LFS - Is it the mission from hell?
 

Hi all
Just wondering what you guys think about taking on a little project..
I found an old 3.5gig hdd lying around and wanna try the lfs mission while keeping my current install.

What are the main things I need to understand to keep to grips with trying this? (i know basic shell scripting but would I need some more programing knowledge to make the most of whats on offer? and what abotu hardware knowledge)

I'm really keen to learn about it so I guess I'll try it no matter what is said..I'm just wondering I'm biting off more than I can chew sorta thing.
Could a person with under a years experience with linux who did a course on unix (thats where I learnt all the command line interface stuff) be able to get to grips with it?

acutally, i think the instructions are so well done that someone if they followed them closely could do LFS, with maybe minimal questions/problems, unless they can't read. so in that case, anyone with some experience should be able to handle it and no programming experience required.

Re: LFS - Is it the mission from hell?
 

It can be a mission from hell. But so can Redhat be if you don't know what you're doing.

LFS is to teach you. The added bonus is having a fully working Linux system that (in my opinion anyway) works a lot better than a regular distribution (it all comes down to you having more freedom and control; a lot more at that). If you spend enough time you can become quite proficient with Linux by going the LFS way. I've seen people with pretty much zero Linux experience going LFS, doing it by the book and reading all the docs that come with packages they can. In the end they know a lot more than somebody who installed a 'real' distribution. That person has no clue what's on the disk and what belongs to what. It'll take that person a lot longer to master Linux. LFS takes it one package at a time and you can spend as much time on installing a single package as you need. At the end you can be an expert on all the basic Linux packages.

Previous Linux experience is an asset as it'll speed things up greatly and you'll be able to correct problems more easily. But newbies will get there, it just takes more time.

In retrospect it's not all that extra. Installing a distribution takes say an hour. Then you spend the next few months learning it. Installing LFS can take a long time (say for comparison it takes you a month to get it up and running the way you want it). But in that month you learned a lot more than the distribution-user learned in 3 months.

What'll help you is willing to teach and read a lot.

LFS will only be hell when you are a newbie to LInux and just follow the LFS book to install the software. You'll get to boot LFS and then what. You have no clue what to do next and you won't get far. A basic LFS system doesnt' do anything. It allows you to build on to it to make it do things you need it to but that's entirely up to you. I'd be in hell if I was dropped at a basic LFS system and didn't take time to learn anything along the way.

Re: LFS - Is it the mission from hell?
 

I'll have hit one year of having played with Linux some time in early March. I have an English Degree. The first computer+OS I had ever dealt with was Win95 on a P1 200. The only Unix experience I had before 11 months ago was the AIX mailserver at college in the mid-90s, and then all I typed was 'pine'. I am not a computer savant. I am not a pretty and unique snowflake.. See, I've got a worse resume than you... so feel confident alright?

LFS took me about 3 days, and a lot of that was compile time. I was using the same P1 200. The book is a solid recipe... follow it and you can't go wrong. Instead of learning, as with most things, from trial and error, you're learning Linux like it was a recipe... follow enough of them and eventually you'll just know how to cook.

Four years of higher education and I come up with that 1/4-assed analogy.

The only solid challenge comes with the BLFS things, adding stuff to your system. I went through installing stuff like: netdate, finger, telnet, sshd, proftpd, XFree4.1, half a dozen other utilities and daemons and scripts that I had always taken for granted, without a recipe and didn't have a problem with any of them.

Then I tried Gnome. Then I ran out of room. 3.5Gb is a good choice as I tried to squeeze it on 890Mb.

Cheers,

Finegan

I first started using Linux in August of last year and I didn't have any trouble with LFS. People think it's harder than it really is. If you don't feel that comfortable with Linux, take is slow and try to understand why everything is being done the way it is. You'll come out fine with a little persistence.

LFS itself is as easy right now as it's going to get. Installing LFS isn't the big problem for Linux newbies; maintaining it is. There's no package management so you're going to have to write your own version, or implement an existing one.

Then when you get into complex network setup you can't just run 'netconf' and fill in the blanks. You'll have to know a lot more about networking in order to get things running properly.

Well the list goes on but I think ya'll can understand what I'm saying here.

Well I started the mission tonight, going well so far..Yea your right the booklet for it is so mint. I'd always thought && was just so you could continure the command on the next line..hehe..
Congrats to the maker of lfs, your a legend.