Loving this
 

Just wanted to say i love this LFS project. Ive actually went through the process twice now since i first tried it on vmware to be sure i liked it. Now its installed as dual-boot with windows and its very fast and incredible stable.

Things i love with it:

- Optional stripping of all the binaries. No longer will gdb hide things from me. =)

- Fluxbox with xorg. Sure, this comes with every distro, but with LFS i know from the start where the config files are and what they do. And the system isnt bloated with crap from the start.

- Every day is a project. Today, i had to learn how to mount ntfs with user privs in order for them to get access to my mp3 files on the windows partion. Also, i had to put them in right groups to get access to audio. Then i learned more about patches, because a wine patch was needed for it to compile properly without ldap-devel. Then i noticed that my disks wasnt using dma so i had to compile nvidia ide support into the kernel to solve it. Also ive skinned alot of applications so my desktop are beginning to look OK now. =)

Anyway... just wanted to show some appriciation for the work that are being done with the LFS project. It really is the perfect linux distribution for people that want to learn about linux.

My sentiments exactly, I felt the same way about LFS when i first tried 4.0, I haven't looked back or used a mainstream distro since, LFS gets better with every release, it teaches me something new each day, and has never let me down, I can't ask for more.

Mad.

LFS does teach one a lot about Linux, I'll grant you that. As a gentoo and former slackware user, I'm very aware of the benefits of using distros that don't hide everything from you. Really, editing most config files is every bit as easy as some custom-made GUI.

Well my experience hasn't been as perfect but I think this is what linux is all about.

If I wasn't such a machine dork I would have given up a long time ago.

Speaking for myself, and only myself, there's nothing wrong with being a geek. :)

The best thing about the LFS systems is that it enables you to see exactly what the geeks who work at distros actually do. You probably haven't actually seen a "software build" unless you've worked in a commercial software company.

And for what it's worth, it's really, really good to go all the way through all of the LFS heirarchy: LFS, BLFS, Hardened LFS. Even if you do not do or have not yet done all of the steps, the description of each component can really turn a whole lot of little light-bulbs on.

Well, I tried Gentoo once, not so long ago. But compiling some important components (gcc, xorg stuff like that) just takes too damn long for my taste :p I did get it to run Fluxbox. I switched back the Slack. I switch window managers on a daily basis, I need things to install fast.

I may try LFS when I'm over that whole Gentoo thing.

I have tried Gentoo, but i prefer LFS... i remember emerging stuff under gentoo and suddenly something broke. I had no idea what to do about it. I would have to learn alot about the gentoo specific package management in order to be able to understand why something breaks. For me, thats not very interesting... id rather spend that time learning about things that are common amongst most linux distros. With a good foundation in linux knowledge, solving problems under any distro is much easier. And its hard to get that knowledge if package managers get in the way of the details. Thats just my personal opinion of course, im sure most people dont really understand why i choose to spend 24 hours compiling every package by hand.

Then again... why DO people collect stamps.... =)

Christer, Sweden

Well, as my uncle says, different strokes for different folks. I swear I'm not a redneck. Just him. :)

Re: Loving this
 

for those who would like to give back to the LFS community.........

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/hints/adoptahint.html

the LFS hints people do need some adopters to take over hints that are not maintained anymore by the original authors..........I'm working on 2 of these myself! some of these were written for the 2.2x > 2.4x kernels.........you can update these for the move from 2.4x > 2.6x and beyond, and other LFS users may benefit from the updated hints.........OR write a new one based on Experience you had to get some hardware working.......

everyone will love this also..........
 

Psst....Psst..Over here........here is a little known fact about the LFS LiveCD 6.1..........it can also be used as a Rescue Disk!!.........and like knoppix it is a full blown OS in and of itself and can get you on the WWW......I decided to re-build LFS 6.1 using the Live disk instead of using Slackware as a host.......I am typing this post within the LFS live disk while compiling Gcc-pass #1.......LOL
so don't tell anyone else about what this LFS LiveCD 6.1 can really do....it's our secret!! :)

I was going to ask if the LFS 6.1-2 LiveCD actually works or not. My original plan was to partition an empty hard drive and run the LiveCD to create my LFS onto that partition. When talking "host" systems, I was going to use my VidaLinux 1.2 (Gentoo based) distribution as an alternative as it has just about every development tool I'd possibly need installed already.

Now it's just a matter of getting up enough nerve and putting aside enough time to do this.. wish me luck.

I ran through the installation in vmware the first time, just to check things out.... if you want (and have access to vmware), you could do the same. =)

I think its probably easiest to install from the livecd when you want to install it for real on the disk. The LiveCD and the documentation is excellent. Print out the LFS book on paper and get to work. You need to know how to use fdisk to setup your partion before you start. The rest is pretty much step-by-step all the way.

LFS isn't quite like other distributions, in that it is designed to be an educational experience. It deliberately does not do the things that a "distro" vendor would do for you, so that you can do those things yourself. So that you can make the mistakes :jawa: ... fail to read the explicit instructions quite-carefully enough :rolleyes: ... so that you can appreciate and understand why those instructions that you failed to read were written in just that way. :study:

And for this reason, LFS is an educational experience par excellence. :cool: I guess that you could spend tens of thousands of dollars at a major university and buy yourself a basic or an advanced college degree in computer-science, but the odds are very good that at no point in that curriculum would you actually "build a system from scratch." As you can do with LFS in the privacy of your own cubicle. (I think that universities know that if they tried to do that for credit, they'd quickly run out of undergraduates in the degree-program...)

This being said... would you choose to go through LFS for each and every system that you wanted to use or to deploy? Possibly not. You might well choose the "distro" route, because all of those time-consuming builds have been done for you. But when you pick up that "distro," having gone through the LFS process once or twice or three times, you will find yourself mastering that procedure... bending it to your particular requirements because, now, you know how. Now, you understand what the distro-builder is doing and has done.

Well, believe it or not, in my university I'm taking the Unix course with the older guys from fourth yearh, I'm a freshman, and we are building, each one of us, our own LFS system. :D

I guess there are some schools that teach you that, although you're the one teaching yourself actually. :P