I've got basic knowledge of Terminal command line, but am aware of how to use google, and have several friends who know Linux very well. Do you think it would be better for me to first build my knowledge of how Terminal works, or is all that's needed to build an LFS system a basic understanding of Terminal?

Thanks for any help

'basic knowledge of terminal' is a bit vague but to be honest if you understand instructions in LFS book you can build it. If something basic like 'cd ../..' is not clear you might want to brush up but otherwise being attentive to detail is the most important thing needed.

I've been dinking around with Linux for 5 years now, and I would think twice about tackling LFS. IMHO, just learning a few commands in the terminal won't help much. What you need is a good understanding of how a typical Linux system is set up....or maybe just a whole lot of patience.

I would go with learning to use the terminal vs using LFS. Besides distro specific commands, the terminal isn't really going to very that much, but soon in your future of linux, you will be working with multiple distros. And that knowledge of the shell will be more handy, IMHO. You should probably get a book on the shell and learn that. Then once you can do your computing from the shell and work through it that way, start with LFS and learn the inner workings of Linux. Also remember, you can pick up another *nix with the same shell and be able to use it with knowledge of the terminal.

I had used Linux less than a year when I built LFS on a Mandrake 7.x version. I spent about a month reading and re-reading through the documentation and downloading all the source on dial up.

I spent a couple weeks fighting with the fact all the development libraries I needed were not installed.

I went to the LFS newsgroup and searched Google when I had problems. I frequently realized I was way over my head to really understand some things.

I got the basic system built and it worked. It gave me a better understanding of the work that goes into a Linux distribution and I really don't mind if someone else does a good job of it and presents a distribution for my use.

I had a knowledge of basic *nix commands, understood that commands are programs (if you ain't got it, you ain't got it), knew how to consult man pages (won't claim to always understand them completely), check appropriate help groups, and Google. I actually consulted the man pages for every command needed for LFS to try to understand what I was doing.

I have always been glad I did it.

Great comments from everyone so far.