Hai Folks,

In this post,we are going to see an interesting topic BUILDING OUR OWN OPERATING SYSTEM.We can build our customized SUSE(linux) based Operating System using SUSE STUDIO.SUSE STUDIO provides a large variety of Operating Systems that can be easily customized and built using the same.

Let us see how to build our own operating system:

1.Go to the SUSE Studio welcome page,by entering the URL http://susestudio.com (or) simply click here.You will get the page as shown below:

2.Click the,Sign in button to create an account with Suse Studio.You will get a window as shown below:

3.You can use your existing accounts with google,yahoo,etc.,to create an account with suse studio.Once you,enter the credentials you can see your home page as shown below:

4.To build your own os,click the create new appliance option available under the actions category.Once,you select it you will get the window as shown below:

4.In that window,choose the base Template.By default JEOS will be selected,which has no GUI.So,I used to prefer KDE 4 desktop.It is upto you to choose,the template as per your needs.And also specify the required Architecture and specify the name for your Appliance and click create appliance button as shown below:

5.Then,you will get a window as shown below:

6.Select the,software tab at the top.There you can select, the required packages to be installed in our Operating System but keep an eye on the download size at the left end as shown below:

7.Next,Select the Configuration tab under which seven sub-tabs are available.First sub-tab is General which allows us to choose Default Locale,Timezone and specify the root password for our operating system.We can even add users and groups under this General tab as shown below:

8.Next,select the sub-tab personalize.Here,you can choose the appliance logo and appliance background for our OS.This logo and background will be used when our operating system start to load,boot selection and also during the login selection.Even,you can use your own picture.The following snapshot,gives a clear idea about the same.

9.Next,Choose the Startup configuration.In this case,it will be Graphical Login.

10.Next,choose the Sever sub-tab and choose the required database configuration.

11.Next,choose the Automatic Desktop User Log-in.When you have multiple users choose the mostly used User.Remember,this is an optional feature.

12.Next,the appliance sub-tab where we can specify properties related to Disk and Memory.The snapshot of the same is given below:

Note:Remember to check the boxes for Live Installer and Vmware Support.Live Installer can be used to try the OS before installing it in our hard drive.

13.Next sub-tab is for the scripts which allows us to run our custom scripts.This,is an optional feature.

14.Next tab is files which allows us to choose the files that must be copied into the appliance once the packages are installed.The snapshot of the same is given below:

15.Next tab,will be Build.Here we need to select the default format to be built for our os and also we can provide some additional formats with the default format.It is better to use the Live CD format.You can see the size of the file to be downloaded in the left side.The snapshot of the same is given below:

16.Click the build button.The Appliance will be built and ready to be downloaded as shown below:

17.That is it,You had successfully completed building your own OS.

Try it out.If you find any difficulties,feel free to contact me.In my next post,I will explain how to use our OS with the help of Virtulization.

Regards

Gauthamraj