Ubuntu Customization Kit

Mandatory packages for base install

Asked by Richard McCord

I want to play around with different file system and GUI options.
As a base, I want to have ONLY the mandatory packages selected to start with.
From there, I'll play around with adding programs, the file system (Xorg, for example) and
GUI (Like Gnome, KDE, etc).

So, what packages do I select to end up with an installable, working system with basically just a command line and network connectivity?

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Wolf Geldmacher (wolf-womaro) said : 		#1

Cannot give you a precise list - this depends very much on the Ubuntu version you want to customize.

But: Check out the packages that get installed when you install ubuntu-server of the release you want to customize (without additional components selected at install time) - this should get you pretty close to what you want to achieve.

You might run into problems with UCK when stripping down a system that much (it uses commands from the system being customized in some areas, most notably packaging, and is geared to allowing extensioons more than stripping down. I'd be very much interested in your findings in this area - so please share your experience.

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Richard McCord (rabbit-richardmccord) said : 		#2

I'm using the 64-bit desktop ISO.
I plan to strip out EVERYTHING to start, then add from scratch beginning with the mandatory packages I mentioned. Ubuntu isn't known for being a minimalistic distro, I know. It just occurs to me that if I get this figured out, UCK could very well become a better Linux From Scratch: the concept of building exactly the distro you want/need, but without the headache of becoming an engineer to do it; automated dependency checking, etc.

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Wolf Geldmacher (wolf-womaro) said : 		#3

Sounds like a great idea!

It also looks llike you will be doing *a lot* of customization runs, so maybe it would be worthwhile to have a look at the alternative GUI I wrote called uckflow, cf. http://sourceforge.net/projects/uck/files/uck-flow/0.4.4/python-uckflow_0.4.4-1_all.deb/download
This will allow repeated customizations somewhat easier than standard GUI. You could then come up with a template for uckflow that could be used to reduce the standard config to the minimum.

If you are willing to do some further experimenting: There is a non-released version of uck/uckflow at http://uck.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/uck/branches/wjg57 That version uses loopback and unionfs mounts which will allow you to even better separate the "ubuntu standard" components from your customizations, saving a lot of disk space for some penalty in performance. It will require you to install a working version of the aufs-tools or a recent version of unionfs-fuse, though.

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