[CentOS] Remaster CentOs Live CD

Rodrigo Barbosa rodrigob at darkover.org
Wed Jul 5 06:49:16 UTC 2006


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On Wed, Jul 05, 2006 at 02:22:53AM -0400, Joe Klemmer wrote:
> Daniel de Kok wrote:
> >> For both of these, we will be happy to entertain changes that people
> >> want ... but I don't think it is in our best interest to tell people
> >> exactly how to build replacements for those, do you?
> > 
> > Why not? Of course, it would not be good if people add their own
> > background and dump it on the net. But I can see the use of making a
> > custom Live CD. E.g. suppose that you someone would like to provide a
> > class of biology students with a live CD that contains some
> > domain-specific programs, so that they can run them without having to
> > install Linux at home.
> > 
> > Of course, the obvious problem is that some people will mess things up,
> > and will distribute broken live CDs to others with the CentOS logos
> > still in there.
> 
> 	If anyone is really interested in remastering their own CDs it only
> takes about 3 minutes of google to come  up with all the documentation
> and how-to's you could ever want.  Believe me, if building your own
> distro was all that difficult there wouldn't be four hundred gazillion
> different distros out there.  I can definitely understand Johnny's POV
> on the subject.  But hell, even _I_ could BMOD (Build My Own Distro) if
> I weren't so damned lazy.
> 
> 	Hey.  BMOD Linux.  Kinda has a ring to it.  If I ever get around to
> acquiring a DVD burner of some kind I might take a stab at it.  Or not.
>  I really am very lazy.

Humm, this thread is a bit dead, but since you've got it back ...

Actually, building your own distro is NOT easy. At all.
I would not even think of starting without at least a 15 people team.
And I mean people that know what they are doing. Even for something
like CentOS, which is not a distro built from scratch, I would not
even consider starting wihout 10 people.

I actually think the CentOS maintainers are crazy for not only trying,
but for managing to do it with so small a team.

Yes, it is very easy to create packages for things like mplayerplug-in
and mutt. But when we start talking about kernel, glibc, gcc, kde
and stuff, thinks go to hell in a handcart. I used to work for
a commercial distro (Conectiva, now part of Mandriva), and we
used to have a guy there, full time, which pretty much only handled
gcc and glibc. 4 guys for the kernel. 1 only for KDE. And don't
even get me started on documentation. We have like 8 people just for
that (yes, translations too, so it was a big job). My main job was
MTAs (sendmail, exim, postfix) and RPM itself. Which took 90% of my
time. The rest of the time I worked on various "minor" packages, along
to lending some help on some of the big ones (glibc) whenever possible.

The reason we have "four hundred gazillion" different distros is
exactly because people have no idea the work involved in creating
and, most specially, maintaining a distro. How many of those
distros pretty much suck ? 99.9% ?

Ok, this is a very sensitive topic for me, so I tent to rant a lot.
But anyone who was ever involved on real distro work will agree with
me.


- -- 
Rodrigo Barbosa
"Quid quid Latine dictum sit, altum viditur"
"Be excellent to each other ..." - Bill & Ted (Wyld Stallyns)

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