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LFS 4.0 Released

Posted by timothy on from the for-the-adventurous dept.

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.

9 of 180 comments (clear)

  1. Pointless? by TriCCer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

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    c0w goes moo.
  2. educational value by mrm677 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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...

    1. Re:educational value by Tekmage · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Ditto on the educational value. I'd been using Linux in various forms since '93, but it wasn't until I started exploring LFS that I really began to understand and appreciate what went on behind the curtain.

      I'd argue the "never in a production system" point though. For an average end-user, sure. But if you have a particular end use(r) in mind (robot control, wearable computer, multimedia entertainment, home automation, etc) then it may be easier to enhance an LFS recipe than prune back a generic distro.

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      --The more you know, the less you know.
    2. Re:educational value by adam613 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I beg to differ. I'm running LFS (a CVS version from early August) on a small-time production web/email server. It was much simpler to set up than RedHat because I knew exactly what was being installed where, and I had configured everything myself. It took the better part of the day to compile LFS and the other packages necessary to set up the server, but it was ready to go the minute I was done compiling.

      It's been up and serving for 38 days straight. It was up for a month straight before that, but I had to bring it down to add memory and remove the cdrom drive.

      I'm also running LFS on a desktop machine. It's not as pleasant to use as the server (KDE took 8 hours to compile), but it was definitely worth the effort it took to set up in terms of learning, stability, and configuration flexibility.

      I appreciated package management a LOT more before I started using LFS. I got into LFS originally because I got sick of Mandrake installing hundreds of packages I didn't recognize or need. I want to know exactly what's on my system and why. And I hate when a package refuses to compile or install due to dependencies which shouldn't be failing. I've never had that happen in LFS.

      LFS definitely has a steeper learning curve than pre-built distros. But what it loses in initial ease-of-use, it more than gains in long-term stability and simplicity. I wouldn't recommend that someone do their first (or second or third or fourth) LFS build on a production server, but after experimenting with it and really learning how it works, I can't go back.

      YMMV, obviously. Not everyone is paranoid and anal like I am.

  3. Re:Gentoo? by handsomepete · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  4. Re:LinuxFromNotSoScratch.com by amccall · · Score: 5, Insightful
    What do you want them to start from? Flip 0's and 1's on a front panel?

    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.

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  5. Re:LinuxFromNotSoScratch.com by jonadab · · Score: 3, Insightful

    > 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.

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    Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
  6. Re:Gentoo? by thing12 · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Why is that everytime someone mentions lfs, someone has to say, "Why not just use gentoo?"

    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.

  7. Re:LinuxFromNotSoScratch.com by batkiwi · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.