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Use LFS, that will teach you!

On a serious note, the Linux distribution choosers/selectors out there can answer your and similar questions.

Actually, I find the answers here in the comments to this askslashdot question more informative than what the linux distro chooser that was the first search result yielded from that lesson on googling gave. (In fact, for me, that distro chooser should have given the answer debian unstable and debian testing, but it didn't ask quite all the right questions (and/or it's logic didn't fit my philosophy.))

I'd advise the op to maybe try your funny link out for fun, but to rather read the comments here for more thorough information.

Use LFS, that will teach you!

On a serious note, the Linux distribution choosers/selectors out there can answer your and similar questions.

If you like GDM, you can use it. This is free software (in both senses), and just because Ubuntu's main branch is going a particular direction doesn't mean you have to. If you want to be based off of Ubuntu, you could do a kubuntu-like fork. If you want to do something completely different, you can switch distros (e.g. I switched to ArchLinux because I didn't want all the eye candy and complexity of what Ubuntu was doing).

And if you're really not seeing the choices you like out there, you can always roll your own. I've done that too, it's time-consuming but not particularly difficult. And if you really like doing that, you can fairly easily set up your installs with a package manager, set up a repository, and all of a sudden you're well on your way to having your own distro.

As it stands, I'm interested to see what Ubuntu comes up with, but I don't equate them to desktop Linux. There are just too many good options out there for that.

>"[...]most of the core programs you use on a regular basis work extremely well."
"Where can I download this fantasy distro that you're using?"

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

It takes a little while to install, but it should work perfectly once you're done...

I'm only partly joking (and I've never yet actually tried "Linux from Scratch" - Slackware, Gentoo, and Arch are close enough to the concept for my purposes) - For every OS, not just Linux, whether the computer is your friend or your enemy seems to largely depend on whether you approach the computer to stumble around, cursing and swearing because you can't get the computer to do what you want, or to invest the time to get to know how to work WITH the computer.

In my experience, anyway, Linux is by far the most willing to be adapted to however you want to work. However, you need to figure out how to tell the computer to do so. Obviously I think this is well worth the investment.

It's true that the "consumer" distributions like Ubuntu and OpenSuse (and to a lesser extent, Fedora, which doesn't seem to be hard to use but tends to be a little more "daring" about using "beta" software - which again in my own experience is at least about as stable as proprietary "1.0" software releases.) have gotten a heck of a lot easier to just sit down and and start using these days, though.

Disclaimer: I'm a big nerd who started on Slackware in the days of the version 1.3.x kernel (Get off my lawn!) - I'll leave it to others to debate the most usable "consumer" distribution.

Have them do a linuxfromscratch book http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/ keep them off a gui and surf with links or wget. I learnt on a box w/250mags HD space and 64k ram.

May I suggest a roll your own distro?

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

Not to be posted toward anyone in particular, but being as this /. is about a change to Ubuntu, I'm sure there will be a plethora of posts regarding how inept they are at dealing with the changes or questioning why the change or etc. The real question is why bother ever complaining about something that was free. If you don't like it, you can always get your money back (credit +$0). If you really don't like the way a distribution is going or have a problem of stability or security of one thing verses another, then by all means do it yourself. If you want something the way you want it, then do so: LFS, Gentoo, or ArchLinux

...except you do it more often. ;-)

I actually quite like the idea of Gentoo, but I find the actuality of it a bit frustrating. Back in the day, many of us learned about Linux by doing it from scratch but without the modern helpful references, or used SLS/Slackware, which gives you a world to stand on while you compile the stuff that is interesting to you without getting in the way.

LFS (and probably Gentoo) is great for a single-purpose or server system, but for a desktop system the compile-time overhead is just a total waste of time. I often hear the claim that Gentoo is a great way to learn about Linux, but my experience is that most people just follow the cookbook without taking very much in at all.

