Been looking at LFS for my own learning experience, although I'm not sure I'm *quite* ready to go with it yet. I just installed Slack, but a group of friends and I are about to embark on a website project. We've built a decent server PC, and we are dealing with limited bandwidth. I've heard RedHat is good as a server, but I'd rather have control over what exactly is running (pretty much just ssh, ftp, http) to save resources.

Anyway, I'm not sure I'm ready to do the whole LFS project hoopla, but LFS would certainly be best for webserving. Better security, more control, etc. Any ideas on difficulty? I'm admittedly still learning, but I do have way too much time to spend on it (for example, I watch an average of 6-7 hours of C-SPAN per day and enjoy it).

IMHO LFS is not better or safer then any other distribution. Getting an optimal system is all about knowing exactly how your machine runs things and to configure it properly. The advantage with LFS is that you've built everything yourself so you know how the whole system runs which really helps if you want to lock it down tight or tweak it for performance.
Although you could do the same with installing a standard distribution it would probably take you a lot longer to figure out how everything works. And since you've got so much time, it wouldn't hurt to get down deep into how linux works. I'd definetly recommend the LFS it's a usefull time waster.

If you really want to learn something, make a box that you don't need to work any time soon.. Keep your slack box so you've got a working linux box and then build the LFS as either a seperate box or a seperate partition without getting rid of LFS.
To install LFS, the directions are very easy and straight forward. The real learing experience is to keep a record of all those files it says you installed and learn about each one and what its function is. Read the man pages available online and learn just how those configuration files work. Also, sit down and get comfortable with shell scripts and how they work. First try to follow exactly how your boot scripts work to start up your machine. If you learn this, you might look at slackware's boot scripts and see how they are different. Once you get your machine up and running, learn how to configure and use lilo (the boot loader) and then learn about how to compile and install a kernel.
One of the beauties, imho, is that it is minimalistic. If the box is a server, don't bother with X windows. You should be able to configure and install and run everything from the console (text mode). After you are comfortable with how your LFS system works, you can play with setting up networking on it and all the server daemons you like. With your slack box up and running still, you should be able to take your time and learn how each works one at a time.
I admit, all this was a very steep learning curve for me, but now I'm very proficient in these things.
Also, I'd stay away from redhat.. It seems only admins that don't know much use rh. Some may like it, but it's got so much in it to keep it easy to use that it is a real bear and prone to complex problems. I hate RH, and am LFS all the way. Of course, RH could be excellent for a desktop.. I'm never going to try to install X on LFS.. I don't use it

sounds good


I think LFS would be great for that, don't forget to install ipchains or iptables.

I would go with apache, openssh, and I guess I have no pref on the ftp server.


If you don't need X then don't bother with it, but I took the time to put it on my LFS.