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How do you properly fork a Linux distro?

I was wondering, how one would go about creating a Linux distro. LFS seems like overkill, I would rather fork an existing distro. I know there are several "respin" applications, but these only seem to allow you to add extra applications to be installed, they don't seem to allow you to modify repositories, configs, and etc etc.

What I'm looking for is knowledge on how to take an existing distro, and modify it significantly, ideally by modifying Fedora or Mint, although I might need to use an older kernel.

General advice is appreciated, how would you modify the files it ships with? What tools do you use? How would you wrap it into a liveCD? How do you host a repository?
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1 Answer

vishaljlf39
You can create a distro simply by creating your own package repository with customized packages in it. That's all a distro is. It doesn't matter how big or little the changes are.

So if you wish to fork a distro, just copy the entire source repository, change whatever packages you want, and the publish the repo as your own (making sure you don't violate any licensing agreements of the distro you're copying from).

That by definition, is creating a new distro.

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