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Oh please, please sue ME! I could use fifteen-minutes of fame! Not only that, I'm installing LFS on my Rev. A Bondi iMac even as I'm typing this post! I'm such an outlaw! Come and get me!!!

And the damn thing is, you end up with piles of crap in your memory on boot-up that you never will use, but they include "Just In Case" so if you do fire up apps they appear to just start right up, unlike those clunky competitors products.

I'd still love to see Windows stripped of all the bundled crap and truly customizable on set-up, like Linux.

Uh, so why don't you remove them? Unless you do your own Linux from Scratch, you're going to get a ton of useless crap loaded at boot time on any Linux distro, too. Most load up some kind of MTA, a webserver, a database server, etc. What the hell would the average user need those for? A user's MUCH more likely to want their pr0n to come up faster than store information about it in a web-accessible DB! :)

Seriously, if you don't want this stuff loaded, don't load it. Take it out of your Startup, remove it from the registry, whatever it takes. Oh, and let's not forget, it's REAL that puts 32M worth of memory-wasting crap in your tray when you install it, not Microsoft. Media Player don't load until you ask it.

How about growing from 0 to 1, with someone putting together his/her own distro? :-)

After RedHat (from 5.1 to 6.2) and Slackware, I decided to switch to something better, much better. I strongly dislike idea of Debian, and I don't think Gentoo would be my choice. I build my own Linux From Scratch.
Sure - it's not updating itself. There are no official packages at all. But from the other point of view - you are not limited at all. You don't need to find balance between your needs and what distribution gives. You don't need to worry how many users your distro has, because there is only one distribution like yours. Because it is your own installation of Linux. One and true.

why not start your own Linux Distro? just a thought...

Personally, I'd love to see which distro Linus uses (or whether he still rolls his own).

of course!

It would be fun to know what distro Linus uses, but we're all better off not knowing.

Mildly off topic, but one use for these live CDs is hardware detection and kernel configuration.
I'd like to try out some of the source distributions, or even do Linux from Scratch, but wading through kernel configuration is rough on an FNG.
Not sure how to extract the kernel parameters from a live CD once booted, though.

Awww c'mon! Gentoo is for sissies. Manly men use Linux from Scratch

your thinking that lack of gui == primitive, it doesn't.

and many linux distros only have beta quality 64 bit OS'es.

LFS + CFLAGS="-O2 -m64" + Building a x86-64 toolchain

Haven't tried it myself, having no Opteron and motherboard. :(
I can dream, can't I?

Available here.

And I have to agree with those bashing Robert Jordan, even though I haven't read his latest pile of crap. WoT is a series that started out so amazingly good, then was ruined by its author. It's his maddeningly slow pace, and more importantly, the fact that every single one of his female characters (except perhaps Min) is an arrogant b!tch. They're all extremely annoying, some more so than others.

And I have to agree with those bashing Robert Jordan, even though I haven't read his latest pile of crap. WoT is a series that started out so amazingly good, then was ruined by its author. It's his maddeningly slow pace, and more importantly, the fact that every single one of his female characters (except perhaps Min) is an arrogant b!tch. They're all extremely annoying, some more so than others.

RUNT will get you to a command prompt off of your USB keyfob, assuming USB drive with boot-from-floppy allowed.
You'd probably want to get your Beyond Linux From Scratch on to give you something beyond that, e.g., a desktop.
Linux, like all good IT projects, is blessed/cursed with flexibility...
And flexibility, like any good PHB can tell you, is the key to indecision.

It's the profit bit that eludes me now :-)

First I always put the last line or two of error messages into google. 8 times out of 10, I find someone asking the same question, and usually someone has already posted an answer.

Actually, before even that I check with Linux From Scratch (and Beyond LFS). But there are a whole lot of packages they don't cover.

Bits are free. Bandwidth is not. RedHat is not now nor have they ever been obligated to provide you with, really, anything.

This is why I bothered to learn the stuff in Linux from Scratch. Sure, it's not plug-and-play, but I'm not paying anyone for support or packaging so I can't really expect anyone to do it but myself in the long run.

If you want Red Hat to give you guaranteed service, pay for it. Or are you the type that complains when any free offer is rescinded due to massive take-up and skyrocketing costs?

Grab it here

[snip]MEPIS Linux 2003 is desktop Linux the way you want it.[/snip]

Thats why I use Gentoo. Gentoo gives you total control, like no other linux distro.

How about you guys post some replies instead of marking my post flamebait. The desktop is still configured for you, so its the way "They Want it". Even Mandrake and Suse make choices for you, Great distros, but you are forced to select the provided options. If you really want it "Your way" and bang metal, you need to use a source based distro, Gentoo is just the most popular one. Theres always Linuxfromscratch

scripsit Unregistered:

If you don't mind having to really learn linux, try gentoo.

