So im in 11th grade rn and we are gonna have INHOUSE EXHIBITION of our college. In this we can participate in a grp of max 4 people or less than that. Im doing solo. We can do project of any subject from Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Computer Science. So I have decided to do a CS project! And the people who do good in the exhibition get selected for intercollege competiton.
Till now no project has been done related to linux. And I love linux, and absolutely wanted to do something related to it. So im thinking of making just a small distro based on Ubuntu. Particularly with XFCE desktop environment. I can also present this as like a modern distro but with capabilities of running on old computers too… This can save a lot of old pcs from going into e waste. Also, here in India, most of the people who buy a new computer just buy it for basic use like browsing, emails, watching videos pics from hard drives, doing some basic office work, etc. So instead of buying a new pc or laptop, people can just buy an SSD and but linux on their old computers to revive them…
Ive decided to make the layout like windows for ease of use. I will also add some basic good applications like OpenOffice.
I am gonna make the distro using CUBIC from Xubuntu.
So any guidance, ideas from you guys will be soo much helpful! Thanks in advance!!!
What you are proposing is probably best termed a ‘spin’ rather than a complete new distro. That does not matter, it is just words.
The idea is fine. Setup something that would demonstrate how to resurrect an ageing PC. Ther should be considerable interest in that.
Plan your work. Set down what the challenges are and how you will overcome them .
I assume this project will be assessed as part of your course. So document it properly as you go.
There are so many ubuntu spins, perhaps better for a small project use puppy and get it to run on old technology… something like dam small linux as i dont think that continues to exist. So a market requirement?
But as Neville suggested, lots of documentation, what you did, why, how, then a demonstration of results.
Currently, I have Xubuntu in a VM and Xubuntu ISO loaded on Cubic Iso Creator both on my main pop system. Cubic allows to run root for the iso. So ill be installing some packages, removing unwanted ones, add themes etc using the CUBIC terminal. After that, fir the customisation, i will do the customisation on the Xubuntu vm and then copy the xml files in the cubic project in the skel directory too! Thats my plan…lets see how it works. Will share!
Also i am thinking of naming it ‘Vajra’ Linux.
Vajra stands for thunderbolt, diamond so it implies speed, stability, powerful, etc.
It also has cultural significance as according to Sanatan Dharm, Vajra(thunderbolt) is the weapon of Indra, the king of gods. Also ill name the version as ‘Indra’ too.
The cultural side is important.
You want this to appeal to local people …you know what their needs and wishes are . Are you going to deal with the language issues?
It involves making an .iso file. I gather you are planning to use cubic for that… test out cubic, see if it works. You need it to work . Making an iso by hand is quite difficult.
Think about what security scanning you may need to do. You dont want to make a malware infected iso.
Dont forget. Document it as you go.
You should vet the project with your teachers, before starting.
You use Puppy for that?
Yes I suppose that would be fast boot…
I might have chosen Porteus or Knoppix maybe? It doesnt really matter, any Linux will do that.
I found puppy by accident when looking for a fast usb small size, it worked and so never went further in looking as it did the job.
Played around with dam small linux for a while as it was just that fitted onto a usb i had of 250 mb with space for other tools which was really silly.
Will look at your suggestions to see if they offer something different as i wanted to install puppy along side something else for support reasons and failed but that could have been down to why i needed it rather than a fault on my part.
Knoppix used to have all the tools .
The smallest of the newer distros is probably Alpine… 8Mb in a container… but small is not everything … you want all the system tools.
SystemRescueCD maybe?
Puppy is probably just as good as any of my thoughts.
SystemRescueCD, just did not do it for me when i tried it
I also tried Knoppix kiosk last year (remembered when i got to the site), i had a project for our reception, was going to set up a terminal where the user could only see our site and our pages nothing else, so installed on a pc with screen etc worked ok doing the job I wanted, but then we wanted users to be able to join our association and make payments to our on line money collection system, thats where kiosk could not cope. In the end used mint and google chromium, with browser locked to our page, worked much better.
Yes alpine linux looks nice with the xfce desktop layout
To be fair,
system crashes on computer,
boot puppy,
connect external disk,
copy user files from crashed system to external drive.
Install mint,
copy files back
Why not just go straight to mint ?
Normally yes I would but if mint fails to boot, for what ever reason, puppy will hence its in my tool kit as a quick fix
I have…I have even tried it out…but it’s not good…it has many bugs…I think i tried it a few months back but still.Although its built by C-DAC-Government of India, It has old kernel…and it doesnt have good out-of-the-box support. WIll still mention it though. And yeahh the distro im making will support even older computers than that of BOSS.
I had not come across this version of linux before. But dont do much research on other country version of linux. Prefer something multi linguistics and international.
Which is based around a well known charity Emmaüs, which collects goods for resale at reduced prices secondhand, originally the money stayed to help french and france but think those ideas have now gone.
Our local Emmaus group is an organisation that supports people with disability.
The word ‘Emmaus’ refers to the location where Christ appeared to his disciples after the Resurrection.