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.
That is really bizarre, I've never had any troubles. Especially killing the NIC and IDE controller, I wouldn't blame software if hardware is dying.
With the portage system, I've never really *needed* to maunally edit unmasked versions of packages. Occasionally I will change the mask rules to try stuff at my own risk, but I haven't needed to do anything.
All that said, it is at least as workable as LFS and much much easier. While both take forever to get up and going (my computer emerged for an entire weekend), the interactive time for gentoo makes it at least livable (I issued one emerge command with the packages I wanted and spent the weekend doing other stuff).
LFS is useful for learning a bit more about the system and how it works, but offers few details that can't be gotten in easier ways. What I have found extremely useful about the LFS references is that when I do go after masked packages and have problems, the LFS hints can explain why it broke and a workaround.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Windows is my favorite too, but I am unwilling to use XP because of their "anti-piracy" features. I guess Linux will be installed on my next computer.
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.