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Software remastering is software development that recreates system software and applications while incorporating customizations, with the intent that it is copied and run elsewhere for "off-label" usage. If the remastered codebase does not continue to parallel an ongoing, upstream software development, then it is a fork, not a remastered version. The term comes from remastering in media production, where it is similarly distinguished from mere copying. Remastering was popularized by Klaus Knopper, creator of Knoppix. The Free Software Foundation promotes the universal freedom to recreate and distribute computer software, for example by funding projects like the GNU Project.

Remastered Linux, BSD and OpenSolaris operating system distributions are common because they are not copy protected, but also because of the allowance of such operating systems to grow an application for taking a snapshot of itself, and of installing that onto bootable media such as a thumb drive or a virtual machine in a hypervisor. Since 2001 over 1000 computer operating systems have arisen for download from the Internet. A global community of Linux providers pushes the practice of remastering by developer switching, project overtaking or merging, and by sharing over the Internet. Most distributions start as a remastered version of another distribution as evidenced by the announcements made at DistroWatch. Notably, remastering SLS Linux forked Slackware, remastering Red Hat Linux helped fork Yellow Dog Linux and Mandriva and TurboLinux, and by remastering a Debian distribution, Ubuntu was started, which is itself remastered by the Linux Mint team. These might involve critical system software, but the extent of the customizations made in remastering can be as trivial as a change in a default setting of the distribution and subsequent provision to an acquaintance on installation media. When a remastered version becomes public it becomes a distribution.

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