Custom Distributions

January 2019, #294: The Distributions Issue

Do you remember your first distro? The first version of Linux I truly used, for any length of time, was back at the end of the 1990s—in Ye Olden Times, when 56k modems, 3.5" floppies and VGA CRT monitors reigned supreme. Linux itself had been a thing for a number of years by this point—with both SUSE (then known as the gloriously mixed-case and punctuation-filled S.u.S.E.) and Red Hat doing good business supporting it—when I decided to really give this "Free" operating system a try. Because I'm a nerd. And that's what we do.

Custom Embedded Linux Distributions

The proliferation of inexpensive IoT boards means the time has come to gain control not only of applications but also the entire software platform. So, how do you build a custom distribution with cross-compiled applications targeted for a specific purpose? As Michael J. Hammel explains here, it's not as hard as you might think.