Hello all,

I posted this thread a while ago.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...-guide-868560/

And that is my ultimate goal. Everyone recommended that I just get any “easy” Linux distro on my computer working and then go from there. By “go from there” I assume they meant that I would go from total computer and linux beginner to advanced user capable of completing Linux From Scratch (LFS) easily.

Well, after a lot of hesitation, I have a working Linux distro on my spare computer. It is Ubuntu. But, I do not know what do I do now to start attaining the knowledge to be able to eventually complete LFS easily. I did search on Google but this is the only thing I found that was kind of informative:
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/876342

So, my question to you all is:
Can you please list what I do now to eventually be able to complete LFS easily? Please keep in mind that I am complete beginner with computers and Linux. Therefore, please recommend/suggest a logical progression of tasks or books/sites or whatever that I can specifically work on and the knowledge that I learn enables me to be able to complete the next task or book on the progression list that you recommend. Almost every time I ask people questions like this in other areas that I am studying about, they list a ton of random topics in a totally random order. Then they list random books that they are not sure if it teaches the material well or not and I am just completely confused. I am praying that we can avoid that here. I am ready to study/learn and get started, I just need a very specific progression flow to work on. Thank you!

On the LFS site, in the book, you will find the prerequisites: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/...equisites.html

You should read through those and become familiar with them. I would also read through some of the book to see where/what is coming.

You think I should read them in that order? Software guide, Linux Users' Guide, and then that last link?

By the way, that second link, Linux Users' Guide, is not working. Do you know of an alternate link? I searched Google for one but I only came up with a beta 1 version of it. I don't think that is the original file listed on the Prereqs page.

I found the same beta 1 of the guide here: http://tldp.org/guides.html down near the bottom. I think the point of their prerequisites is for you to be comfortable working with Linux, doing a lot on the command line, installing software on your own, from download, extract, make, configuring and compiling.

If you feel comfortable with Linux and the command line, go and read the LFS book and see what is ahead. Thant would give you an idea of what you would be doing to get the system working. It is more involved than you may think (not sure if you've looked through the LFS book). The website is well documented and they have a great deal of material to read through.

You definitely need to be (very) comfortable with the CLI, so here are some suggestions:

1. Read this very good tutorial and try all the cmds
http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz

You should bookmark these for reference
http://tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-G...tml/index.html
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/

2. Personally I'd say Ubuntu is too MS-Win like for what you want to learn, try eg Centos (free rebuild of RHEL).
No harm in installing the GUI (especially for email, web surfing etc) but try to do as much as possible on the cli

3. This is very good site for worked HOWTOs with explanations
http://www.linuxhomenetworking.com/

4. This site has a LOT of Manuals/Books etc; worth bookmarking & referring to as required
www.linuxtopia.org

If you want to get into building LFS, I'd concentrate on the Network/SysAdmin and Programming sections

HTH & Good Luck

1 members found this post helpful.

I thought about number two above and I found this:
http://superuser.com/questions/68663...nux-and-centos

I will note, though, for me when I start Ubuntu it boots straight to the command line interface (CLI). I have to enter "startx" to start the GUI. Are you suggesting that I do everything with using the GUI in the Ubuntu setup on my other computer? If that is what you are saying then I gather some of my first tasks would be these: (feel free to add more)
- connect to internet via browser
- open a word processor or editor

For the others you listed, thank you! I am not sure where exactly to start and how to specifically progress but I have a lot of material that, from what I have read, tries not to assume any prior knowledge.

I will post any questions I have in the general forum area in a separate Q&A journal thread should I have any.

1. Read/do the Rute tutorial first (prob using the other 2 refs at the same time).
After that, have a quick look at the rest and decide what you want to do next.

2. if you've got 2 computers great; that means you can fool with/break/fix the cli one and research/email on the GUI one.


If you're only running one in CLI mode, it may not matter which distro you use.
Be aware that default install of Ubuntu disables the root user and instead gives full access via sudo to the first std user created.
This is not the way anyone else works, ie Unix or Linux.
You may have already 'fixed' that.

Re that link: most of the comments are ok; its very subjective as to which is 'best', try as many as you want eg via LiveCDs if you can.
Se www.distrowatch.com

This however
is flat out wrong; Centos is a straight rebuild of RHEL, but free. Fedora is the bleeding edge R&D version of RHEL.

HTH

Well, my main computer that I always use (I'm using it now) has Windows XP on it. I have a spare MAC laptop and the other is an old Compaq desktop that has Ubuntu on it.

I have no idea what you are talking about here but I am assuming I will after I have read more of my homework listed in this thread so far.

I am doing the rute first and I am running into some seemingly minor but annoying problems.

In the test:

1. it says:
Alt-Ctrl-f
Erase forward one word.
Alt-Ctrl-b
Erase backward one word.
But that's not working for me. What's going on?

2. it says:
“The Ctrl-PgUp and Ctrl-PgDn keys scroll the console, which is very useful for seeing text that has disappeared off the top of the terminal”
But that's not working for me. What's going on?

3. it says:
“All GNU commands take the additional arguments -h and --help.”
Not working for me.

Hi

I have built the LFS system it is a dawnting task. Yes you will have to know your way around the cli and the link you were given by jkirchner is a good link.
When and if you start LFS do read the book and follow it

@leoio2
I've never actually been through the whole thing, you'd have to tell me where those things are...

1. I'm guessing this is an editor; problem is it may depend on the key-bindings being set

2. just tried that in Putty connecting to CENTOS6; if I create more terminal lines than size of window, the the cmds work for me.

3. I think that's just a recommendation; I wouldn't assume that.
Common help flags are any/some or none(!) of
and for cmds that require at least on arg, using no args gives the help page(s).
See also the 'man' (manual) cmd and the web version is here http://linux.die.net/man/

HTH

NB: IMPORTANT NOTE: Free/Open Src SW is written by many orgs and individuals; not one big business. As a result, there are inconsistencies ...
Also, as different versions of tools/cmds come out, options/flags may change/be removed/have new ones added.
The most accurate will be the man pages issued with the tool ie the ones on the same system/same install.