its one shortcoming is the whatprovides option, which can help greatly if installing a dpkg manually or when a program complains about missing shared objects.