The SUSEStudio Project.

[13thSlayer]

Novell has launched a website allowing anyone to build their own SUSE-based Linux distro, with any software and all, just within a few clicks in a handy web-interface.
From tuxradar.com

But this comes with its own community-focused side effect. "We want people in the open source community to create custom distros," he continued. "We don't know really what that means, and that's kind of the beauty of it. We don't know where the community will take it... We don't actually know all of the things people have done with SUSE Studio yet." And people certainly are using it - in the last week alone, almost 6300 new appliances have been produced using SUSE Studio.

So far, the studio is invite-only, however, you can request an invite on their site (got mine in 3 days )
P.S. If something like that'd exist for Ubuntu, there would be no man happier then me on earth.

[olembe]

Re: The SUSEStudio Project.

That looks really interesting. The ability for organizations to create their own customized and branded Linux distros might offer some opportunities for more widespread use of linux.

Also, I agree: if there was an Ubuntu version of this I'd be drooling over my keyboard right now.

[Ole Juul]

Re: The SUSEStudio Project.

I signed up for that some time ago because it sounded interesting and it seemed like an interesting way to have a bit of a look at SUSE.

It is probably a great idea for people, mostly companies, to distribute an application and add other parts which would be interesting or needed by their clients - an example would be a product database. An obvious use is to make a live disk which boots directly into an application. For people like me who just fool around, I'm not sure it serves much purpose. After trying a couple of "mixtures", I finally settled on making a non GUI "distro" which would fit on a mini CD which is 200MB. I ended up with a nice rescue disk and little suite of network servers for testing.

One problem is that it is not really as configurable as it would appear at first. It seems to me that the old Slackware distros (I haven't tried SW in a number of years) were equally, perhaps even more, configurable. It is also not that easy to get it to work. At first I tried two different "mixtures" with KDE and they turned out quite buggy. No doubt that was because I don't know enough about it, but it is still indicative of the maturity of the system. One has to know something about the package dependencies of what one wants to install in order to get the most out of SStudio.

In the end, what is this for? Like I said, commercial use looks promising, but for the individual user - what? I just don't see what they are really offering to people like me. Surely one can install Kubuntu and then add and remove a large number of packages. I've done that and it works really well. That should work with any distro which offers package management. (Don't they all?) When it comes to saving an installation as an iso perhaps there are more limitations, but isn't there a way to do that? I seem to remember either Puppy or DSL having a mechanism built right in for that purpose.

Disclaimer: I tried the SStudio just to educate myself. I don't want to run it on any regular machine since Novell made their infamous secret deal with MicroSoft.

[russlar]

Re: The SUSEStudio Project.

I dunno... sounds too much like Phil Collins to me....

[GreyGeek]

Re: The SUSEStudio Project.

After I moved from RH5.0 to SuSE in September of 1998 I purchased 22 consecutive boxed sets of SuSE.

For the longest time the SuSE installer would give you options of setting up a server or a workstation. IIRC, if you chose a workstation then you had the option of which kind of DE. Then came the choice of applications. You could select the Multimedia package, or the Office package, or, you could go through the list of apps on the CD and select individually each app you wanted to install.

It looks to me like Suse Studio has moved these setup options to a webpage where they can then generate the ISO for your customizations, which you then have to download. One advantage is that the ISO can be considerably smaller. Or, perhaps your ISO will be larger than can fit on a CD and must be burned to a DVD? Also, the usual caveats about checking the ISO and the burned CD with md5sum still apply.

Prior to Kubuntu I used to use PCLinuxOS, which is a very fine RPM based distro. The dev crew put out a PCLinuxOS-mini ISO that was about, IIRC, 275MB. Minimal apps. Browser, Network manager, basic admin utilities and the KDE desktop.
I loved that approach because I didn't have to install anything I didn't want, only what I needed to get an installation and a network connection going. Then I could choose what ever addtional applications I wanted from the respository. That approach is still my favorite.

[Ole Juul]

Re: The SUSEStudio Project.

It looks to me like Suse Studio has moved these setup options to a webpage where they can then generate the ISO for your customizations, which you then have to download.

Actually, for those that haven't tried it, SuSE studio allows you to run your "distro" right on their site so you can test it before downloading. They also give a choice of live or HDD install and keep all the old versions in chronological order so you can go back a step or two. In those ways it is an interesting platform. One handy thing is that as you check, or uncheck, packages it keeps a running total of the download size.

On a side note, I must say that they have the strangest and most convoluted way of logging in that I've ever seen. You can't just put in your login and password! You have to log into something else on your machine and then point to it.

@russlar: People get their inspiration in the strangest places. Let's hope the RIAA doesn't get involved.

[kjjjjshab]

Re: The SUSEStudio Project.

Yeah, this is actually one of the coolest things I have ever had a chance to play with... I never did install an iso from it, but boy you could spend days tweaking a build for fun. And it is pretty easy to see how useful this could be to small - medium sized organizations.

I saw this today on the subject: Blog post via PlanetKDE

[Exodist]

Re: The SUSEStudio Project.

I have used SuSE for many years. It was at one time my favorite distro. Even tho I am excited to see how this SuSE Studio distro designer will play out, I got a feeling its Novells way of getting around the distros broken package manager that has haunted the distro since 7.something-long-ago.

[kjjjjshab]

Re: The SUSEStudio Project.

Lifehacker.com article

[Ole Juul]

Re: The SUSEStudio Project.

It is indeed a clear description of the site, but it looks like that article just reiterated what Suse says. I don't see where it added any critical thinking. I'm actually not sure what the point of it is.*

As I stated above, the ability to add your own custom software and branding has commercial usefulness, but the rest of it, and the part that everyone talks about, is just like Kubuntu and many other distros. People writing about it seem to have lost any awareness of Synaptic or Adept or any package manager, which does exactly the same thing. I recommend that Kubuntu rename Synaptic as "Kubuntu Studio".

* I understand why you posted it kjjjjshab, thanks. I just don't know why the writer wrote the article.

[kjjjjshab]

Re: The SUSEStudio Project.

...* I understand why you posted it kjjjjshab, thanks. I just don't know why the writer wrote the article.

Lifehacker.com is mostly a Windows/Mac site (when discussing OSs)... so it's just more word.

[bastard_lunatic]

Re: The SUSEStudio Project.

Can we have Phil Collins do a theme song of sorts?? Hehe.

"SUSE SUSE Studio!"

(I know, that was lame, but I'm overly tired, so that's my excuse.)