And if all else fails, you can always try here. Only problem you'll have then might be the drivers, although in that case there still may be help for you.

I have been using Gentoo (and love it) for several years now. I have not actually tried LFS although I am familiar with its basic concepts. Can you advise why you would prefer LFS over Gentoo? It seems you'd be giving up the ease of long-term administration that Portage offers, and so far as I know Gentoo does support the ARM platform.

And if all else fails, you can always try here. Only problem you'll have then might be the drivers, although in that case there still may be help for you.

From experience I totally agree:
I myself tried to learn linux 3 times before I finally moved to the platform. I had my then had Redhat 5.2, SuSE, Mandrake, and some others before dropping out - the interfaces worked well, but I did not understand the fundamentals - expecially things like why I could not execute my programs etc - which I later on learned was - my programs where not in path and thus I had to make them executable and then use ./ and other issues.

All solutions - Ubuntu, Redhat, Slackware, etc use entirely different package managers etc. This was another huge problem for me - I was learned the Redhat way and had no understanding of how I could install things myself when I needed. This is a major issue.

Through my Linux experience in school which essentially was more about creating some basic C programs etc, I had yet no understanding of the way the system worked, why there was a /bin, /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin and so on, and I was close to drop Linux altogether.

I did make one last attempt - Linux from Scratch http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/ : Finally a project that helped me make sense of all the Unix systems!! It took me only one single week despite having to recompile all the code! The compilation time was time to learn the fundamentals - partitioning, file system considerations, Linux Standard Base : why some things are to be in /bin, others in /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin or /opt and so on.

As soon as I had finished the basic Linux from Scratch program, I had learned enough to use ANY Linux system; I moved to Gentoo at the time to make sure I did not forget what I had learned and improve some more. Today I use Redhat ES for servers and mostly Ubuntu for desktop.

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

For those who feel a need to have complete control over their own desktops.

I see the arguments each direction on this one - and my own view is 'whatever happened to letting the users decide themselves?'
I have spent ages playing with themes on KDE, Gnome, WindowMaker and Enlightenment. If you're not able to customize, just run OSX or Windows and get an OS that someone controls and will actually provide real support for (including paying off vendors to write drivers).

Linux is supposed to be about the anarchy of self-expression and total control of your machine. Canonical, RedHat, SuSE and many others provide varying levels of 'corporate stability' that you can buy into if you're into that sort of thing.

How many products are shipped with Mesa as an important, primary component?

If you're using OpenGL, 99% of the products are going to want real hardware acceleration, not Mesa.

According to Linux From Scratch, Mesa is used to as the userspace component of OpenGL acceleration in X.org, at least with DRI drivers. In other words, if Mesa doesn't have it, FOSS drivers in Linux won't have it.

Of course the real solution is to move the project over to software patent free part of the world, rather than meekly remove the "offending" portion, but still...

Openess is a fine thing, but let's not forget the tyrany of the mob. No Open Source project is a free-for-all. Apple was never billed as a open source company. Never. Darwin had as much to do with OSX as a stripped down car does with it's fully outfitted luxury brother.

Apple's modus operandi is providing tools and a platform that allows createive and not-so-creative types to perform tasks that 90% of users want to accomplish. Apple made the P.C. into a toaster. A very nice toaster. If you want total control of the OS, I recommend the Linux-From-Scratch project.

Ubuntu would probably not satisfy the true *nix/mage anyway.

It's not bloated, hardware has just been updated. It makes no sense to continue developing for decade-old hardware when almost nobody uses it. If you're looking to run linux on it, you certainly can, take a gander at http://wiki.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs and put together exactly what you want, using absurdly low amounts of disk space and memory.

If you want a desktop distro that's pre-configured, go back in time and find an old version that was created specifically for that hardware's era.

I'd probably not use such a machine for everyday computing but if you want to have some fun, try building Linux from scratch on it and try out how well the current kernel handles the old hardware.

