With these decisions over, the real work can begin!

The starting point to making your own Linux distro is, rather ironically, from within an existing Linux distro. This way you have all the tools you need at hand. You will also need up-to-date libraries and supporting utilities.

You may choose to use a distribution building kit - like ROCK - or you may wish to start directly from scratch. The advantage of the former approach is much of the laborious work is taken away and results can be achieved faster. However, the advantage of the latter is that the distro can be customised to far more depth and that you will have a much finer-grained understanding of the processes that have taken place.

Let's see what is involved in both of these approaches walking through both. When we considered this article, we had detailed instructions in mind. However, the full steps required are not trivial: the Linux from Scratch project, for instance, have an entire 253 page book devoted to the exercise! Therefore, we will instead give pointers to further reading and to the tools necessary - but more than that, what this article aims to do is instil in you both the inspiration to create a distro and the confidence to do it.