The Alindis Documentation

Version 0.0.2

Felix Rabe

Alindis is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

Alindis is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MARCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. (A copy of the license is included as an appendix.)

Abstract

This book is a comprehensive guide which leads the reader from zero to his/her own GNU/Linux distribution. (But at the moment, it contains almost only experimental nonsense.)


Table of Contents

Preface
The Alindis project
Who should read this book?
How much time you will need to go through it
I. Part I - Introduction
1. Introduction
What is a GNU/Linux distribution?
The GNU project
The Linux kernel
Software distribution
Corrections for some erroneously misused terms
GNU, Linux, and GNU/Linux
Free Software and Open Source
Hacking is not a crime
History of GNU/Linux distributions
The first GNU/Linux distribution
Debian
Slackware
SuSE
RedHat
Caldera
Mandrake
Corel
Organization of this book
Summary
2. Preparation
Requirements
Defining the goal of your distribution
The goal of the Alindis Distribution
Installing LinuxFromScratch
What it is and why you should do it
Reading the Alindis Documentation during/after the LinuxFromScratch installation
LinuxFromScratch
Setting up internet access
Preparing your system for distribution development
Summary
II. Part II - Development
3. Package management
Packages
Dependencies
Package databases
Existing solutions for package management
RedHat: .rpm
Debian: .deb
Slackware: .tgz
Other (less successful) package formats
Plain source code packages: .tar.gz
A concrete implementation: package management in Alindis
What features should the package management have?
Defining a clear API
Summary
4. Installing additional software
Setting up and using the Alindis package manager
Setting up the graphical interface
Installing required libraries
Installing XFree86
Installing Fvwm2
A small introduction into Fvwm2
Installing useful software
CD writing tools
Enabling the ide-scsi kernel module
Installing cdrtools
Introduction into cdrtools
CVS
Summary
5. Developing the installation procedure
Booting from diskette
The basics
How other distributions do this job
Experimenting with bootable diskettes
Tools for creating bootable (GNU/)Linux diskettes
Booting from CD-ROM
How other distributions do this job
Experimenting with bootable CDs
Tools for creating bootable (GNU/)Linux CDs
Installing over FTP
Discussion of some other methods
Examining installation systems
How Debian does it
How Alindis does it
Summary
6. Choosing the right packages for the distribution
Introduction
The base system: LinuxFromScratch
Future enhancements to LinuxFromScratch
Devfs
Simpleinit
Libraries
Development
Graphics
GUI libraries
Sound
Cryptography
The graphical user interface (GUI)
The free X11 implementation: XFree86
Window managers
The big desktop environments: KDE and GNOME
Development
Editors
Programming languages
Internet applications
Browsers
Servers
Clients
Office applications
Graphical applications
Sound and musical applications
Emulators
MS-DOS/Windows: Wine, Willow, DOSEMU & FreeDOS
Games
Basic games from GNOME, KDE, bsd-games
Bigger games
Hardware-related stuff
CD writing software
Printing
Scanner software
Scientific applications
These packages are included in Alindis
Summary
III. Part III - Advanced topics
7. Internationalization
Why internationalization is important
Internationalizing the distribution
Internationalization efforts in the Alindis project
Summary
8. Accessibility
Why accessibility is important
Making the distribution more accessible to handicapped people
Accessibility in Alindis
Summary
9. Marketing
Going online
Making the distribution available for download
The distribution's presentation on the web
Building a community
The website of Alindis
Selling the distribution
Looking for vendors and customers
The way Alindis is sold
Summary
IV. Part IV - Appendices
A. The technique behind this book
B. Resources
Downloading the Alindis package
Internet addresses of mentioned software packages
Online search engines and archives for Free Software
Freely available documentation used in this book
Suggestions for further reading
C. Re-building the Alindis CD image from Alindis
D. GNU General Public License