Let this be a lesson to everyone who reads the article. Security is not something that happens by accident.

I've said for a long time that binary packaging is, fundamentally, a Hell-spawned abomination masquerading as a convenience; incidents like this only prove the point.

Compile yourself a minimalistic base system, a la Hardened Linux From Scratch.

Then get the absolute minimum number of packages you need for a working system, such that you've got some chance of keeping them updated. Firefox for web browsing, maybe. A single media player; VLC or Xine. Vim/Emacs as an editor. OpenOffice.org if you need that. Whatever servers you need, but keep that list small. A firewall, which is hopefully obvious.

Use a minimal window manager which doesn't have a dep list as long as your arm, as well. I use Ratpoison. Do not laugh until you've tried it. It is very, very fast, and resource consumption is virtually nil. It's basically an X version of GNU Screen.

Once you've got this small list of packages, take full, ruthless, practical advantage of the fact that your system is open source. Subscribe to the announce or bug related mailing lists for the apps you've got, and keep local virgin tarballs. This way, whenever there is a bug or potential exploit, and the patch gets posted within a few minutes or hours, you can get it the moment it goes to CVS, patch your own source tarball, and recompile. The same goes for the kernel itself.

You won't be vulnerable to exploits, because you'll get the solutions to them as they are implemented, and you're also far less likely to end up with a compromised machine as a result.

Brainless Windows refugees, who will sneer at me, and/or complain about how this isn't, "user friendly," don't even bother. This post isn't for you. We already know that you've committed yourselves to being servile, unthinking sheep, and you are therefore invited to accept the consequences of your (lack of) actions in that regard.

it's trivial to re-install linux

Oh really?

The best way to get to the fun roles, are by teaching yourself how things work. This is usually not accomplished at schools, but with you yourself playing around with things.

The easiest way, from my point of view, is starting to play around with various unix systems.

I don't know the current state of slackware, but back when I wanted to learn linux, I tried getting slackware to work on my workstation, including X. I tried and failed for a couple of weeks - but I learned a huge lot from it. I went on to install Debian. These days - I'd suggest going the Gentoo route, and then try to build your own linux distro from scratch.
See: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

Buy the book "Running Linux". Read it, understand it.

Don't stop there. After playing around with linuxfromscratch and reading 'Running Linux', I would go on to download OpenBSD, and read the FAQ's/Howto's and most importantly - the man-pages you're referred to after installation. There is an incredible amount or good documentation for OpenBSD. It's easy to read - and you learn a lot - fast.

After playing around with OpenBSD - I would go on to play around with NetBSD. When I played around with it (1.5.2, I think) - it was a very nice and barebone unix. Documentation wasn't perfect, but that lead me to learn even more.

FreeBSD is very nice - but last time I played around with it, it suffered from having too many users having written too much contradicting information. It was more difficult to pick up than Open/Net-BSD, but it's way more usable for an end user. THAT, however, should not be one of your considerations when you want to learn. Pick the best documented one, not the one that has the most fancy features for your desktop. :)

In the process of installing and fooling around with all these systems, try to build your own firewall for your home computers. Read up on firewalling - it's a good goal - as to create a useful firewall you'll need to teach yourself TCP/IP in the process.

When you feel that you've mastered most of this (you haven't, but that's beside the point) - you should've spent 6-12 months. It's now time to pick up "Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment". See: http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Environment-Addison-Wesley-Professional-Computing/dp/0201563177

This book will teach you a lot, and now that you've used Unix for a while - you'll understand quite a bit of it. Not all, but it's a good read, and will teach you even more of what you need to know.

After fooling around with all this, or preferably in between and along the way, you'll need to:
  - Configure BIND (DNS), and maybe look at djbdns
  - Configure postfix/exim, and maybe also take a look at qmail
  - Configure a dhcp-server.
  - Fool around a bit with apache, building it from source and swearing at it. :)
  - Set up an nntp-server.
  - Maybe set up an IRC server to fool around with.

