I always assumed that LFS was more of a "you are running your own distro" kind of thing and everything would be up to you. That does not sound appealing.

But yeah, FreeBSD is the BSD that I generally find appealing. It hasn't stuck yet though. Something keeps me coming back to Slackware.

After a Gentoo install that eventually died I was quite reluctant to try it again though. Quite a lot of compiling to maybe end up with the same result.

EDIT: Slackware was my valuable learning experience. I did spend some time doing things that normal users would probably not do, like examining the boot process and determining exactly what happens and when.

I beg to differ. Slackwares philosophy is simple, stable and secure. All though it is trivial to compile software and follow the LFS-handbook, LFS and BLFS isn't any of those values.

You can't give a CD of source codes, a handbook and a liveCD to use as a bootstrapping environment and expect a newbie to have a running system. You can with slackware.
And perhaps you will get BLFS as stable as slackware, but certainly not without a lot of experience. And do you really have the time/energy to regularly check for security updates on 100+ packages?

AND:
just who will downgrade your miss upgraded packages for failed dependencies after you already re-compiled the whole kde/X/gcc before?

I must admit I am a little ill-informed about the whole LFS thing. I did research the topic (7 years ago?) but I am unfamiliar with it for the most part. So is the idea to work without a package manager or to choose your own?

There's no package management in the LFS book, or BLFS. There are hints for package management, but really once you get beyond the LFS or BLFS installation, it's apparently a major hassle to keep up on security and updates.

LFS is very interesting and educational, or at least what I consider interesting. Eric even gives it some credit for helping him with slack64. That being said a modern distro is pretty unwieldy and I wouldn't be the only person trying to update it. Even Pat has help.

Slackware v13-64 is so badly done, I for one would suggest going back to window$

tyc

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I should give LFS a shot at some point, it does sound interesting!

That's an honest impression, but is there any particular reason why you think it's badly done?

Personally I didn't found it very consistent with the regular 32bit, apart from 64bit being a little faster. That for me is a sign that there is a lot of thorough work behind.

You are entitled to your opinion, but can you back up that statement with anything specific?
Slackware64 is, IMHO, far superior to Ubuntu or microsoft windoze, however, I do think multilib capability should be built-in.

Dinithion and cwizardone,

Guys...come on...that post is obvious flame bait. Best to ignore such silliness, imho.
Back on topic. Another distro that I've never tried is Gentoo. That might prove to be interesting. I just need to overcome inertia.

. . . Says the guy with the good taste to run SuSE, a distro that makes Red Hat look hip and bleeding edge, and zero thanks in 51 posts.


Thanks for the constructive input, tyc.

hitest is, of course, correct.

I've never tried Gentoo either. Do you really have to build it fresh for each install? If so, does anyone have a set of pre-built images out there? I'd like to see what it's like, but I don't have twelve hours to spare building gcc, busybox, init, WINE, OpenCASCADE, etc . . . especially when there's likely thousands of architecturally identical machines already out there on which the Gentoo build has already completed.

Hi,

I'll bite!

You can support this argument how? What details do you have to support this position and post the apparent problems you find with Slackware 13.1 x86_64? If you think the multilib is an issue then you should read about what Alien_Bob has presented. As for not having a included install;
I agree that this just seems to be flame bait.

That is not a very good argument. Considering 'thanks' is a relatively recent addition and he has been here since 2007, you make yourself look foolish here. Also, I don't know that ranking thanks is any good for the community...I know I don't post to inflate my ego (though I'm not saying no one does).

Of course his groundless argument makes him look just as foolish with no evidence whatsoever to back up his opinion, but trolling is par for the course on the interwebs...

[edit] See here...I think enough has been said about tyc and Slackware and I'd hate for the thread to be derailed...

There are ever more users, emerging from the swamps of "the other OS", coming to GNU/UNIX land, thinking they know the "great way of UNIX", by clicking they way (randomly) trough widgets they call "windows" and "programs" while falling short to tell a GUI from CODE.
And apparently, if some item ("icon") doesn't "double-click" right away into "existence" they want their "rightful" refund for using freeware?

Are we (the users of the "old days") so much more computer nerds?
Do You all "users of the old days" need a manual to adjust a wrist watch every time You get a new one?
Or is this world coming to an end?