One of the biggest benefits of GNU/Linux is that you can change absolutely anything to suit your needs - right down to the source code itself. In fact, many distributions are exactly this – specific packages bundled together for a particular use with no other changes made. [img 79156/]

Ubuntu Studio for instance is merely Ubuntu with all the software installed as standard for video editing.

Suse Studio on the other hand, is not a video editing distribution, but instead a powerful web-based platform that designed to enable you to create custom Suse based distributions in a matter of minutes.

Each custom distribution is called an “appliance” and is created, at least initially, through a wizard like tabbed interface. Every appliance starts with a base template – a number of pre-configured systems based on openSUSE 11.1 and SUSE Enterprise 10 or 11.

As well as full blown Gnome/KDE installs, you have minimal graphical installs or stripped down JeOS installs (Just Enough OS) giving you nothing but a terminal. Naturally, there is the choice of a 32-bit or 64-bit installs.

From this point, you can start configuring things in more detail. With a few clicks you can completely brand your appliance with a logo and background that affects everything from booting up to logging on. You can pre-configure your network settings, firewall – even the users available on the system. For those who are intending on distributing the appliance, you can have a custom EULA that must be agreed prior to boot.

Of course, the most important aspect of your custom appliance is in the packages installed. Suse Studio gives you an interface very similar to that built into the Suse operating system itself, enabling you to find and install what you need. Naturally, not everything will be there – but you can either upload packages, or specify external repositories with the software you require.

Should you need to, you can include custom scripts to be run post-build, on boot, and also specify which programs should be run on startup.

Once you have customized your appliance, you need to build it. This takes only a few minutes and is available as a USB Stick/hard drive Image, Live CD (ISO) or as a Virtual Machine for Xen or VMWare – which can naturally be converted to other systems such as VirtualBox.

Building takes only a few minutes before it is ready to download. However, the innovation doesn't stop there. You can also “test drive” your distribution, live on their servers using a VNC like, flash based interface to control it. If that's not enough, you can access this fully functioning server over SSH as well as any web servers that might be running on it. You are however restricted to incoming only connections.

You get a whole hour of use before it turns off, but in this time you can either be testing that it works – or customising it even further. Suse Studio keeps tracks of any changes made – files removed, added or amended and you can select these changes to be added to the distribution for next time you boot – for example, your apache configuration files.

Suse Studio uses an overlay system to make these file changes post-build. You could for instance upload a compressed archive of a web application to be used and this would be ready and waiting. You have 15GB of storage for your custom builds and packages – an ample amount.

A lot of Suse Studio has been well thought out – from MySQL importing to little touches such as uploading files from a URL instead of through the web browser. The system as a whole works exceptionally well, taking what used to be a complex task and making it incredibly simple, but without removing any power or flexibility.

Suse Studio has many potential uses. Creating custom, branded distributions for deployment on various platforms would be one, but it lacks the ability to create your own base templates. Creating virtual machines to run specific web applications on a light weight OS is another. But the scenario that most jumps to mind, is in creating a distribution medium for your own product – an internet independent, self contained example of a web application, running entirely locally and enabling the user to try your product in a sandbox environment without affecting their machine.

Author: Andrew 'Spode' Miller

Suse Studio review