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LFS 4.0 Released
Tekmage writes "For those of you who have never had the pleasure of rolling your own Linux install from scratch, take a moment to check out Version 4.0 of Linux From Scratch. Definitely for the techies amonst us, there is (IMHO) truly no better way out there to get down and dirty with the inner workings of our favorite OS." LFS organizes its documentation into "books"; 4.0's book is dated yesterday.
gentoo is an alternative, but its not the same as doing it by hand... you just start it and it does it all by itself... with lfs you can compile everything the way you want to with the options you want and dont need to mess around with the config files of gentoo.
For your enjoyment:
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North America
Fremont, California, USA [8 Mbit] http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/intro.shtml
Lufkin, Texas, USA [6 Mbit] http://linuxfromscratch.idge.net/lfs/intro.shtml
Columbus, Ohio, USA [1 Mbit] http://www.us.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/intro.shtm
Calgary, Alberta, Canada [10 Mbit] http://www.ca.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/intro.shtm
Europe
Mainz, Germany [100 Mbit] http://lfs.linux-provider.net/lfs/intro.shtml
Amsterdam, The Netherlands [100 Mbit] http://www.nl.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/intro.shtm
Oslo, Norway [100 Mbit] http://www.no.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/intro.shtm
Lancaster, UK [100 Mbit] http://linuxfromscratch.mirror.ac.uk/lfs/intro.sh
Vienna Univ. of Technology, Austria [64 Mbit] http://www.at.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/intro.shtm
Karlskrona, Sweden [10 Mbit] http://www.se.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/intro.shtm
Freising, Germany [4 Mbit] http://www.de.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/intro.shtm
Teesside, UK [256 Kbit] http://www.linuxfromscratch.co.uk/lfs/intro.shtml
Odense, Denmark [256 Kbit] http://www.dk.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/intro.shtm
Australia
Brisbane, Australia [155 Mbit] http://www.au.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/intro.shtm
Asia
Singapore, Singapore [45 Mbit] http://www.sg.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/intro.shtm
No Norm, those are your safety glasses; I'll wear my own thanks...
Gentoo is pretty much based on iso-linux from the linux from scratch project.
The benefits are great documentation from their website and the best package manager out today. It truly feels like an os you own and not by some corporation since you have to put the os together yourself. The forums are also great. If you want to get your hands dirty and have a huge community help you out through the process then look no further.
http://saveie6.com/
I'm sure people are going to reply saying that LFS is a niche product and not news that many people care about.
Well, though most of you are probably exposed to Linux through the desktop, Linux is winning it's in-roads in the industry through embedded systems and handheld devices (not desktop). Functional LFS installs can be as little as 5 megs or so and completely customized. Perfect to compete with several-thousand-dollar offerings from MS, Palm, etc.
So if embedded systems are driving commercial linux support, in a way LFS and systems like it are more important in the short term than Mandrake and SuSE.
So why not write your local LFS contributer and say thanks?
Uninnovate - Only the finest in engineering.
the reason LFS doesn't come with cron is because it is not an ESSENTIAL program to the operation of a linux system. you may want/need it, but someone else might not. it isn't essential so its not included, plus there are hints that provide information on how to compile it. that is what is so great about lfs, anyone in the community can contribute by writing a hint.
I wonder if the problems are really gcc3.2 and not the source code. I've just spent the last week trying to compile a suite of programs with 3.2 just to discover that none of it compiles. However, each problem was actually due to use of non-standard C++ code. The issue is that old versions of gcc let a lot of non-standard code compile, but the newest version is much more strict. I would hope that the solution is to fix the code and not make the compiler do silly things to remain backwards compatible.
I suspect that there is a large amount of code out there that has the same problem. Probably this includes the packages you couldn't compile.
** Sig-a-licious **
That's an unfair characterization. Sure, you get to compile your own kernel and set up a network and all that stuff. But installing new software is always as easy as typing "emerge ". Saying "everything else needs to be installed from scratch" is pretty unfair. There are scripts and ebuilds written so that pretty much all you do by hand is set up the file systems, handle networking, and compile the kernel. You don't need to worry about where to download things, or what to download, or which patches to apply or anything like that.
Read Bujold. Free (as in
A text webbrowser, a ftpclient, telnet etc is also pretty basic, but don't expect to find it in LFS. LFS is sorta just enough to build another LFS from.
e etc etc stuff, check out Beyond Linux From Scratch:
If you want that cron/ftp/telnet/lynx/cdrecord/lame/xfree/kde/gnom
http://beyond.linuxfromscratch.org/
Johan Veenstra
Hey fear not. Getting KDE running on an LFS system is not *that* hard.
:) the completion of the lfs-book.
;-)
There's a subproject of LFS, that isn't as well known as it should be, that's documenting the process of installing software after (or I should say 'beyond'
http://beyond.linuxfromscratch.org/view/cvs/
In there, you will find all the information required to install the graphic libraries, X11, KDE, and so forth.
You can also check out the lfs-hints for additional software/issues that are not covered by the blfs-book;
http://hints.linuxfromscratch.org/hints.shtml
It's more about taking the time todo it
Knoppix essentially does what you're saying.
It's a distro that doesn't use the hard drive at all. It boots from a cd, detects your hardware, and loads up KDE3. It's does a pretty good job at hardware detection, although saving your settings (and files) for the next time is kind of a pain. However, for trying Linux out without screwing up your machine, Knoppix does a pretty good job.
'When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.' -HST
This "problem" has a simple solution. If the slack from symlinks bothers you that much, why not move to a extent-based filesystem like XFS? I use it on most my LFS and Gentoo boxes, and it works like a charm.
The GNU tool you're referring to is probably Stow.
Other good package management tools for LFS use include Depot, Graft, swpkg, opt_depot and the countless other free package managers whose names I have forgotten.
Six sick
Ok, here's an example. My linux system at home (functioning as development machine, router, and firewall) is LFS. I've got each package installed in its own subdirectory under /pkg, and I've got /bin /lib /include and /man full of symlinks to the corresponding files in those directories (this is so utils like gcc, man, and the shell can find things without having to go searching all over the disk).
:)
Removing a package is trivial: just delete its directory and remove the symlinks. Upgrading a package is trivial too: install the new package into a new directory, update the symlinks, and remove the old dir. If an upgrade has some problems, I can roll back to a previous install by rolling back the symlinks (provided I haven't deleted the old installation yet). My next project is to create a program that can manage the symlinks automatically, to make it even easier. (Preemptively: yes, I know about "stow", no, it doesn't do what I want)
I don't know of any regular distribution that lets you do that