Debian – Fully rename the own GNU/Linux distribution

debianlinux

I am developing a Debian GNU/Linux-based operating system/distribution. It's for visually impaired people. I took the "standard" Debian Live CD and built my distribution from a bare metal command line. Here are some features:

  • Xfce desktop, heavily modified for the visually impaired;

  • High contrast themes, icons and color schemes;

  • Pre-configured Orca screen reader;

  • An intuitive and simple screen magnifier;

  • Virtual keyboard;

  • Basic set of desktop applications, logos, wallpapers and bash scripts made by me.

The system is pretty much ready and installable, in some kind of "alpha" state. I don't have a name for it yet, so I call it "Redebian" and use this name in my scripts. I will present it in a science and technology fair in my school in August (I'm currently in High School), so the project is very important for me.

But one thing is bothering me: I don't know how to properly change my OS name from Debian to whatever its name will be. I googled for several days and got suggestions to edit /etc/os-release, /etc/issue and a few more files, but I am afraid to break the system. I'm using the official Debian repositories, so the release name is a very fragile factor.

What should I do to safely and properly change the name of my Debian-based operating system? For example, I want it to show "Welcome to Redebian" when the system is booting instead of "Welcome to Debian". And I want the update-grub script to recognize the system as "Redebian".

Best Answer

Taking the source from @Jeff Schaller, you will have to edit the following:

Apart from that, there are also 3 files you may explicitly want to change, them being /etc/issue (perhaps /etc/issue.net too), /etc/os-release and /etc/lsb-release, with the last one need to be changed to change the GRUB listing for your distro. Be sure to checkout /etc/default/grub for the line GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR. It should be something like GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null

For every other software that your operating system may need, you will at a very minimum have to download the DEB sources, run a find . -exec sed -i /debian/redebian/g {} \; for all the files, and then recompile each of the DEB packages. This is a hacky approach, but you will get the desired result for most packages. Basically, we are taking every instance of debian and replacing it with redebian for every software.

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