Linspire Launches the Custom OS Build Service

Today, Linspire announced the availability of the Custom Operating System Build service, an initiative to provide a customized desktop Linux operating system to partners. This service will also help Linspire's partners to cut time to market and reduce the overall costs needed when building a Linux operating system.

Larry Kettler, President and CEO of Linspire, Inc., stated: "With desktop Linux, more and more partners

are asking for customization so they can take control of the OS. This service will not only provide the feature sets they want, but cut the time it takes to get to market with their products, as well as greatly reduce the overall cost to deliver a custom desktop Linux operating system."

At first, it was designed for making the release management process for Linspire's partners more efficient and stable, but now it will provide the ability to produce Debian or Ubuntu-based operating systems, in a clean and efficient manner. The new distributions will have customizable software stacks and some more other customizable features.

"Our expertise and advancements in producing efficient tools for packaging and building the Linux operating system will translate into a lower overall cost in terms of time and money for our partners. As the desktop Linux operating system continues to mature and offer real cost savings as an alternative operating system, this service will allow companies to take advantage of this technology without having to deal with all the complexities," added Cary Harper, Vice President of Engineering at Linspire, Inc.

A Linspire partner has the task to maintain the OS builds with patches and fixes for the great number of files installed as the basis of the operating system. This task is simplified with the packaging tools and services offered through the use of the CNR service, that provides access quickly and easily to a fast-growing repository.

The Custom OS Build Service packaging tools come with these features:

￭ Automatic patch application to source packages
￭ Automatic change detection
￭ Automatically detects when a package needs to be rebuilt
￭ Repository management features
￭ adding/removing packages/directories and signing repositories
￭ Packages are automatically built in a clean chroot environment, which ensures that the packages do not accidentally or intentionally depend on any special configuration or packages installed on the developer's machine.
￭ Packages can be organized into hierarchical groups

The Custom OS Build service will be a part of the Linspire Partner Program, with more than 7,000 approved partners all over the world.