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Linux from Scratch

linuxfromscratch.org

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21–30 of 83 posts

Re: Linux from Scratch

#21

Post by sixtyj »

rando103747202 wrote: post #10

LFS takes the wrong approach in my opinion. I did it once manually over a couple of days. I suppose I hoped enduring the pain of waiting for the packages to compile would somehow make me smarter. It didn’t. I didn’t learn much. It was like following a baking recipe. I know I need to add eggs and sugar in the ratio it says but I’d be damned if I could tell you why that specific ratio works. It’s just too much to take…

LFS is known but it is really more a cookbook than explanatory principles.

Principles can be studied from “Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces“ book - https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/

Rob Love wrote the book “Linux Kernel Development”. https://rlove.org/

And then continue with reading LFS.

Re: Linux from Scratch

#23

Post by nullify88 »

rando103747202 wrote: post #10

LFS takes the wrong approach in my opinion. I did it once manually over a couple of days. I suppose I hoped enduring the pain of waiting for the packages to compile would somehow make me smarter. It didn’t. I didn’t learn much. It was like following a baking recipe. I know I need to add eggs and sugar in the ratio it says but I’d be damned if I could tell you why that specific ratio works. It’s just too much to take…

I learned a lot doing Gentoo stage 1. I was also following the guide like a recipe, but at the time I hadn't been exposed to the underlying machinery that is often automated, abstracted away, or done for me already. It was also a good test on how well I could follow instructions and later on apply my own customisations. Like lego.

Re: Linux from Scratch

#24

Post by esseph »

lukeify wrote: post #4

You can tell it's written by real Linux users because the landing page UX doesn't make it immediately obvious where to even start reading.

... At the top? You're expected to read all of it! :)

Re: Linux from Scratch

#25

Post by kaashmonee »

rando103747202 wrote: post #10

LFS takes the wrong approach in my opinion. I did it once manually over a couple of days. I suppose I hoped enduring the pain of waiting for the packages to compile would somehow make me smarter. It didn’t. I didn’t learn much. It was like following a baking recipe. I know I need to add eggs and sugar in the ratio it says but I’d be damned if I could tell you why that specific ratio works. It’s just too much to take…

I second this a thousand million times. But with AI, i can't help but admit i find myself indulging in building things backwards, now that i can try a couple different approaches simultaneously for it.

Re: Linux from Scratch

#26

Post by lukeify »

boomlinde wrote: post #15
lukeify wrote: post #4

You can tell it's written by real Linux users because the landing page UX doesn't make it immediately obvious where to even start reading.

Took me half a second to realize I would probably start with "LFS :: Linux From Scratch is the main book, the base from which all other projects are derived."

You mean the link to a page which _also_ doesn't have the main book?

Re: Linux from Scratch

#28

Post by myaccountonhn »

rando103747202 wrote: post #10

LFS takes the wrong approach in my opinion. I did it once manually over a couple of days. I suppose I hoped enduring the pain of waiting for the packages to compile would somehow make me smarter. It didn’t. I didn’t learn much. It was like following a baking recipe. I know I need to add eggs and sugar in the ratio it says but I’d be damned if I could tell you why that specific ratio works. It’s just too much to take…

Setting up Oasis https://github.com/oasislinux/oasis> taught me more than LFS personally. Everything being statically compiled makes it less magic.

Re: Linux from Scratch

#29

Post by necovek »

rando103747202 wrote: post #10

LFS takes the wrong approach in my opinion. I did it once manually over a couple of days. I suppose I hoped enduring the pain of waiting for the packages to compile would somehow make me smarter. It didn’t. I didn’t learn much. It was like following a baking recipe. I know I need to add eggs and sugar in the ratio it says but I’d be damned if I could tell you why that specific ratio works. It’s just too much to take…

As pointed out already, LFS is a cookbook, and you learn most by having an idea about how you want to tune your Linux system.

So at points you want to dive deeper, you do — and go off the beaten path.

It requires a desire not just to understand how bits and pieces fit together, but how you can make them work even better for yourself and what is and is not customizable?

Arguably, even if building it today is easier — back when I did it in 2000, you sometimes struggled to find where the canonical source code of the package is, not to mention compilation errors, linking errors, etc. Only then did you get to configuring the init RC system, choosing between them (no systemd yet), etc.

But a requirement is — IMO — that you are strongly opinionated about how a system should serve you, and look for opportunities to tune it.

Re: Linux from Scratch

#30

Post by zsoltkacsandi »

rando103747202 wrote: post #10

LFS takes the wrong approach in my opinion. I did it once manually over a couple of days. I suppose I hoped enduring the pain of waiting for the packages to compile would somehow make me smarter. It didn’t. I didn’t learn much. It was like following a baking recipe. I know I need to add eggs and sugar in the ratio it says but I’d be damned if I could tell you why that specific ratio works. It’s just too much to take…

> LFS takes the wrong approach in my opinion.

Shameless plug: I started a series of blog posts exactly because this. https://serversfor.dev/linux-inside-out/

Unfortunately due to some cervical spine issues and a surgery I wasn't able to finish it, but I am planning to pick it up and continue.

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