Also, it's important to get to know a couple of programming languages. Not necessarily to expert level, but it's important that you fool around with C (not C++, but you might want to learn a bit of that in addition) - plus a couple of scripting languages. It's important that you teach yourself bash (since it's probably your shell) - in addition to either perl or python. You'll find camps that say that perl is more important, while other camps will claim that python is more important. I went with perl first, and I'm now trying to teach myself python.

Now, this is a huge list of things to play around with. There are lots more - but it should give you a good 12-24 months of fooling around and studying. With all the knowledge you gather from this, if you complete it, you should be ready to get yourself fun, challenging and other frustrating work. :-)

I think that at this point it's getting unacceptable to have a gigabyte OS and it still doesn't do anything will out adding more software.

I know we're supposed to be used to ACs making dumb comments, but seriously. There are plenty of small or potentially bare bones FOSS operating systems available.

I can't comprehend why they'd be using anything other than NetBSD in space anywayz.

>It's to do with fitting it all on a regular CD

I understand that; I was more talking about what lands on the hard drive after setup rather than what gets loaded into ram while the livecd is actually active. I'm not going to be wanting to do compiling while I've only got a ramdisk to work with, believe me. ;)

Mind you, you're correct of course that for new users, having Gnome as the first thing they see is more important than certain other things being on the disk.

I've actually been working on a system of my own, more as a learning exercise than anything else, as part of messing around with Linux From Scratch, and part of that has meant debating what I want X to contain on a LiveCD. Truthfully, I think terms of my own use, I want to go more the minimalistic route. That of course is one of the fantastic things about Linux; if we don't like what someone else is doing, we can always do our own thing instead.

The first thing you need to determine is just how secure you want your Linux to be, how much control you want, and how much expertise you can muster to implement those security policies. If you want total control and have a staff with high technical expertise, then you may want to go with Linux From Scratch. You'll have total control (and total responsibility) for everything, but it's going to require a lot of work.

On the other end is (K)ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, Mandriva, and other easy to use Linux distributions. Setup and maintenance are very easy, but they are managed outside of your direct control. You can always boot from read-only media or run the system (slowly) from CD or DVD, though. Outside of creating your own operating system and applications, though, you're probably going to have to compromise on total control. In that case, any of these distributions are more or less on equal security footing; all of them are good choices.

How paranoid you are will go a long way towards deciding which distribution you want to use.

Right here

I agree with everything you wrote. Good advice and a realistic perspective. Macs remote reimaging form open firmware, you could have a website + instructions and just give the kids the URL.

2.) If your goal is teaching computer science, Macs (and to a slightly lesser degree, Windows PCs) are NOT the way to go. Both MS and Apple hide the workings of a computer from the user to a degree that makes it almost useless for this purpose. Kids( and teachers for that matter) will not learn how computers work through osmosis. Of course it is fairly unrealistic to expect US public/private schools to put linux in the classroom but one can dream.

OSX architecture may hide things, as you say. Darwin on the other hand is a BSD. Pretty much everything you wanted to do with Linux in a curriculum you can do with the Mac macports. Don't get me wrong, I think kids would learn way more from say at 10th grade having to reimage to a Linux from scratch and work it up to the point it runs Open Office but I can't see most HS computer level teachers being able to teach that.
Really any modern OS, Linux included sucks for understanding computers, they are just too complicated. A virtual OS built on top of a Lisp is much better. Getting the stupid thing to be able to do eval((3+4) * 6) will take some deep understanding.

By using Slack, everyone around you will know that your kung-fu is the best kung-fu.

Actually, everyone around knows that your Slack kung-fu still can't beat my LFS karate, punk.

Heh. Lemme guess, you've never contributed to the Linux kernel or done any noteworthy coding in your life?

GNU's kernel isn't finished, so GNU is used with the kernel Linux. The combination of GNU and Linux is the GNU/Linux operating system, now used by millions.

