Every once in a while, I have a hankering to make a new Linux distribution.  The open nature of Linux, its programs, and its community of users and developers fortunately makes developing a new distribution feasible, yet at the same time the disparate state of all these resources makes it difficult for a beginner to start.  Some guides are wonderfully detailed but limited in scope whereas others, like the venerable Linux From Scratch, tell you how to create something but not how to create your own thing with your design, your method, and your imprimatur from start to finish.

Enter So You Wanna Make a Linux Distribution?.  This website aims to serve as a repository for my collected distribution development lore and wisdom, which I have accumulated over (roughly) seven years of mostly unsuccessful attempts to create my Linux distro, Vorpo Linux.  I’ve written it as a guide/manual so that others can follow along and hopefully learn from my mistakes as they create their own systems:

1. Introduction to distro development
2. Resources available (in lieu of a bibliography)
3. Requirements for starting
4. What exactly is a computer and why does it need an operating system?
5. How Linux manages a computer compared to other operating systems, and what a distribution is
6. A walk through an average GNU/Linux system
7. Starting distribution design
8. A thorough primer on the boot process that won’t leave you hanging dry, pt. 1: turning the computer on
9. A thorough primer on the boot process that won’t leave you hanging dry, pt. 2: the boot loader
10. A thorough primer on the boot process that won’t leave you hanging dry, pt. 3: the kernel
11. A thorough primer on the boot process that won’t leave you hanging dry, pt. 4: init/initramfs
12. A thorough primer on the boot process that won’t leave you hanging dry, pt. 5: post-init
13. Setting up the toolchain, pt. 1: basic overview
14. Setting up the toolchain, pt. 2: chicken and the egg, or gcc/binutils and libc
15. More to follow…

This guide can be followed through from beginning to end, but if you’re like me then you’re impatient and want to peck around to get at the good stuff immediately: that’s perfectly fine.  If you’ve already been working on developing a distribution and need help with a particular point, I recommend using Google to do a site search for a particular phrase or keyword.

Finally, if you would like to contribute, comment, or make any corrections, please feel free to e-mail me at ersin.akinci@gmail.com.

I hope that you find it helpful!