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Well if you feel like compiling from source, a guy here; http://forums.lunar-linux.org/viewtopic.php?t=535 put Lunar-Linux on his with minimal issues.

The packages in pkgsrc don't always compile on slackware. I'd guess 1 out of 3 packages are broken. I know this because I've tried several times to run pkgsrc on slackware. If you want to run a simple, straightforward, slackware-like distro with source based package management, I suggest Lunar Linux.

The guys and gals down at Lunar Linux are grinning maliciously at the success of their propaganda scheme to encourage poor schmucks like me to post links to their project on /. in a desparate attempt to get +5 mod points.

There's good source distro's out there that already have decent installers for a long time. Try lunar:

http://lunar-linux.org

Lunar is an excellent distro meant for savy linux users, and mostly named for a far easier install procedure than gentoo.

so what, no other distribution uses source to compile its distro?

http://www.sourcemage.org/

http://lunar-linux.org/

Perhaps not what you meant, but gentoo is not the only dependency resolving source-based distro

Lunar Linux

Found via following his web link. Not mainstream at all, but looks interesting all the same. Thanks for trolling and giving me an excuse to stumble over another distro to have a play with :-)

Here is a much more interesting april fools joke, one that had me thinking for a second:

Lunar-Linux and SourceMage Merging

Here's the diff for ALL platforms and ALL distros:

http://nl.lunar-linux.org/node/61

You're right. In fact, that's how i chose my desktop enviroment. Sqeeeeeeeee!

There are already a few things similar to ports available. You already know about gentoo I assume, personally I prefer Lunar. I know of 4 or 5 other source based distros, but Lunar seems to me the most stable and mature.

openMosix is a Linux kernel extension for single-system image clustering.

no it is not. It is a kernel extension that allows transparent and smooth migration of processes between cluster nodes without user intervention based on load balancing algorithms. (PERIOD).

OpenMosix is available in dozens of distributions and on boot images, even knoppix-like ones (cluster-knoppix) but also for mainstream distro's like lunar gentoo etc..

using lunar linux. It automatically replaced xfree86, no need to specifically install startx as it comes with the XOrg package already. Didn't need to adjust any config files... the old one just works fine on all boxes I upgraded (nvidia setup, ati fglrx 9500, and an old trident based laptop).

well that's actually your distro's fault. And yes binary distro's suck at providing headers and other -config and .pc stuff you need.

source distro's like Lunar-linux provide a wonderful rich platform with all of these -dev stuff installed by default and the way the developer has meant it. These source distros are excellent for developers.

For some apps, the gained speed is huge. A nice report on the speed gains has been written up. It's really remarkable.

Diversity is certainly a strength of Linux.

Are there sysadmins who've never coded, not highly skilled at what they do who are a drag to work with? Of course. Sysadmins run the gamut, the best (and probably most productive) have enough coding experience to know and work with the dev side also. The very best can run circles around the average dev imx. Naturally the very best devs are int the same class.

There are just as many 'developers' who don't have the first idea how to perform adequate testing, let along consider the constraints of running in a production environment let alone writing portable, consistent or maintainable code.

The author of this article is quick to bitch about a sysadmin losing his working files. Sure it happens. What the hell is with a developer who doesn't bother to keep any working copies of 2 weeks work? (In my own time managing a corp. network I'm pleased to be able to say I had exactly one instance of unrecoverable data loss -- where two users hadn't realized that NFS did not provide pc clients with any form of locking)

As a distribution maintainer (lunar) I see several OSS packages a week breaking reasonble build schemes or changing thier tarballs, (breaking MD5/PGP checks) without updating version info. So I'm sorry but there are no shortage of sloppy developers out there.

In my own engineering practice I've found over the years that all work goes better if the people doing it know they'll be held accountable for it over the long haul. Too many devs are allowed to get away with a 'throw it over the wall' mentality, going on to the next project and never having to deal with some of their cruft. Of course the same logic applies to the sysadms, I've seen lots of the behaviors the article rants about it but I gotta say ranting and pointing fingers ain't the solution.

http://www.lunar-linux.org/

good luck getting it in other distro's.

In descending order of (my) preference:

• Lunar Linux
• Sourcemage
• SGL
• uOS

I don't consider myself a guru, but 'I would say I know enough'. I've done the whole LFS/source based distro thing for a while now so here's my take on things.

