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I have a question related to this article, though not directly. If building completely from scratch turns out too cumbersome and time-consuming, what would be t

I have a question related to this article, though not directly. If building completely from scratch turns out too cumbersome and time-consuming, what would be the easiest way of building a minimal, fast starting distro with graphical user interface and networking whose only purpose is to run one application on x86 hardware in kiosk mode? Is there a distro builder for dummies?

ChickeNES 10y ago
Not exactly a distro builder, but Alpine (https://alpinelinux.org/ https://alpinelinux.org/) is a lightweight distro that follows an install-only-what-you-need philosophy.
kasabali 9y ago
Buildroot
rijoja 10y ago
Sure there is LFS. I suppose arch could give you a fairly minimal installation. Really when you think of it harddisc usage is hardly the problem here so even though it might seem silly having a 10GB installation, it will cost you nothing and save you time. But if you want it quick install debian or arch or whatever and simply start only X11 and whatever application you want to run. If there is no window manager or an extremely limited mode, you got kiosk mode.
slezyr 10y ago
https://susestudio.com/ https://susestudio.com/ (NOT REALY WHAT YOU WANT) You can pick packages and build a distro from browser. NixOS - You can make one config file to specify how your system should look like. It's easy to make GUI for it.
Nullabillity 10y ago
NixOS is awesome for stuff like this. Very easy to define your own "base image" and layer whatever you want on top of it. Binary packages by default, but you can override the compilation flags for any any package, Gentoo-style. Configuration files are also packages, which frees you from the cruft that systems like Chef or Puppet tend to accumulate. Oh, and NixOps is awesome for managing multiple machines. And it can automagically set up VMs corresponding to your production network. SUSE Studio has a nice GUI and is easy to get started with, but AFAIK it doesn't have a nice story for configuration management, or managing the systems after they've been deployed.

ChickeNES 10y ago

Not exactly a distro builder, but Alpine (https://alpinelinux.org/ https://alpinelinux.org/) is a lightweight distro that follows an install-only-what-you-need philosophy.

kasabali 9y ago

Buildroot

rijoja 10y ago

Sure there is LFS. I suppose arch could give you a fairly minimal installation. Really when you think of it harddisc usage is hardly the problem here so even though it might seem silly having a 10GB installation, it will cost you nothing and save you time. But if you want it quick install debian or arch or whatever and simply start only X11 and whatever application you want to run. If there is no window manager or an extremely limited mode, you got kiosk mode.

slezyr 10y ago

https://susestudio.com/ https://susestudio.com/ (NOT REALY WHAT YOU WANT) You can pick packages and build a distro from browser. NixOS - You can make one config file to specify how your system should look like. It's easy to make GUI for it.

Nullabillity 10y ago

NixOS is awesome for stuff like this. Very easy to define your own "base image" and layer whatever you want on top of it. Binary packages by default, but you can override the compilation flags for any any package, Gentoo-style. Configuration files are also packages, which frees you from the cruft that systems like Chef or Puppet tend to accumulate. Oh, and NixOps is awesome for managing multiple machines. And it can automagically set up VMs corresponding to your production network. SUSE Studio has a nice GUI and is easy to get started with, but AFAIK it doesn't have a nice story for configuration management, or managing the systems after they've been deployed.