How to cook minimal kernel

MESSIAH

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Hi. I want make my own linux distro x64 with minimum components. I want to make it live USB with option to install on HDD + install mods in future.
 


Hi. I want make my own linux distro x64 with minimum components. I want to make it live USB with option to install on HDD + install mods in future.
It's simple... Linux From Scratch. Except, well, it's not as simple as you might think. Forget about how to make a live USB until you've actually built a distro to work with. Start the race at the beginning, not at the end.

If you find actually building a distro is too hard, you might be able to fork an existing distro instead, so most of the hard work is already done for you. This article was updated in 2017, but some of it may not be current anymore. Slax, at least, has changed how it is built... now based on Debian instead of Slackware.

Unfortunately, you won't find much detailed help here. Building from scratch, or even building a respin, is beyond the abilities of all but maybe a few of our users. If you want to be a developer, join some developer mailing lists and/or IRC channels and talk with those who are actively involved in projects like this. Most of us here are just not capable... we can only Google for you, and you should be able to Google for yourself.

Good luck!
 
I want make my own linux distro x64 with minimum components. I want to make it live USB with option to install on HDD + install mods in future.

Why?
 
I have to agree with arochester and atanere here, there are already at least a dozen "minimal install" linuxes out there.

But on the other hand, I do see value in "doing it yourself". I've gone the whole LFS route and compiled my own kernel a few times. It is a job. It usually takes me about 3 solid days to get to a bootable media (USB, DVD, ISO) and it's a good exercise to see what goes into building a distro.

But then when you are done... now what? You have a static OS with static packages. Neither one can be updated. You have to rebuild the kernel, or at the very least rebuild your packages with all the correct dependencies. Doing it all yourself becomes tedious.
 
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Distros are for the weak. True haxxor make an UEFI bootable kernel and just drop it on EFI/FAT partition. coreutils package you said ? Pfff... you don't need a text editor when you have a shell with pipes and redirections...
I don't even use linux anymore, I run custom bare metal programs on my RISCV micro-controller. I made an ethernet controller out of my GPIO pins, using few opamp. Checkmate NSA, can't get me with you NIC firmware backdoor !

Jokes aside, you look like you are trying to learn some serious stuff, which is great. But you are dealing with things that are incredibly complex. Typing commands from tutorials won't teach you much, sadly. Here is a book, buy it new, used, borrow it, but give it a try !

 

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