edit: i meant just lfs in general i didnt know what exactly the "cross " meant


ok to start off i have been running linux for about 3 to 4 years now i am not a newbe to that i am however very new to this whole "linux from scratch" idea....


my questions range greatly from system requirements to mental requirements to even time consumption


so lets start with my first few questions then ill keep this topic going the whole time through the newb levels of the process but when the questions get advanced ill move over to the right section of the forums



1. do i need to know C or C++ or similar??

2. start with a freshly wiped drive or just a partition?

3. how big do i need the above to be?

4. can i get an alpha level system up in a day?

more questions later im gonna goto the website now....

1. do i need to know C or C++ or similar??

No, but any time you build large numbers of packages from source some knowledge of C/C++ is helpful. The book has a list of minimum skills that are expected for a successful build and C/C++ isn't one of them.

2. start with a freshly wiped drive or just a partition?

Just an empty partition. In fact, you can build the entire CLFS into a directory in your existing Linux install.

3. how big do i need the above to be?

Depends on your plans after building the base system. You'll only need a couple of GB for the base system. IIRC the book discusses this point.

4. can i get an alpha level system up in a day?

Don't know what an "alpha system" is, but I can build a multilib Cross Linux from Scratch system on my machine in a day. This depends largely on your hardware and experience level. You could easily do it in a weekend with most any hardware. You will have a fully functional operating system.

Depending on your hardware, I would recommend Cross LFS. If you're using an x86_64 machine, then definitely use the multilib CLFS instructions. If you have an ix86 machine either LFS or CLFS will work, but I always use CLFS even on my ix86 machines. If you have a PowerPC, PowerPC64, Sparc, Sparc64, MIPS, or Alpha machine, then CLFS is your only choice.

ok cool i'm gonna start everything from scratch im installing a new install of debian on my system as we speak

one more question

5. can it eventually be setup with a .deb packaging system?

and a comment

i am doing this on an iX86 pentium 3 550mhz

any other hardware details i can also get into on request

5. can it eventually be setup with a .deb packaging system?

Why would you want to? If you need a package manager, stick with a distro that uses one. But you could install any package manager you want. I've installed RPM, Portage, and Pacman on base CLFS systems. The one problem you will have is making sure the package manager "knows" about the packages already installed. Otherwise it will try to re-install them or won't work at all.

i am doing this on an iX86 pentium 3 550mhz

You could use either LFS or CLFS. I still recommend CLFS using the x86 32-bit instructions and CBLFS. CBLFS has more packages and is more up to date.

ok i figured out that this is a very confusing process so ill stick to prebuilt linuxes for now