Recently, I've been wanting to make a custom live iso with a couple of tools that I need but I really don't know where to start or what to do… any help?
E: I didn't phrase my post correctly, I need a portable set of desktop tools for development, running on the gnome desktop
If I understand it correctly: you just want something you can flash or plug into a random PC, like when you switch companies or rebuild your PC often, and then work from this setup for developing. Is that right?
There are following options I have in my mind right now:
Install a “normal” Distro of your choice (e.g. Fedora Workstation or Silverblue) onto a external hard drive, or (maybe?) better, an USB-NVME. Now, you can just use your setup on every PC by just booting from the hard drive. If you are a developer, you probably use containers anyway, so I would recommend an immutable distro like VanillaOS or Silverblue. They are way harder to break and will make you more productive.
Use NixOS or something therelike. You just write your system-config as a nix-file and then you can overwrite any Nix installation. There’s also Fedora uBlue, where you can make something similar, but that image is more cloud based, while Nix is “simpler”.
Make your own “distro” by using an iso-maker program. There are a few around, but I don’t have any in my mind right now.
But you should still explain your intentions better, they are hard to grasp for me.
Ok, so pretty much, I want a portable, minimal desktop setup with some partitioning tools and some development tools in an iso format, so I can at any point in time simple take it, chuck it into ventoy or flash it with persistent storage and be ready to go.
And those “iso-maker” programs are more specifically what I’m asking for, either that or if there is a way to make a customized image of a pre-existing distro
I’ve used and even daily driven Linux off an external drive before, that’s not what I’m asking about, I’m specifically asking about a way to make a customized live iso image…