e-Business Australia

I strongly urge you to consider using something like LFS (linux from scratch) to assemble your own package, and addseparate packages to contain the code that you must have custom written. You may still have major issues at update time but with sufficient isolation, this can be managed.

There are many unix-like variants to cover just about any imaginable embedded, general purpose, networking, firewalling or other need. Many folks have thought they needed to roll their own. Most did not understand that the whole purpose of a well designed OS is to abstract away the details of dealing with the underlying hardware and certain other layers.

If your conclusion is valid, then of course vanilla patches are not going to work in the future.

By definition you will be altering the vanilla base to which the vanilla patches apply. You will always need (at least) expert evaluation and regression testing to see if a vanilla patch is applicable, doesn’t damage your altered base and can be applied.