That's from http://www.gnu.org/, titled "The GNU Operating System." GNU/Linux is in no way the kernel - Linux is the kernel, which is under the GPLv3. GNU is the system of userspace utilities that are bundled with the linux kernel in order to construct the GNU/Linux Operating System.

Just because you have never used GNU/Linux without the additives like X or a package manager doesn't mean its not possible. In fact, it was the only thing that was possible in the early 90s when the Linux kernel was first developed.

You can still construct the plain vanilla GNU/Linux operating system using the Linux From Scratch guide http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/. GNU offers its userspace utilities separately and Linux also provides its kernel as a standalone download at kernel.org.

LFS? Really a lot of Linux distros will do. If Linux or another *nix is too much to understand, there are always smaller OSs like MenuetOS.

You could go with a straight BusyBox, or add a slightly more robust text editor to the enviornment.
Then compile that into your initramfs, and just don't bother to do a switch_root to a real file system. As long as you've got the hardware and filesystem drivers compiled into the kernel, life is good.
See http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/ for more details.
This use-case is one where I would not recommend emacs.

And its elitist attitudes like this that have confined Linux to a niche for so long. Why should Linux be so hard that you need coding skills to use it? Why should someone be forced to spend hours trying to do something that takes minutes to do in Windows or OS X? Why would a Linux coder even be upset that more people are using Linux? That just means your skills as a coder are in higher demand and you can get paid for working on open source.

I consider myself to be a power user and frankly the faster and simpler it is for me to configure the system the better. I didn't install it to tinker with it, but to use it. If that means the GUI lets me configure my wlan from a dialog box instead of fucking around for hours reading HOWTOs, editing config files and rebuilding modules then great.

If you find Ubuntu to be unbearably usable and friendly, install Ubuntu Server which doesn't even install X by default, or go find another dist. There are dozens of them to choose from. If the thought of even using a dist is too high brow, you can even build your own from scratch.

My favorite real idea for a class would be: 1. here's a box of:
- parts sufficient to build a computer
- a printout of the book at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
- a CD with the source tarballs on it and a liveCD to get the machine booting
- an ethernet connection with a static IP assigned (to make it a little easier)

2. Build a LAMP server entirely from source (and keep the source directories around for proof)
3. Progress points for:
- a bootable machine
- a pingable machine
- a static web page
- a dynamic page
- a dynamic page with data from a database

" ... if you don't trust the package maintainers then you shouldn't use that distro.

I suppose this will offend a bit, but that is an absurd statement. What percentage of the people using any OS know and trust the people rolling it? I can go by reputation, or if I am smart I can reject a given OS because they have a history of being shady [ I won't mention the M word ;-) ], but I ultimately have to use something based on reputation and a solid dose of faith unless I roll my own.

But his article raises the question: is it better to embrace some closed source fixes, and so create a larger user base, or to remain pure, and keep Linux for the specialists?"

The beauty of Linux is that users can answer that question for themselves and choose the distribution that best conforms to what they want. For general acceptance things need to 'just work', but if you are pure of free software heart with the intelligence to make things that don't just work work, possessed of courage and time and command line chops, you could use something like Debian. Hell, you could build Linux from Scratch if you wanted to.

Gentoo is not hard core. Any monkey that can use a command line can do a Stage 1 Gentoo install (I'm proof!). Linux From Scratch is hard core.

emerge "teh hardcorz"

It's not for the feint of heart, but you might look at using LFS to build such a minimal system. I don't really see the harm in using a "full" Linux machine for the development environment, and then using LFS to build the embedded image that you deploy to "real" devices. We do this where I work.

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

It'll get the job done. If your totally new to Linux, it might be a bit much, but the folks on the lists are quite helpful.

