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Linux from Scratch

linuxfromscratch.org

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Re: Linux from Scratch

#111

Post by therein »

hi-v-rocknroll wrote: post #96
cloudripper wrote: post #48

I gave LFS a go earlier this year. I learned a lot through the process - but I definitely went outside the guardrails. I use NixOS as my daily driver and found myself curious of whether I could complete LFS using a "Nix" approach. I was only a basic Nix user at that time and that choice made a difficult process much more difficult. However, the declarative nature of Nix meant that I had clear notes of every step of m…

While Nix/NixOS solved RPM dependency hell and side-by-side multiple concurrent version installation issues, it created its own problems. The problem with Nix/NixOS is everything is too isolated to be configurable or usable, and so almost everything is broken because it doesn't work like any other OS. Chasing down all of the oddities and gotcha problems becomes a full-time IT job that slows everything else down, and…

If the DSL was easier to work with, more familiar; and if there was some good IDE support with autocomplete and documentation, I think it would be amazing.

Re: Linux from Scratch

#113

Post by therein »

imiric wrote: post #104
_ank_it wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extremely noob here, I was trying nixos and got real confused about how to install python packages as pip was not allowed at system level.

Nix purists would say that you should use flakes to declare all the dependencies for each project, and reference all Python dependencies as Nix packages there. Nix effectively tries to replace every package manager in existence, so all Python, Ruby, Emacs, etc. dependency trees are duplicated in Nix. I think this is insane. Not only will many packages be missing from Nix, you will also have to wait for the upstream c…

Ironically, that's when you create an Arch container in LXC.

Re: Linux from Scratch

#114

Post by sweeter »

sieste wrote: post #3

I really like the idea, really tried following the process several times. But each time it just turned into a copy-incomprehensible-commands-into-the-terminal exercise at some point, and I lost motivation. Did anyone experience the same?

Yes. I got a little bit out of it, certainly, but it really is mostly an exercise of compiling packages. I was a little disappointed but in the end LFS inspired me to take on a rewrite of the Unix Coreutils in Golang. I learned far more about Unix systems from doing this than anything else. It also improved my skills a lot, I look back on some of this code and cringe a little bit.

[1] https://github.com/sweetbbak/go-moreutils

Re: Linux from Scratch

#115

Post by bee_rider »

pino82 wrote: post #95
bee_rider wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I was just abstracting from the experience of having everything I did attributed to my generation, and then applying that experience to the next generation. They handle some things a little differently and sometimes reach for different defaults, but in the end, it isn’t like they are coming from some totally alien planet or anything like that.

Very often when I discuss it, someone argues along the lines of "yes, it looks different, and maybe even weird at first glance, but everything is indeed fine, and look how access to all that content even makes them more competent than older generations in many ways". And I'm always asking myself what is wrong with me that all that completely does not reflect my practical experiences at all.

I dunno, hard to say, if our experiences don’t match maybe we’re just in different environments. No particular reason to assume mine is the ground truth of course.

One possible skew could be: often it is professors who complain about this stuff, but the type of person who goes on to be a professor tends to be pretty clever and surround themselves with clever friends. So if you are a professor or a highly skilled programmer or something, keep in mind that you probably have a rosy picture of the average competence of the past.

Re: Linux from Scratch

#116

Post by imiric »

therein wrote: post #113
imiric wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nix purists would say that you should use flakes to declare all the dependencies for each project, and reference all Python dependencies as Nix packages there. Nix effectively tries to replace every package manager in existence, so all Python, Ruby, Emacs, etc. dependency trees are duplicated in Nix. I think this is insane. Not only will many packages be missing from Nix, you will also have to wait for the upstream c…

Ironically, that's when you create an Arch container in LXC.

Meh, maybe. Containers make everything more difficult for local development, though. That would be my last resort in this case.

