I downloaded the Live CD, not wanting to risk incompatabilities with host distro.

A few quick comments on the tools and config of the LiveCD - simply perfect! From the speedy XFce with Firefox and X-chat available, to irssi in the console, everything is right at your fingertips, ready to go!

Made a few attempts on my main machine using a spare partition, but didn't read carefully enough - I made some fundamental errors, such as incorrectly setting the environment back up after rebooting into XP for work purposes.

I soon switched to using a spare machine - a headless 133mHz pentium w/128mb RAM. This veritable dinosaur was more than up to the task, even if it was a little slow (76 minute SBU!). SSH into the box made the job as simple as a PuTTY window in XP.

After another 'go back and try again' due to a power failure, things went more than smoothly.

A big thanks to the people in #lfs-support on irc.LinuxFromScratch.org - they talked me through some recovery trouble after the power failure, and offered great support and lively chat whilst waiting for the dinosaur to compile :)

I've now moved into customizing the resulting system using parts of BLFS, and am happy to have found a use for such a geriatric PC.

Two thumbs up!

- Ebonhand

I tried it on a laptop.

I didnt find the doc about installing from live cd, so I took the doc for installing from any linux distro.

It is not easy to install :
- very long (didnt finish yet),
- if something goes wrong, you need solid linux knowledge and luck and google.
- if something goes really wrong, then install from the begining...

The doc is not always clear if some problems met are normal or not...

I would never recommend for linux beginners.
I would recommend for students and programmers and people who have time and want to learn.

The result I think is worth it.

Once I tried this and after a couple of failures (that was all due to my overlooking the tutorial), I could successfully have my LFS system fully functional in about a month. ( I used a P III / 500 MHz - 192 MB RAM system).
Then moved to BLFS system but I could not get to the net however hard I tried. Lost interest and moved to arch linux.

But definitely it is worth trying LFS and the community support is very good.

Boovarahan s

but I wrote a package manager, currently not perfect

In fact, LiveCD is great : it provides the packages and patches, you have an HTML version of the book with a lynx to read it and GPM to copy-paste the commands (which can be very long)

But BLFS, explaining the way to have a more "usable" system is not yet up-to-date, so it's really difficult to have a well tuned system in a reasonable amount of time ... (and if you mess up something, you are not always sure on how to fallback)

Otherwise great, but requires patience ;)