Technology, Open Source and Shiny Things

So I love Ubuntu Linux. I love Backtrack. I especially love some of the additions made to it recently. But the lack of apt makes it hard for me to use it to the full extent that I can. I understand that there are things like fasttrack but imagine if you could have access to the ubuntu repository.

I have made minor remixes of Ubuntu before but I haven’t done a lot of major work. Things that come to mind are adding things for which there aren’t deb packages, ripping out things that are not needed and making it boot faster. If I even get something running how would I share it and set up repositories.

I guess my question is how does one start a distribution?