Creating a Custom Distro of Reactos

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artamb
Posts: 29
Joined: Mon Nov 29, 2004 2:28 pm
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Creating a Custom Distro of Reactos

Post by artamb »

Bitflusher,

You bring up some good points, but the market niche we are looking in,
that doesn't seem like a feature, that is wanted, although we will
test our distro with Ghost imaging and deployment.

After our first distro is out and users request that support, then
I think we can added it if there is wnough of a demend.

Like many who have commented in previous posts, there are many who
are skeptical about us even make our own Distro, so we are scoping
our distro to address a certain market place and need.

Thanks!
ARTamb
artamb
Posts: 29
Joined: Mon Nov 29, 2004 2:28 pm
Contact:

problems in BOOTDATA files

Post by artamb »

GVG,

I went into the BOOTDATA folder and found the information
and found serveral files to change most of the folders,
however, in the files I can't find where you defined the following:

%USERPROFILE% = %SYTEMDRIVE%\Documents&Settings

ProfilesDirectory = %SYSTEMDRIVE%\Documents&Settings

-AND-

ProgramFilesDir = C:\Program Files
ProgramFilesDir = %SYSTEMDRIVE%\Program Files

I was able to find all the other stuff I need to edit, but those two folder
changes edits I can't find in the files listed in BOOTDATA folder.

Thanks!
-ARTamb
GvG
Posts: 499
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2004 10:50 pm
Location: The Netherlands

Post by GvG »

It took a little chasing around to see where these are defined. When I found them, it made sense again. Those directories can be localized, so we need different defaults for each language. The easiest way to do that is via resource files.
Anyway, take a look at reactos/lib/userenv/En.rc et al.
artamb
Posts: 29
Joined: Mon Nov 29, 2004 2:28 pm
Contact:

Creating a Custom Distro of Reactos

Post by artamb »

Thanks for the additional help GvG!
nitrofurano
Posts: 21
Joined: Mon Dec 06, 2004 7:16 pm
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Post by nitrofurano »

-finally i don't think you can remove the reactOS name so easyly (in terms of copyrights), and i don't think that devs will apreciate a fork with ReactOS name replaced by myOS.
i can see what it is - LinEX is a very good project for popularizing Linux (and from their test on schools and public companies/services), but its name is a huge mistake induction...
nitrofurano
Posts: 21
Joined: Mon Dec 06, 2004 7:16 pm
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Post by nitrofurano »

My company is looking to make a custom Distro of ReactOS, because
we are impressed with the project and like the product. We will only sell CDROMS w/ mannuals, but offer free downloads
of the OS from our webpage, very much like Redhat did with early versions of Linux and like what other companies etc...
I know ReactOS is pretty embrionary this time, but btw, it's very important get this kind of feedback about companies wanting to make their own distros - i hope one day very soon companies at level like Mandrake, Debian, RedHat, and so on would be interested not only on making distros, as well spending their efforts on making ReactOS even better and sharing it with open-source community

I think any kind of effort in this way is welcome and maybe people here in this forum is curious to know more
artamb
Posts: 29
Joined: Mon Nov 29, 2004 2:28 pm
Contact:

Creating a Custom Distro of Reactos

Post by artamb »

As you can see by the comments, there are many users that are not please with the fact we are making our own distro, but I am VERY gald to say, that myself and the company are very happy that the actual developers are helping us and supporting us in our own distro! :D We are working on our distro webpage and trying to write it to give the developers the credit they deserve.

We are hoping once our distro becomes stable [hand and hand with a stable REACTOS, since, after all, that is our CORE :D ] we will be able to go to the Dells, Gateways, and many other OEM vendors to sell our distro as a pre-installed OS as an alternative to MS products or the various LINUX products.

We are hoping to have our first beta out by JAN05, it may be based on the current REACTOS, it looks like our second BETA will be based on any other alter core.


But, while I am here, myself and company would like to know how would the REACTOS developers feel about us placing their banner and logo on our credit section webpage liniking them back to www.reactos.org. That way when they read about our DISTRO they can click on that banner to come back here if they would rather use REACTOS instead of our distro.

We want to make sure the REACTOS project gets full credit and exposure for their hard work, because we couldn't make our distro without the REACTOS Core.
Mr. Anderson
Posts: 36
Joined: Tue Mar 01, 2005 10:45 pm

Post by Mr. Anderson »

A Reactos Distribution sounds interesting. In Fact, I already had the same idea. Probably it will work slightly different from Linux Distributions, but I think there will be a need of it, though.

You wrote, that you don't want a Distribution to be called just 'ReactOS'.
What about a name like e. g. Kleene ReactOS or Chomsky React or something else with ReactOS or React in it? (Similar to SuSE Linux, Mandrakelinux etc.)
RomanH
Posts: 83
Joined: Fri Nov 26, 2004 11:14 pm
Location: Switzerland

Post by RomanH »

I've got a question which might be slightly off topic:
If I want to include other software in the ReactOS-ISO, how would I do that?

I have got a working build environment and would like the ISO to have an additional directory ("other software" or something like that) in which I could include software to test on ReactOS.

Is it possible to change the makefile to include already compiled software into the ISO? (make livecd and/or make bootcd)

Thanks!
RomanH
ea
Developer
Posts: 31
Joined: Sat Nov 27, 2004 11:54 am
Location: Italy, EU

Post by ea »

RomanH wrote:I've got a question which might be slightly off topic:
If I want to include other software in the ReactOS-ISO, how would I do that?

I have got a working build environment and would like the ISO to have an additional directory ("other software" or something like that) in which I could include software to test on ReactOS.

Is it possible to change the makefile to include already compiled software into the ISO? (make livecd and/or make bootcd)
You do not need to modify the makefile. Simply create you oun directory in

bootcd\disk

and run again

make bootcd

Remember that the file system in the boot cd is strictly ISO9660.
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