Kirby

1. Take the hard drives out and stick them in a USB Shell. Voila, instant backup/portable storage solution!

2. Take the memory chips and sell them on ebay as upgrades.

3. Rip the screens out and use them to create a Head Mounted Display in your home Virtual Reality project. (Yay for 90's thinking! ;-))

4. Unsolder the parts and use them for home hardware projects.

5. I'm running out of ideas. Maybe use the shell to stuff something geeky inside? Like a Commodore 64 Laptop?

6. Last but not least, cobble the best and/or compatible parts together to create one or two functional laptops. Load an OS in development (e.g. JNode) and use it for portable Operating System development. Alternatively, use it for an educational experience by building Linux from Scratch.

As an 'expert' system administrator (albeit unpaid) I have four servers. One is running Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003, one is running Microsoft Window Server 2003, one is running Ubuntu Linux 5.10 (Server), and the other is running Apple OS X Server (10.4).

I can tell you now that when I first started my company, although I was a major advocate of Linux, I soon found that I did not have the time to maintain a then Gentoo or custom LFS distribution, Debian was far too heavy to pick up, and Slackware felt a little dated. So I took a look at Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003, liked what I saw, and bought a Dell PowerEdge 400SC with an OEM install.

At first Small Business Server was a breath of fresh air. It was easy to maintain, with a full complement of features, having been bundled with Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL Server, and Window Sharepoint Services. I actually enjoyed - yes, enjoyed - using it.

Until backup stated to fail. Until my tape drive disappeared. Until the sharepoint website database got corrupted. Until exchange monitoring failed. Until the POP connector started to thrash the CPU. Until the Windows Update website failed to check for updates.

These things happened. I'm not saying that they wouldn't happed with another system, but that is not the point, since they happened to me, and that caused me grief, and time, and money to resolve. I ended up trying to build a new system based on Microsoft Windows Server 2003, since I already had Microsoft specific data (files and tables), but this proved even more difficult to maintain.

I struggled for eighteen months, and then decided to build an Ubuntu 5.10 server. I use Ubuntu on one of my laptop, and had gently learnt the apt- way, and liked it. I set up a server with similar features to the Small Business Server, using Postfix, MySQL, and Plone, and even went some ways to transferring my sharepoint data. It works. It hasn't failed yet.

I bet the guys who took part in the survey only set up a server, installed some applications, and patched it. I bet they didn't try running a business for 18-months, just to see what it was really like.

I must say that we recently purchased an Apple PowerMac, and were so impressed we are now looking at completely switching, hence the OS X Server. It is a dream to install and configure, but we are going to run it for several months until we are satisfied that it can do the job.

Say hello to Gentoo or even Linux From Scratch

Linux is just the kernel, right? GNU/Linux would be an operating system.

Ubuntu is an Operating System, that uses the Linux Kernel.
So is Gentoo, RedHat, CentOS, Mandrake, etc...

Is Linux From Scratch easy to use? I would say "not really"
How about Ubuntu? (Ubuntu, in the live disc, was able to recognize and use the wifi card and odd screen resolution on my laptop, so it very much gets my vote for "easy to use")

Does Linus speak for Red Hat, Novel, and SuSe? I wouldn't think so, unless he has invested enough in those companies to have a large enough share of the stocks.

Of course Linus speaks for Linux, since he is in charge of which patches get accepted into the stock kernel.

As has been discussed before, Gentoo isn't an enterprise production OS... in fact, it's not totally ideal for even a single server in a small shop.

The thing about gentoo is that it gives you super-fine grained control over your packages. You want ldap support? want to not support jpeg, but to support png? do you want the package installed, but omit all the X11 bullshit? Or how about keeping a specific version of a package from upgrading when you upgrade your system? That's the power of gentoo's package management system.

Gentoo also offers insight into the innerworkings of the linux OS. You get to build your own kernel and pick EXACTLY what gets installed.

