Considerations

While you’re considering the various toolkits, you should try to answer the following general questions. You should also make up a list of questions specific to your project.

• What is the size of image produced?

• What architectures are supported?

• How easy is the toolkit to use?

• How many optional packages are available?

• What exceptional packages are available? (Web-based administration, perhaps?)

• How customizable is the image? How difficult is it to customize?

• How much does the toolkit cost? Is a royalty involved?

• How well is the toolkit documented? Is printed documentation available?

• How well is the toolkit supported? Paid support? Active list?

• What are the requirements to use the toolkit?

• Can a new version of the toolkit be installed without losing changes?

To test the toolkits, I tried to build a single floppy x86 boot disk that would run the Minicom application (for more on Minicom, see Chapter 8, “Static Application Example: Minicom”).