LinOSX TechnoMash

Rolling my own Linux Distro

I’ve decided to take the plunge and try rolling my own Linux distribution based on Redhat’s Fedora Core 3. I’m including many thirdparty RPMs from Fedora RPM services like FreshRPMS, DAG, ATRpms, and jpackage as well as some customized applications that i’ve been playing with.

It’s been very interesting reading and learning exactly how to do this and each step opens up a cool new world of things that can be done. The Anaconda installer is an incredible piece of software. I believe that it’s going to be relatively easy to script the creation of a new DVD ISO almost daily.

Some great links I’ve been reading on this are:

• isolinux splash how-to
• anaconda wiki
• Ethan McCallum’s articles on O’Reilly

Fedora Core 3 Fresh Install

Well, it looks like there’s either something wacky with my hardware. After 11 tries, I could not get the Fedora Core 3 installation done on my Dell Dimension. I had to revert to some old Redhat 8 CDs I had, install a basic installation on a tiny partition and manully add a reference to boot into FC3.

I wish there were some logs or something that would tell what the error was but this was definitely a strange one.