If you don't mind really having to learn Linux, try Linux from Scratch. Then switch to Debian ;)

Seriously, when you do it that way, you'll understand your system a whole hell of a lot more than you ever thought you could. For real work, though, let Debian's security people keep on top of the patches...

Amen to that. The things I love most about LFS are the way that there are no dependancy problem, and the fact that there are never any missing headers. The only two pieces of software on my system that I haven't compiled myself are the Nvidia drivers and Opera 7, and both of them are pretty much self-contained. So long, Debian/Redhat circular dependencies and missing devel packages! Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out!

Also, the Beyond LFS hints are a great resource even if you don't use LFS. Short, clear guides on how to get certain programs installed and working.

just builds this and that on top of LFS. Try this for starters.
As to a bootable cdrom how about this?

Google nazis? is that a sequitur?

Umm...most of those are met already. Let's see, I've been running Redhat 7.3 for about 3 years now. In that time I've added a second video card and replaced my sound card. Kudza takes care of it when you boot with the hardware. The only configuring I've had to do with the hardware was setting up Xinerama for multiple monitors but Joe Desktop User won't care about that. If I put in a CD it plays automatically and can be ripped using a program from the menu called grip. DVD's can be played easily using Xine which is also in the main menu under multimedia. Nautilus plays songs while they you are hovering over them with your mouse, or opens up a player when clicked. Video files that are standard play using an appropriate when clicked. And this was all out of the box, absolutely no setup or command line. I've also used 2 different USB printers that have worked pretty well, but one required a driver download and typing ./install command as root. So I guess according to your list we just need simpler interface for USB drives. Unless we're going for a Linux from Scratch distro, then many issues are taken care of.

Here ya go folks: Real cowboys roll their own.

Thank you!!!

If a learning experience is what you're after (and you're not averse to a little pain), I recommend Linux From Scratch. There's none of that messy "automation" to get in the way.

Now that I have broadband, I much prefer Gentoo, if only for its ability to uninstall stuff. But nothing makes you more comfortable hacking on the source than being forced to compile everything yourself. I'm more reluctant to do that sort of stuff with Gentoo, just because I'm afraid I'll "break" something it unexpectedly depends on.

So go and create one

...is the original creator of Linux From Scratch, and therefore registers very high on all standard 7331-meters

Of course, that could also be why the distro I use is this one.

Haven't heard of LFS, so please elucidate.

Linux From Scratch, a source-based disto. I used it for a while, and was quite happy with it, right up until I needed to uninstall some stuff.

So I guess your initial Linux-fanboy approach of whining and bitching about "Microsoft crimes" didn't work? You sure are proud of that "Fortune 500" thing, eh? Funny, I can't find any Fortune 500 companies HQ'd in the backwater cesspool that is Davenport, FL.

... but we should really be debating how we get this right on an OSS platform. If I put RedHat9 next to Windows Server 2003 I have significantly more updates to apply to my Linux box.

I think most of the people don't mind updates/patches, but when it comes to stopping all the services, closing all connections and rebooting and doing all that few times, it becomes annoying. I though only use LFS based system on desktop stuff, not running any servers, but IIRC and AFAIK a restart of server/service (only matter of seconds) is needed with Debian, Redhat and others.

-rzei

Brew your own custom flavor!

Actually, LFS is a little more like buying a "make beer at home" kit than true homebrew, but that's a minor nit...

Small, clean, up to date, low memory and disk requirements, fast as hell...

At first part students must understand very deep details of OS design and they have to understand that by practicing: kernel configuration, disk partioning, filesystem choice, init scripts.

If you will promise your students that OS has a kernel with drivers they won't understand it. If you will shouw the control panel of some driver configuration in Windows they will remember it as a control panel. But if they will configure the kernel in Linux and build it to see the difference between configurations - that will give them a much better picture of the kernel design.

As for Gentoo, it will be a great step for a student after a lot of manual work with LFS to learn how to automate some aspects of system installation, what are system and application packages. and what is their life cicle. Gentoo's Portage demostrates the most fine-grained control of package dependencies. Making own ebuilds for existing open source applications will teach various application building techniques.

After playing with many application packages on both LFS and Gentoo a student will have a very deep understandig of what is networking, document processing, databasing, graphics, music etc. A student will remember it in concepts rather than in screenshot images of control panels, like that would be after close-source OSes like Windows or OSX.

