Forum Home
Press F1
Thread ID: 108629	2010-04-05 07:37:00	New GNOME Based Operating System (made by me)	goodiesguy (15316)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
873298	2010-04-09 05:09:00	For a newbie, the learning curve will match the trajectory of a NASA space rocket. :D However, with a good dollop of Linux experience and determination (and ability to carefully follow instructions), you can install Gentoo from a stage 1 level. This is when you start with ~90MB of bootstrap files and from that download all source code, compile (with setting your own compilation/optimisation FLAGS) every package or program needed to run a Linux system. This includes the kernel which you customise and then complile, any system maintenance apps, basic tools and other essential items to get a system to boot up. Then you can consider adding graphic elements such as desktop environments, and graphical programs. As terrifying as this sounds, Gentoo has excellent documentation that takes you through all the steps (or did last time I looked ...). I built a Gentoo system (after Chill inspired me :p) a few years ago. It look several days on a Pentium 3/512 MB RAM to compile from source a command line only operating system. It then took a further few days to compile and install a graphic desktop plus additional applications. Firefox by itself took 4 hours to compile from source code. :rolleyes:. It was the best feeling ever to boot up a fully functional OS you hand-rolled yourself. These days I go for the ready-to-roll distros that come with 95% of what I want (and how I like it) already. I love decent graphical package managers too. :lol: If you want to learn more about Linux, start with a easy to use distro to get your head around things, but then quickly more onto one that doesn't hold your hand so much and does things in a more traditional Linux fashion (instead of trying to mimic Windows and hide things from you). Once you had a good period with that, try installing applications using command line and practice navigating around your system without using a graphical window manager. Read up on command line text editors (Nano is great) and then practice using them. Once you are familiar with those things, try to build a custom kernel and install it. If you can do that, and the computer still boots up and is functional, then think about taking the next step and really customising a distro to your liking. It is all about having fun and not being afraid of breaking things (as long as you can then fix it!). :)	Jen (38)
873299	2010-04-09 06:06:00	wow Jen, until now I thought of you as a mod, now I see you as a nerdy mod! Downloading the OS now	hueybot3000 (3646)
873300	2010-04-09 06:41:00	is anyone acctualy using this? i hope to make a difference. please people support barron os linux. I am really at a bit of a loss here. How can you expect to make a difference when there are hundreds of distros of Linux out there made by groups of people who have been involved sometimes since the early '90s putting hundreds of hour in per release. You seem to be saying that you have not even booted the thing you "made" yet to test it out??? For what reasons should anyone give it a go?	johnd (85)
873301	2010-04-09 07:05:00	Yeah those were the days, compiling on a 200Mhz P2 :p	Chilling_Silence (9)
873302	2010-04-09 13:16:00	Wow Jen - 4 hours to build ffox. It takes me about 20 minutes now .... PC's have changed a lot! I know what you mean though - there is nothing quite like your first successful attempt at rolling a kernel :clap What surprised me is how easy it is to build a lot of apps - most of it is reading documentation and then following a recipe - chasing down a few -dev dependencies from time to time. Which OS are you using now Jen?	Brooko (8444)
873303	2010-04-09 14:16:00	I remember back in the day when people built OS's from scratch like with Gentoo or LFS :pI still do :rolleyes: - mainly embedded stuff though, and none of it for public release. Generally if I need a custom distro it has some rather fruity requirements that aren't met by anything already available, and it's for a specific project. Getting an entire OS to fit into under 5MB, including the kernel, all of userland, and the software that runs on top of it, is something of a thrill. As far as day-to-day stuff goes, Gentoo & Debian are fine for pretty much everything. I've used them for years, and have yet to run across a compelling reason to switch. Goodiesguy - just a thought - it's generally a smart idea to test something before you start advertising it, especially when that something is an OS... I'd like to second Jen's comments from earlier. You also need a reason to develop a custom distro - what problem does it solve that none of the other distros do, and why should someone give up the massive support base of a major distro and switch to yours in order to solve that particular problem, rather than adding a solution for it to an existing distro?	Erayd (23)
873304	2010-04-09 20:04:00	Wow Jen - 4 hours to build ffox. It takes me about 20 minutes now .... PC's have changed a lot!Yeah, today's technology would churn through the source code with no problems. Which OS are you using now Jen?I haven't strayed too far from my original Linux roots when I started with Red Hat 8 - I'm a Fedora fan, and both laptop (dual boot) and desktop run that. While I would love to run Linux exclusively (like I used to), due to my studies over the last 2 years has meant I had to use predominantly Windows on the laptop (using Wine was not an option). I'm a bit out of practice with troubleshooting Linux because of that, which is why I don't tackle too many of the technical Linux threads here these days. Six months to go until I finish my studies and I can get back into it. :)	Jen (38)
873305	2010-04-09 20:14:00	Yeah, today's technology would churn through the source code with no problems.Try telling that to Open Office! It still takes forever... Other prime candidates for their own geological eras include GCC and glibc.	Erayd (23)
1 2 3