I think it's important to make a distinction between LFS and Gentoo/SGL/Sourcemage/Lunar/uPM. LFS is a book that describes the process of producing a minimal linux installation that is capable of building software. The source based distros provide scripts/tools that automate the build process for you. Which you choose is largly dependent on your needs.

It seems from your post that you are interested in learning what makes GNU/Linux tick: what files do what, what software is required and what's bloat, and generally what goes on under the hood. For this I found that there is no substitute for LFS, it took me from Mandrake newbie to power-user in a couple of months. This was a good few years ago and at the time there was no BLFS, I feel that that actually helped me with learning the stuff. LFS held my hand through the installation of the base system, but after that I was forced to RTFM, making my own mistakes and learning from them. After 2 or 3 months I had a fully functional system with KDE, apache and a bunch of other stuff. I also had learned many times more than I did in over a year of using mandrake.

My new shiney LFS system was a joy to behold, but it became a real pain to maintain. I found that an unacceptable portion of my time was spent updating software manually and it was effecting my productivity. This was around the same time that SGL first appeared on freshmeat. I had tinkered for a while with LFSmake but found that it wasn't flexible enough. SGL was wonderful, I traded a small amount of the total control that LFS gave me for a system that saved me 80% of the time I was spending on keeping my system up to date.

Unfortunatley there was a bit of a storm in the SGL teacup which resulted in SGL going offline for a while and 2 forks appearing (Sourcemage and Lunar). Initially I went with Sourcemage but I found that after a while it became too unstable and as I was using it for work I couldn't have that (it may well be better now, I've not checked it out in a while). I switched to Lunar and am still using it now. It doesn't provide the same education as LFS, but once that knowledge is aquired it provides a much more efficient means of installing/maintaining your system.

I should say that I did once try gentoo but I was put off by the complete lack of an installer. You have to jump through too many hoops (and triangles, hexagons and other polyhedra) to get the thing up and running. uPM also looks interesting but is still in a relativly eary stage of development.

To sum it all up: LFS cannot be beaten for it's educational value, but for day-to-day use Lunar suits me best.

I can't comment of Gentoo as the lack of an installer put me off, but there are other source based distros out there. I use lunar on all my machines, both server and desktop. It works just fine as long as you are comfortable with configuring stuff without a GUI.

I run ClarkConnect on my firewall. Redhat, Debian, Gentoo, Lunar and Slackware on my *personal* box. Lycoris on my wife's box (no humorous responses please).
While the individual merits of each distro can be argued to no end, I do have to note that only Lycoris and ClarkConnect (Based om RH 7.2) worked perfectly out of the box. (Inasmuch as Windoze does)
Noting that, I would say that if you want to learn the differences between the distros, you should first learn how to multi-boot your machine. The greatest learning experience for me has been to have a working distro available at all times, while I'm trying to get a new (to me) distro working that I'm not familiar with. (Such as linux-from-scratch)
Anyway, I hope I haven't strayed too far from the subject, but I had to add my $.02.
In short, IMHO, if you are a complete newbie, learn how to multi-boot, install Lycoris, Mandrake and Debian. (or go to DistroWatch and pick a couple.) Graduate from one to the next while keeping your working distro intact. Then, Paraphrasing another post I read "apt-get when you finally get it together" - lol.
Happy Thanksgiving!

if the sniffer is trojanized, then it could possible hide such "activities". I actually read the article and it however seems that it was not the case here... phew :-)

MD5 checks work nicely. Sure pgp in theory is better but since md5's are cached locally, and a helluva lot faster to check the chances that they will actually be used and verified are seemingly quite good.

Which is to say in practice MD5 has caught rather a lot of these problems, and in quite timely manner.

As irrelevant as various source-distributions (e.g. lunar, source-mage and Gentoo) are at present in other respects, they make a nice 'canary' in the coal mine :-).

Get a source distro! Nothing beats a compile-yourself distribution optimized for your system in every ELF:

lunar linux
Gentoo
Rock linux
Sorcerer linux
SourceMage

In the end... binary distro's are just like windoze

For anyone that likes the GenToo way of doing things, i would recomend you check out
Lunar Linux
Lunar linux is the old sourcerer linux that has been talked about and praised a LOT in the past on /. It DOES have the ability to do recursive builds, and seems to be QUITE stable and fast.

It used to be a great distro, but it turned into the greatest (and saddest) web-soap ever.

I hope Kyle gets back to coding so he can start building the killer distro Sorcerer could be.