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.

Comments

Re:Gentoo?

[Ron885]

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.

Re:Mirrors and /. effect

[iamthemoog]

For your enjoyment:

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.shtml
Calgary, Alberta, Canada [10 Mbit] http://www.ca.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/intro.shtml

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.shtml
Oslo, Norway [100 Mbit] http://www.no.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/intro.shtml
Lancaster, UK [100 Mbit] http://linuxfromscratch.mirror.ac.uk/lfs/intro.sht ml
Vienna Univ. of Technology, Austria [64 Mbit] http://www.at.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/intro.shtml
Karlskrona, Sweden [10 Mbit] http://www.se.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/intro.shtml
Freising, Germany [4 Mbit] http://www.de.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/intro.shtml
Teesside, UK [256 Kbit] http://www.linuxfromscratch.co.uk/lfs/intro.shtml
Odense, Denmark [256 Kbit] http://www.dk.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/intro.shtml

Australia
Brisbane, Australia [155 Mbit] http://www.au.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/intro.shtml

Asia
Singapore, Singapore [45 Mbit] http://www.sg.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/intro.shtml

Gentoo is a great iso-linux distro

[Billly Gates]

If you want a balance between installing everything from scratch and a real distro with documentation, then I would recommend Gentoo.

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.

Why LFS indeed?

[ageitgey]

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?

Re:This is only slightly off-topic but,

[Ron885]

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.

educational value

[mrm677]

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...

Re:educational value

[Tekmage]

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.

Re:educational value

[adam613]

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.

Re:problems with GCC3.2 though

[ct.smith]

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.

The Way to Learn

[fm6]

I've heard popular distros like Red Hat criticized because they do too much hand-holding. The theory is that you'll learn more about how Linux works if you use a less user-friendly distro, such as Slackware.

But if you need handholding, you really need it. On the other hand, if you're comfortable with using Linux, but want to know more about how it's put together, even Slackware is too high-level. LFS, on the other hand, is the ultimate Linux-learners tool, because it doesn't automate anything.

Re:This is only slightly off-topic but,

[shoppa]

Three points:

1. Cron is not essential.
2. Cron has historically been a security risk. What's the patch level on Vixie-Cron? :-)
3. Cron packages generally (there are exceptions) require a sendmail-like mail system for reporting results. Sendmail (and even its not so cumbersome clones) isn't generally necessary or even wanted.

All that said, there's a wide choice of crons you can install, just see the BLFS (Beyond Linux From Scratch) hints.

Re:LinuxFromNotSoScratch.com

[amccall]

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.

Re:Too many todo's

[HIghoS]

Hey fear not. Getting KDE running on an LFS system is not *that* hard.

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' :) the completion of the lfs-book.

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 ;-)