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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.
I don't get you. LFS is a great way for people to get a grasp of what gnu/linux is/contains. If they have the time or not is up to them, but this definately is news for nerds. I'd say that lfs has great eductational value. but that's me.
c0w goes moo.
LFS is a great way to learn Linux. It truly helped take me to the next level of my personal understanding of how things work.
However I would never recommend it for a production system. Even using it for a personal workstation takes loads of time to manage. One doesn't appreciate package management until they have installed a LFS system!!! Of course one could always use RPM/APT/DEB after doing a LFS installation...
I totally agree. I use gentoo now (bizarrely enough) because it's simple to maintain and not terribly hard to install in the first place if you have a weekend to kill, especially in comparison to lfs. There's a massive difference from installing KDE from source and typing 'emerge kde.' As others have said, lfs is great for getting your hands dirty and learning some stuff. Gentoo is for after your hands are dirty and you want to clean them up while still getting that feel-good speed from compiling every package for your system from source. Yeah yeah yeah, you have to hand edit all of the X/ftp/ssh/profile/etc config files and that's a big pain. Deal with it. You should be doing that anyways.
Why is that everytime someone mentions lfs, someone has to say, "Why not just use gentoo?" It makes us (the users) look like the next generation zealots. I have a better idea - learn what distros do what things and at what difficulty and then choose for yourself. Suit your own needs, dammit.
yes, you do need somewhere to compile the chapter 5 programs in, but there are many people who provide iso images with the chapter 5 programs precompiled, or you could use another box to compile the stuff for chapter 5. after you have that sorted out, you could than just install the things from chapter 6 that you want and skip the other things. what is nice about lfs is that you can install what you want and not install what you dont want.
In order to build ANYTHING you need an existing tool chain. Here that means gcc, bash, ld, etc... LFS starts with creating a bootstrap system using your existing distribution: this existing distribution might just be a bootable ISO cd. LFS DOES go through everything: the kernel, gcc, glibc, ... everything.
LFS will show you how to build your own Linux, step by step. It will tell you everything you need to know to understand the bootup process.
If you want to run LFS on a 486 though, you'd probably be a lot better off getting it going from your main system, and then copying over. glibc alone can take HOUR(S) to compile on a modern system.
------ 24.5% slashdot pure
> Okay, so what do these people mean by "Linux From Scratch"?
> Installing another distro first to install "required tools"
> is in my view not installing from scratch.
If I understand correctly, the other distro you use to build
your LFS is not part of your finished project, and does not have
to be installed on the same drive or end up running on the same
hardware. i.e., you can take the hard drive from your 486 and
pop it in any working Linux system and build LFS on it, then
put it back in your 486 and use your shiny new LFS. At least,
I think that's the theory.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Why is it that every time someone mentions any other distro (especially LFS), Gentoo users apparently feel duty-bound to storm out and preach the glories of their distro?
You people really sometimes come across as zealots. I've messed a bit around with both Gentoo and LFS myself (I liked both), but one of the main reasons I don't do Gentoo at the moment is simply that I'm so fed up with the legion of Gentoo fanboys who can't understand thatreason. Grow the hell up. Just because Gentoo is a nice, even great, distro doesn't mean that the rest of the Linux distro scene sucks.
Does the tech community really need all this ridiculous zealotry and misguided "advocacy"? If craftsmen felt the same way about their tools as we computer people do about ours, we'd have screwdriver fans advocating the use of a screwdriver for driving nails and chopping wood, while the chainsaw fanboys are out trying to drill holes and change tires with their chainsaws. Hint: Different distros, different text editors and different programming languages exist for a reason: People are different. "Different" does not necessarily have to become a question of better or worse.
</RANT> -- this might be flamebait, but don't say I didn't warn you.
Six sick
Because it's a troll. It gets discussion started...
It makes us (the users) look like the next generation zealots. I have a better idea - learn what distros do what things and at what difficulty and then choose for yourself. Suit your own needs, dammit.
Exactly! Over the past 8 or so years I've used Redhat, Debian, Mandrake, a couple of BSD's, and LFS. Now I use Gentoo because it suits me - and I think it would suit nearly everyone who has an interest in LFS. I can't see why most people, even those who want the flexiblity of a source based system, would spend the time to maintain an LFS based system unless they had nothing on a computer except learn about how the computer works. You have no time left over to take advantage of what the computer can actually do for you -- save you time. How much different are your compile time choices going to be from the ebuild's defaults? And if they are different, then edit the ebuild file.
LFS is just tedious to maintain. Which is part of the reason why it's perfect for an embedded system. You get exactly what you need, nothing more, and you never change it.
As others have said, lfs is great for getting your hands dirty and learning some stuff. Gentoo is for after your hands are dirty and you want to clean them up...
LFS is a wonderful experience to install. I'm not discouraging anyone from going out and installing LFS. I just believe that after you've done it once, you don't need to do it again - and that's where Gentoo comes in. Gentoo essentially is what Automated LFS aims to be.
When you bake cookies "from scratch," that doesn't mean that you're buying some chips-ahoy's in a ziplock bag and heating them up in the microwave.
It means that you need some tools, a cook book tells you the ingredients and what to with them, and you bake yourself some cookies.