I am a newbie in LINUX and I am trying to understand LINUX by using SUSE 8.0 at the moment. I am not happy at all with that Dist and I have a lot of PBS. First, I find SUSE very difficult as it is not flexible at all. Second, I have loads off aplis that I will never use and are taking too much space on my disk. For those reasons, I wanto build my own LINUX but am afraid that it is going to be too difficult. Is it that difficult ? How long would it take me to install LFS? Is it compatible with a multiboot system ? (Win Wp/LFS) What kind of help would I be able to get if I encounter any PB? I know for SUSE, I am not getting very much help from anyone or anything.

Thank u.

well i think going by the way you talk that you mightn't be ready for something like lfs yet. if you have applications you don't want, remove them... additionally suse is flexible to a good extent. maybe you are just not sure how to make it do what you want?

LFS does take a few weeks to install, everything is from scratch and you DO need a sound knowledge of linux to get going. A number of people of varying skill have tried it and a few people who i would have advised against it have had a certain degree of success, but generally it's not somethign to be taken lightly. There is however a pretty competent manual to guide you if you're brave.

i'm sure i should know what a "PB" is....

but yes if you have built a system you can multiboot it easily enough, well... comparatively.

Well, truly though, if you can follow directions well, anyone could really do an LFS with just the basic knowledge of Linux.
As some it takes hours to install if you have the time to sit in you front of your computer for 6 or more hours.. Some it takes maybe days or weeks. Also a faster computer helps since your compiling lots of apps.

Like Acid said, if your brave go for it, you have nothing to lose. I always suggest anyone wanting to try LFS is to first try to learn a particular distro and when you feel comfortable with it, then attempt it.

One other option is to try a "middle of the road" distro. Slackware, for example, is slimmer and more flexible than Suse, and easier to install than LFS. It's a great distro to learn about Linux.

Time is a huge consideration with LFS, it takes me around 20 hours just to get the base system installed, and that's on a 800MHz with 256MB. And not only that, you do not want to be around your computer when glibc is being installed. And its not only the base packages to worry about. X can take a while to install, as can numerous other packages, and like Kewpie says, in effect, to get a distro comparable to SUSE can take a couple of weeks.

However, the disadvantages outway the advantages. My comp is fully what I want. No applications that I don't use. Programs are compiled to my system, which usually means that they are quicker to use. I understand a hell of a lot about Linux.

As far as being easy to install then I would have to say that yes it is fairly easy to install. The book steps you through every phase, and all you have to do is literally copy the commands and then paste them into a shell. There is excellent support from the LFS site, where every single problem I had, had been before and solutions were given.

LFS was perfect for a student with loads of time on his hands, and a Linux heart through and through. But for a recent newbie to Linux I would have to say stick with what you have got for a while.

Well, this is what I would do: Keep SuSe for your daily use and install LFS on a second partition to get going with Linux. That's exactly what I did and I did learn a great deal about Linux this way. SuSe is I think much more flexibel than you believe.

I agree with almost everything.

SuSE is a very good distro, I´ve used most "user friendly" distro´s, i.e. Mandrake, Red Hat, and SuSE, and in my experience SuSE has been the best and most flexible so far. Maybe the fact that I shelled out 70 euro´s for the professional edition of 7.3 is a great factor in this, but YaST2 is a wonderful piece of software, it makes adding and removing software from your distro´s cds very easy and flexible. SuSE does have their own way of doing things, but they conform to the FHS better than the other before mentioned distros. SuSE also will configure your system for you if you want it to, but you also have the option of disabling this in the SuSEConfig files. So as far as these three distro´s, SuSE for me is number 1.

I had LFS up and running like a charm, but I had to start over (from scratch lol) again because the compilation of X 4.2 kept making my system violently crash and/or hang. If you´ve done it once it´s not very difficult to do it again and inmuch less tme. I´m also following the keep chapter 5 and 6 seperate hint, this has the advantage that if you ever start from scratch again you can just start from just before chapter 6 in the LFS book after the software installation part in chap. 5, because you alkready have the software from chap 5 in a static tree.it allows you to really really build your LFS from scratch. also it just feels better, some of you will know what I mean. I had LFS up and running with bsd-style inits in three days the first time I tried it, and though I may have some skills with linux I certainly am no NIX guru.

In the time that I built my LFS I have learned so many things about how linux works and bash tricks and many more things, that I believe this is the way to really start getting into linux and learning it. If you´re willing to invest time into linux anyway, why not just take risks and try installing LFS even if you dont succeed the first time. If you come from a windows background you have probably had to reinstall windows 20 times a year anyway, so why not just make a spare partition and expirement with LFS, even if it means reinstalling and formatting a dozen times. It will help you on the road to linux gurudom, trust me.

And most importantly, dont forget to read the LFS book as well as the hints, they are not only useful for LFS but also for linux in general.

Good Luck!

PEACE OUT

What is LFS and where can I find (best distri?). I'm the type who
likes to 'hack around',& like the idea of being able to build my own OS.
Thanks!

LFS = Linux from Scratch
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org