Using System Rescue as a regular OS

General discussions
1

Here is something you are not expecting, from someone who is not a linux geek.
I am a person who is aware of the Dunning-Kruger effect: and so I know that
I am knowledgeable compared to the average user who has trouble using Windows
and a complete imbecile compared to y’all (yes: I said y’all). Nevertheless
I want to talk about sysrec linux. I have been using it to set up old computers
with OS’s quite some time now, mainly gparted, and using bootable USB sticks and
external hard-drives with sysrec on them. I also use sysrec to “manage windows”
by booting it and mounting the windows partition to delete or tarball files that
Windows will not let one access.

Overall I have been wowed and impressed by Sysrec linux.
How it can do so much with so little. Basically everything one should need for a
basic computer system is there, and it recognizes hardware better then than some
full blown linux distos. I am super impressed by the way “it just works”.
Which has led me to often wish that I could use sysrec as a full-blown linux
system: I mean as a starter system, with the xfce environment and hardware recognition
capabilities and the software it comes with, and then then build on it. Add multimedia
software and other stuff to expand it into a tailor made linux system. That would be
absolutely fabulous! But alas, I can not do this. Sysrec is hard-wired to be what it is:
a temporary system that I can’t change. It uses those sfs files and such stuff that
I cannot understand. But it would be wonderful if … if …

One could install the sysrec system, just as it is, as a primary and permanent os on
a hard drive, with grub installed to boot it - and then add software that one wants
using either/or a gui package installer or a command line like zypper or apt-get.
Could anyone possibly make such a thing?

I know what you’re thinking: Arch Linux.
Don’t tell me about Arch Linux. I know about Arch Linux. I even successfully installed
Arch Linux once - which is VERY hard for a newbie to even do - only to find that
it did not work with the computer’s video. And even if it had, Arch says that it comes
with nothing. Sysrec comes with a web browser, multiple text editors, utilities, etc.
I don’t want to start from nothing.

SO… thoughts? Suggestions? Hails of derisive laughter?

2

It is already possible to install System Rescue on the local disk and to boot it from Grub so you dont need to insert a removable device to use it. It’s well documented.

If you want to add additional packages, the simplest solution is to just use the System Rescue sources from git, add your own packages to the list, and run the build script. Just follow the README fie in the sources. It’s not that hard to do, but you need to have a regular Linux distro to run this, and you will have to rebuild it regularly to keep your custom version up to date.

Keep in mind this distro is not meant to be used as a regular OS on a desktop or server. It is not updated very regularly and hence you wont get bug and security updates every few days as you would with a regular distro, so you would be at risk. But if you have nothing sensitive on your computer it may not matter.

The reason why most things work out of the box with System Recue is because of all the work being done by the upstream distribution (Arch Linux). If you dont want to use Arch I would recommend a distro such as Linux Mint. It is meant to work out of the box and to be really easy to use.