> I want to build my own embedded Linux-based OS out a different distro. I know > one can use Buildroot, etc, but I would like some ideas on architecting such > a solution rather than picking one. So a good start is having the requirements and available system resources. I mainly use debian because i'm a kernel developer, and it gives me all the tools i need for development on ARM based system. I normally cross compile the kernel on a big x86 box, but debian gives me the base system on the target, i can apt-get any special tools i need, and if i need to do some user space development, a toolchain can quickly be installed and used, although building anything serious on the target is slow. For your user case, how much flexibility do you need? Often embedded systems have one purpose, so you don't need the flexibility Debian gives you. buildroot will give you something much more tailored to your specific use case. Same is true for yocto, etc. Is security an issue? Embedded systems are often shipped and forgotten about. But if you want to keep it secure, you are going to have to rebuild it every few weeks/months. So you need a distribution with security updates, and a method you can either update individual packages, or rebuild the whole image and install it. You say pinball like machine. I'm assuming you mean on screen display, rather than controlling solenoids, having switch inputs for paddles, etc? What graphics toolkit do you want to use? QT is often used in embedded systems, but there are other choices, and ideally you want a distro which has what you want. Does the ARM platform you have chosen need binary blobs to make some of it work? Does it have an open source GPU driver? It can be hard getting vendor binary drivers working on anything other than what the vendor supports. So you might want to see what the ARM SoC vendor supports in terms of distributions. Andrew