I have to say it has been a very long time since something on the web has impressed me to the point of being amazed. But today I found out about SUSE Studio.
SUSE Studio allows you to build/create your own Linux distribution based on SUSE linux.
“Build an appliance — or your own custom Linux distro — with a few mouse clicks. Customize it to your heart’s content, and share it with the world!”
You can currently choose from one of many options available to create a OpenSUSE, SLES 10, SLED 10, SLES 11, or SLED 11 machine. You can create a custom boot menu with the option to upload your own image for bootsplash. Complete control over packages, ability to overlay files (this means you can inject scripts or your own program you are distributing) right into the machine.
Once you have completed creating your custom machine you can build it into a Live CD/DVD or a disk image (this can be DD’d onto a USB Stick or another for booting) or a VMWare Disk Image or a XEN Disk Image.
From here your SUSE Studio machine is just a quick download away, the machine I test built was just a 220MB download and on a 20mbit internet connection I was able to download my image at roughly 550kb/sec and took around 15 minutes.
This is a very well polished service and is currently still in beta. I can’t wait to see what these guys come up with next.