Or Debian, Gentoo, Mandrake, or NetBSD, or plain old Darwin and roll your own distribution. There's even a very unofficial slackware project available. Or if you *really* like rolling your own, check out Linux from Scratch. If you have a really old Mac you can even run BeOS on it.

Me, I'll stick with OS X, but don't tell me you can't put another OS on your Mac.

What Linux distro is similar to Contiki?
Linux From Scratch.

like RedHat, Gentoo, Suse that runs on a 486 with superior performance and uses virtual no resources like Contiki?
Yes.

but what REAL available distros are available?
Linux From Scratch.

What Linux distro is similar to Contiki?
Linux From Scratch.

like RedHat, Gentoo, Suse that runs on a 486 with superior performance and uses virtual no resources like Contiki?
Yes.

but what REAL available distros are available?
Linux From Scratch.

What Linux distro is similar to Contiki?
Linux From Scratch.

like RedHat, Gentoo, Suse that runs on a 486 with superior performance and uses virtual no resources like Contiki?
Yes.

but what REAL available distros are available?
Linux From Scratch.

Its a great learning exprience.

BZZZT. Wrong!

If your mission is to learn about linux, you can't go wrong with Linux From Scratch. It explains how to compile everything yourself, with easy step-by-step instructions. None of this silly hand-holding that you get with portage/emerge.

LFS for learning, Gentoo for portage.

Although I never actually *measured* anything, I have been moving all my boxen (except for one Duron on which I have found it quite impossible to compile Gentoo) to Gentoo 1.4rc4. I was actually in the process of building my own compile-in-place GNU/Linux called "Q-Gnu/Linux" when I discovered Gentoo did it all, and did it better. I was all RedHat before that (going so far as to wear a red fedora on parties - I have two of those). I find Gentoo as opposed to RedHat quite impressive, at least. My professional workhorse (on which I'm currently typing) is a Toshiba Satellite Pro 4300:

model name : Celeron (Coppermine)
stepping : 3
cpu MHz : 597.077
cache size : 128 KB

..with 384MB RAM.. and was becoming annoyingly slow in things requiring major GUI complexity, like OpenOffice, and at compiling many Java classes.

Compiling Gentoo on there allowed the machine a third chance at life, the second one being when I got it (already old then) and installed RedHat on it, over that would-be-OS it came with. It just feels that much faster again. I am no longer annoyed by it at all. It took more than 4 days to compile all I wanted from the Gentoo 1.4rc4, but it was *well* worth it.

I moved my personal little server, an Athlon Thunderbird, with the same impression. Currently running

emerge system

on my brand new Athlon XP 2600, expecting much from it.

Bottom line: Nothing but Kudos for Gentoo, wondering what went wrong during the tests described, or whether somehow the subjective speedups I have experienced are just auto-suggestion. I think not. I have been staring at CRT's since 1980, thats 23 years folks! And I tell ya compiling stuff yourself is worth it. So if you have time on your side, go for LFS, which I did, and slowly ground into Q-GNU/Linux. If you have some time, but not *that* much time, go for Gentoo, if you have no time, you poor shmuck, either get a life, or install SuSe :-), and pretend.. :-) :-)..

Most of the comparisons in the article were for X-related graphics applications, and while they were comparing the versions of the applications, they were not comparing the libraries underneath them (glibc, X11, and probably the window manager too come into play) and they should've compared versions there too. It becomes complicated because for a typical X11-based app there are probably several dozen libraries involved (in addition to all the configure-time options for them...)

Your desktop environment is just as important to you as the GNU tools, but those tools are fundamental to the desktop environment itself. You start with a kernel (Linux), build a toolchain with a c library and a command interpreter (GNU), then add a desktop. GNU does much more than that, but take a look at how to install linux by hand and you'll see that GNU is more than just proframs, it's a whole platform that you have to build off of to get a desktop. Linux+GNU=OS. Muy muy importante.

It's been a while and was with an older kernel, but I found current instructions at the linux from scratch hints site.

By following these easy instructions,

By following these easy instructions, you too can encrypt your data and swap partitions with Loop-AES. (The instructions are for Linux From Scratch, but they worked fine on my Debian box.) This way, no unencrypted data ever touches the disk; even if your computer is stolen, the thief can't read your data.

By following these easy instructions, you too can encrypt your data and swap partitions with Loop-AES. (The instructions are for Linux From Scratch, but they worked fine on my Debian box.) This way, no unencrypted data ever touches the disk; even if your computer is stolen, the thief can't read your data.

I'm browsing on a 300 MHz Celeron machine. A dragon would be a step up, I think.

I can compile Linux From Scratch in a single evening. I think this machine is more than sufficient for my needs. I can't imagine why a Dragon wouldn't be.