Re: Linux from Scratch

#117

Post by fourfour3 »

llm_trw wrote: post #30
fourfour3 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially with the increase in storage performance - going from a hard disk that might have even still been using PIO modes to modern NVMe would be gigantic

The kernel is rather larger today: https://stopbyte.com/t/how-many-lines-of-code-linux-has/455/... The same is true for all other pieces of software. Build time will always increase until no one can be bothered to build it any more.

I think you've missed the point:

> I wonder, if you were to script all the commands you ran back in the day, and ran that same script on your old 386 and on a modern system with a top-of-the-line AMD Epyc or Intel Xeon, how much faster would it run?

Implies you're compiling the 386 era versions of Linux - so the fact modern Linux is larger is immaterial.

Re: Linux from Scratch

#118

Post by nextos »

_ank_it wrote: post #89
hollerith wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NixOS separates packages. If the package foo contains a file /usr/bin/foo, NixOS installs it in /nix/store/67c25d7ad7b2b64c67c25d7ad7b2b64c-foo/usr/bin/foo. In order to make this separation work, Nix must sometimes rewrite binaries so that all references in the binary to /usr/bin/foo becomes references to /nix/store/67c25d7ad7b2b64c67c25d7ad7b2b64c-foo/usr/bin/foo. The advantage of this approach is that it gives more…

Extremely noob here, I was trying nixos and got real confused about how to install python packages as pip was not allowed at system level.

The right way is to compose the base Python package with the libraries you want. For example, this gives you an ephemeral environment with the latest python3 plus NumPy:

  nix-shell -p 'python3.withPackages(ps: [ ps.numpy ])'
In case of Python, you can also go for a simpler option that avoids composing Python with its packages, but that gives worse isolation:

  nix-shell -p python3 python3Packages.numpy
If other packages were present in that ephemeral environment, aside from python3, they could see NumPy in a global directory. That's why the first option is preferable, as it offers better isolation. In Nix, some languages only let you use libraries with something like the first option. See the Nix user wiki for further information: https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Python.

Re: Linux from Scratch

#119

Post by pino82 »

bee_rider wrote: post #115
pino82 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very often when I discuss it, someone argues along the lines of "yes, it looks different, and maybe even weird at first glance, but everything is indeed fine, and look how access to all that content even makes them more competent than older generations in many ways". And I'm always asking myself what is wrong with me that all that completely does not reflect my practical experiences at all.

I dunno, hard to say, if our experiences don’t match maybe we’re just in different environments. No particular reason to assume mine is the ground truth of course. One possible skew could be: often it is professors who complain about this stuff, but the type of person who goes on to be a professor tends to be pretty clever and surround themselves with clever friends. So if you are a professor or a highly skilled prog…

I'm not clever, no. A few of my friends are, but I never was. I would call myself a skilled software developer, yes. And other, more skilled ones, would maybe disagree. :) But all that says nothing about real life cleverness.

I can clearly see that there are unfortunate patterns, even back then when I was young, and it just got worse and worse. Which is no surprise imho. Of course it propagates. If the parents are already 'social media' addicts, and their friends, and the teachers as well, what shall happen with their children. The issues just 'normalize' - that's what we see, but it doesn't _solve_ them.

The thing is, our societies love to chatter about all kinds of issues and troubles, as long as they are somewhere else or at least the bad guys are far enough away. Something not binding. But as soon as an inconvenient discussion about themselves start, about what they do wrong and what issues we get by them, it turns into silence. So we also do not discuss much about more and more incompetent social media addicts. Since the majority is addicted, and the ground for public discussions is social media only nowadays, who should even start this discussion - and where...

Re: Linux from Scratch

#120

Post by donio »

sieste wrote: post #3

I really like the idea, really tried following the process several times. But each time it just turned into a copy-incomprehensible-commands-into-the-terminal exercise at some point, and I lost motivation. Did anyone experience the same?

For most people the whole reason to do the exercise is to understand what is involved in a bootstrap process. When you don't understand something you stop and figure out what is going on. There is not much point in blindly running commands that you don't understand.
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