turnbui
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat May 03, 2014 3:20 pm

build ones own Linux

Sat May 03, 2014 3:24 pm

Hello,
is it possible to build your own Linux on the RPi?

fruitoftheloom
Posts: 23548
Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2014 12:40 pm
Location: Delightful Dorset

Re: build ones own Linux

Sat May 03, 2014 5:01 pm

Rather than negativity think outside the box !
RPi 4B 4GB (SSD Boot) RaspiOS64 ARM64
Asus ChromeBox 3 Celeron is my other computer...

User avatar
croston
Posts: 708
Joined: Sat Nov 26, 2011 12:33 pm
Location: Blackpool
Contact: Website

Re: build ones own Linux

Sat May 03, 2014 5:20 pm

Being pedantic, I'm not sure whether you want to build a Linux Distribution or the Linux Kernel.

Assuming you mean a Linux Distribution:
Yes - you can, providing you have enough computing power - I don't think that a Raspberry Pi on it's own is quite enough to create a build in a reasonable time. As a starting point to see how it can be done, take a look at 'spindle' - the scripts used to create the Foundation Raspbian Wheezy Distribution:
https://github.com/asb/spindle

Or my fork of Spindle that I used to create my own Raspbian Jessie Distribution:
https://github.com/bcroston/spindle

Bear in mind that the .deb packages for armhf v6 have already been built/compiled, saving a massive amount of work.

Of course there are other ways of doing it - I don't know much about how the Arch or the Fedora Remix distributions are created. I'm sure you could even create your own by compiling everything from scratch - this would take you a long time though!
Edit: the PiLFS link above by @fruitoftheloom does this.

-----
Assuming you mean the Linux Kernel:
I've never done this for Raspbian myself. Google is probably your friend here - there are plenty of other people that have done it.

Heater
Posts: 16092
Joined: Tue Jul 17, 2012 3:02 pm

Re: build ones own Linux

Sat May 03, 2014 7:19 pm

Bah!

I was building Linux From Scratch back in 1998, or so, on a 120MHz 486 machine.

I'm very sure it's doable on a Pi.

You can always take a nap whilst the compilations are going on :)
Memory in C++ is a leaky abstraction .

User avatar
DougieLawson
Posts: 39301
Joined: Sun Jun 16, 2013 11:19 pm
Location: A small cave in deepest darkest Basingstoke, UK
Contact: Website Twitter

Re: build ones own Linux

Sat May 03, 2014 8:06 pm

Heater wrote:Bah!

I was building Linux From Scratch back in 1998, or so, on a 120MHz 486 machine.

I'm very sure it's doable on a Pi.

You can always take a nap whilst the compilations are going on :)
+1

When I did Linux from Scratch on an old machine it was often a case of set it going today, come back to the next step tomorrow. Some of those tomorrows were a long time after the task was set running.

I often leave things compiling over night, because watching paint dry is less boring than watching a long compile run.
Note: Any requirement to use a crystal ball or mind reading will result in me ignoring your question.

Criticising any questions is banned on this forum.

Any DMs sent on Twitter will be answered next month.
All non-medical doctors are on my foes list.

turnbui
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat May 03, 2014 3:20 pm

Re: build ones own Linux

Sat May 03, 2014 8:11 pm

thank you everyone. great news.
ian t

Return to “General discussion”