Since Gentoo is frequently on the bleeding edge, it's great for testing out new versions of applications. One of the downsides of CentOS that I've encountered was the fact that subversion isn't quite up to date, and it took several months before vim7 was in the yum repository. Of course, you could add new repositories to yum, or download an RPM specificly of what you want, but that sometimes involves waiting for someone to make the RPM or finding the repository that has what you need.

Another downside of Gentoo, especially in a production environment, is that since it's bleeding edge, many things in the system are changing and usually with a frequency that defies belief. I've been running Gentoo on my own two personal servers (hosting my websites and mysql and DNS and stuff) for nearly 5 years. The sheer number of times that I've booted the machine after doing an 'emerge -u world' and gotten "this configuration file's syntax is depricated, please use this new syntax instead" messages has been infuriating. Routine upgrades aren't routine. You can spend hours picking through config files and manually inspecting the diffs between versions. You don't want Gentoo on your server unless you enjoy spending a day doing an upgrade.

Gentoo is ideal for embedded projects and systems that aren't going to change. The OS lends itself well to projects such as DVRs and controller OSs for robotics. It's small and runs on a lot of different hardwares.

I'm always amazed at how much hate people have for gentoo because you have to build it yourself, but you don't hear people getting mad about the .tar.gz source files they download from sourceforge. You don't hear people bitching about Linux from scratch. The nice thing about Gentoo over LSF is that it automates a lot of the process for you and allows you to set up your system by itself, without the aide of another machine to get the system bootstrapped and initially configured. Sure, some gentoo users are cocky; but they're cocky in the same way that a guy who built his own Camarro acts around their buddy who just bought his new, shiny Saturn.

Gentoo is an exercise in academia. For a user new to Linux who wants to get a feel for the ins and outs and get used to the commandline really fast, gentoo is for them.

Then you should really appreciate the LFS program...http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

A good way to know about the boot process is to install Linux From Scratch.

I always got annoyed about things that run on my computer that I don't know what it is, and if removing it would break anything. LFS clarified for me many dark-spots about the boot process. I even ran the installed system for almost a year, but it got harder to keep up-to-date with package versions, and I came back to using a normal distro.

However, if you're adventurous and would like to build your own Linux box with all bleeding-edge components, you could try the guidelines posted on the "Linux From Scratch" website (not an endorsement, just a place to start):

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

Screw the enormous desktop environments. All you need to do is be able to click, drag, resize, minimize, hide, redisplay, and select running applications.

UWM takes the cake on full functionality, configurability, a little bit of window decoration, and written completely with standard Xlibs (so no extraneous junk), and the compiled binary, on Debian, is still only 92k.

If you want a little more eye-candy I used to suggest Enlightenment, but E17 is about as large as almost anything else. E16 is still rather light, weighing in at 660k (again, Debian Sid) and not having many external library requirements. That's a little bit dishonest, though, in that my system does include most of the glib/gtk and kdelibs which are necessary for various applications.

Anything which requires HAL/FAM/bonobo, however, stays the FSCK off my system.

I remember when one could go from a bare HD, through LFS, and on through BLFS, and a have a fully functioning system with X11/gtk/glib/multimedia/filesharing/etc in about 4 days on what was, at the time, semi-standard hardware (around 500 MHz CPU and 256 mb RAM). Now, to have a comparable modern day desktop Linux OS, it'll still take about 4 days of compiling--but with a 2 GHz CPU and 1 gb RAM.

Bloat-free software is a way of life... and the way to go.

This is mainly for those who roll their own using LFS, but Hardened Linux From Scratch should give some tips, and practical advice, which critical areas need patching, plus proper practices.

By the way, building Linux from Scratch is a long, long, long procedure. DIY distro mostly teaches you to appreciate the work that goes into a distro's design.

For those of you who truly hate your grandmothers, you can always set them up with LFS. :)

Hogwash.
Gentoo is a source-based Linux distribution. A package manager.
As far as learning the system components, http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/ is a far better tutorial.
But neither is intended to be a kernel introduction.