Customized small download linux iso….
This is a good idea…. let’s say you want a linux install, but you’re very particular. You’d like to have a certain setup out of the box, say a basic desktop with OpenOffice and Firefox/Thunderbird. Nothing fancy, just a basic desktop and you wanted to deploy over several systems. Some distributions give you the choice to save settings for a later install, but for most, this can be the start of a fairly tedious install-fest. Someone has come up with a good solution to this (and a solution to the multi-GB of iso downloads….) You go to a web page answer a few questions and then download a CUSTOMIZED linux install iso that then takes care of the whole process for you.
It’s called Instalinux (which redirects to this address.) And it’s built on LinuxCOE which is a set of tools recently open-sourced by HP. It looks as though in some cases your install iso can be as small as 30MB which is fairly impressive. I haven’t tried this out yet, but plan to very soon. (I’ve been wanting to see a SuSE 10 install.)
Currently you can choose from Fedora, SuSE, Debian and Ubuntu to customize and the….
ISO image is generated that can be used for a “hands-free” installation using either Kickstart, AutoYAST, or the Debian Preseed autoinstallers.
Nice idea.