For now i've decided i will be using gcc-4.1.1 or never, binutils at least 2.17, some decent uclibc as a base for this system. It's going to be based on gentoo. Already have set up cross compile enviroment on my other x86_64. Efika itself will have an operating system "image" - just the applications needed there, no header files, no ducomentation (like manuals, info pages and such), no toolchain (gcc, binutils). And of course no portage! I'm going to make a separate gentoo portage profile for this project, specyfing the needed ones and virtual to package mapping. Oh and of course ebuild for a kernel. Beeing a kernel developer i could not just use something ready for Efika;) Choosing a right kernel with modifications is a long way to go - for now i know that's going to be based on something later than 2.6.20, with RSBAC 1.3 or 1.4 (the matter of features i need - 1.3 is definitely sufficient and stable as a rock), PAX and some more patches. Default kconfig will be included (maybe enable with some use flag, will see). I'm choosing openssh instead of dropbear crap of course. No busybox and similar either. Init scripts done myself. pdksh as a /bin/sh and users/administrators shell. Speaking about sheels - i've made some kind of simple comparision - pdksh is using about 400 KB RSS / 600 KB VM - comparing to over 1.5 MB for zsh, bash or tcsh. Oh and pdksh is using virtualy no cpu - rarely going beyond 0.1%, most frequent showing up with nothing. That's very nice comparing to over 3% or more for bash,zsh,tcsh. And since Efika is going to be plug-in-and-play device there's no need for some big and complicated sheels with a lot of features and even more resource hungry. It's going to be rarely used anyway.