Repeating some unanswered questions:

1. If I just did a stage 3 install of Gentoo, I would still learn how to install LFS etc., ?
However, in the Gentoo site it says at Stage 3 install a lot of choices are made for the user. This sounds different to me.

2. How long will a Stage 3 Install take ? Just curious.

3. The BSDs are said to be the Ivory Towers of the Operating Systems. What do Gentoo users feel in this regard ?

4. Once one knows LFS/BLFS very well, can one make their own distro ?

Thanks.

Vijay

1. If I just did a stage 3 install of Gentoo, I would still learn how to install LFS etc., ?
However, in the Gentoo site it says at Stage 3 install a lot of choices are made for the user. This sounds different to me.

LFS has absolutely nothing to do with gentoo.You wont learn anything about installing LFS by installing gentoo.

2. How long will a Stage 3 Install take ? Just curious.

Stage3 is very fast - all you need to do is partition the drive and untar the stage and setup some config files.If you want a GUI and stuff you can install that also from a package CD.But thats not really the point of gentoo.

Thanks, this is good to know. So all the 5 stages I mentioned earlier here are important to experience, ie, from Gentoo Stage 3 to BLFS.

Vijay

I'd have to agree that LFS is the way to go if you want to learn a lot about Linux in a short space of time. I am only a newbie to linux (a couple of months) however, I am about half way through building an LFS system. Even for newbies, LFS provides a very valuable source of knowledge even if you never acutally finish building it.
Cheers :-)
Nathan

When doing Gentoo Install, does one need two PCs/Monitors ? The reason being that there doesn't seem to be any other way to access the instructions and seek assistance should anything go wrong.

Thank You.

Vijay

All the doc's are on the CD or alternatively accessible with a browser on the web if your network is running.

You can make your own distribution without going through LFS/BLFS. It all depends on what ideas you have for your distribution.

Writing your own packaging-system that implements BZip+LHA compression requires some programming skill as well. You don't learn C/C++ by completing BLFS...

If your plan is to do something someone else already did and just slap some premade packages together using someone elses premade startup-scripts and packaging system and then call it your own distro then you can probably manage with knowing LFS/BLFS.

So in short, BLFS/LFS is nice for a newbie to go through but it doesn't make you a coding guru or master of networking. However if you have small plans using already existing software then you could probably make one before you learned BLFS inside out.

Yeah, LFS has nothing to do with Gentoo. Anyway, the main difference between the Gentoo stages are compiler settings/how much of the basic system you wish to compile. You edit 1 file and then start a script or emerge that runs for hours. Either way, you will end up with just a base system that doesn't have much (no x, windowmanager etc etc). Oh, and you can always recompile packages if you want anyway.

There is actually much less of a difference between the distributions than people claim. They all use kernels produced by Linus; they all use compiles from gnu; they use desktops from kde or gnome (for the most part.) If you stick to a command line interface you will learn a lot. I use many distributions. Slack was my first (version 2.4). I don't gravitate toward gentoo because I program all day and good enough is okay by me. 'Ultimate optimizations' won't necessarily buy you all that much better speed. Better coding will.

Good luck

Thanks for all the responses so far. A friend downloaded and gave me the Gentoo CDs.

Is the packages CD Bootable or not ? I tried and it doesn't boot with it. Hope it is OK.

Vijay

The packages CD isn't bootable, only the liveCD is. Oh and btw, if possible, print the instalation handbook before you start installing... Much easier than to read it from the CD.

I don't have a printer. That is why the two monitors idea cameup. Perhaps I can ask
someone else to print this for me as a favor. How many pages is this installation manual ?
Thanks.

Vijay

I wish everything needed for LFS and BFS was available on CDs just like Gentoo. Presently, I just have a dialup connection. This makes it really hard to download files.

Vijay

Actually if my calculations are correct ok enough with the geekiness Cli means command line interface afaik. Just like gui is graphical user interface.

Not to be harsh, but I'm suprised nobody has made the point that installing 20 different distos won't qualify anyone as a guru? Pick a distro, any distro and configure it to do what you want. Give a friend that you trust the root password and have him "crash" a few things. Then fix it! Investigating and fixing it will get you on the road to "gurudom" much quicker than simply knowing how to install any of the distros you mentioned. I think you'll find its much more fun as well. Very few full time administrators spend anytime at all installing an OS's. The ones that do, don't just stick in the boot CD and hit the power button. They usually have custom written scripts that untar a base OS and prompt for a few bits of info then configure from there.