Build your own Linux distro

Nate Drake helps you spread your wings and fly away with your own version of Linux.

Much as we all may love Justin Bieber, it’s debatable whether the pop star deserved his own version of Linux. The fact that the internet community has afforded us ‘Biebian’ Linux ( biebian.sourceforge.net) is a testament to both their ingenuity and sense of humour.

It may come as a slight relief to non-Beliebers that this operating system wasn’t built from scratch, but is in fact a variation of the ultra-lightweight Puppy Linux. Even non-fangirl versions of Linux such as Ubuntu are based on older systems (in this case Debian).

This is the upside to living in a world that gave us operating systems devoted to Justin Bieber, Hannah Montana and Satan. The free and open-source Linux kernel allows for distributions (distros) in thousands of so-called ‘flavours’.

For you as the end user, this can be truly overwhelming, so most newcomers to Linux stick with wellknown distros such as Ubuntu and Linux Mint. While we heartily endorse your efforts to keep life simple, Linux isn’t constrained in the same way as Windows. Most distributions support a number of desktop environments designed for flashy visual effects or efficiency. You can change aspects of your system from simple things like the colour of icons and windows, to how windows are arranged on the screen and how you launch applications.

In this guide, we’ll help you to select a basic distribution of Linux complete with a desktop environment and make it your own. In the first few sections, we’ll explore how to change aspects of the graphical interface of your current system by installing window managers, panels and custom themes. If you want more control over your system, you can also use SUSE Studio’s handy online wizard, which enables you to create an installable Linux image complete with desktop background, pre-installed software and even your own personal files.