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Anyone who does sysadmin work, and doesn't already know this stuff, should take the time to run through it.
It might just save your snazzy new start-up some embarrassing downtime ;)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Linux is at least half about learning how to compile from source. Look at number of people who don't know how, think it's "hard", etc. If you don't know how to compile, solve dependencies/minor issues, etc. You don't know Linux.
I started writing that I guess I don't know Linux and missed the information LFS conveys. But I can't shake the feeling that I learned more about independent toolchain than about the OS, and I'm lost trying to understand why a CLI http browser refuse to access some domains for no apparent reason. I'll read BLFS to see if some part of the knowledge I'm looking is there.
Remember that LFS, despite the name, is not about learning Linux-the-kernel, it's about learning 'Linux-the-operating-system' (which is more precisely referred to as GNU - using 'Linux' to refer to the OS is technically incorrect, though very widespread).
Most of the time this is just a point of either pedantry or politics, but if you want to build your OS from scratch, you really need the entire toolchain[1] if you want to build a 'usable' system.
[1] You can sub parts of other toolchains, so I guess the more correct answer is that you need an entire toolchain, with the GNU tools being the de-facto default toolchain.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I started writing that I guess I don't know Linux and missed the information LFS conveys. But I can't shake the feeling that I learned more about independent toolchain than about the OS, and I'm lost trying to understand why a CLI http browser refuse to access some domains for no apparent reason. I'll read BLFS to see if some part of the knowledge I'm looking is there.
What do you mean by 'independent toolchain'? And what part of the OS were you looking to learn about? Remember that LFS, despite the name, is not about learning Linux-the-kernel, it's about learning 'Linux-the-operating-system' (which is more precisely referred to as GNU - using 'Linux' to refer to the OS is technically incorrect, though very widespread). Most of the time this is just a point of either pedantry or po…
[1] I probably read LFS with the wrong mindset ..
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I ran Archlinux for over 6 months. Gentoo is more hacking. I am back to "bog-standard" distro Ubuntu because once you have learned basics you just need a complete user experience and stop wasting time on trivial things.
I personally prefer an "user experience" tailored to my own needs instead of a set of defaults chosen by someone else. Specially when they push you into things like Unity and Pulseaudio.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3171448 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1159909 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3677350 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1779665 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2336657
The newest of those is past the commenting period. That means any discussion on this can't take place there, so you are either advocating that no one else, particularly new people, has anything valid to say, or your are advocating that we should cater specifically to you. Since neither of these make a lick of sense, what value do you think you are adding?
I’m being cynical but my experience of building from source even with automated tools is one where things going wrong and being very difficult to resolve: there’s a cyclic dependency here; this things compiles but won’t link; this thing just segfaults; you need a new version of X to build Y but Z, which is a part of X, needs an old version of Y; I know you wanted to run the latest version of X but author of Y didn’t…
I’m being cynical but my experience of building from source even with automated tools is one where things going wrong and being very difficult to resolve: there’s a cyclic dependency here; this things compiles but won’t link; this thing just segfaults; you need a new version of X to build Y but Z, which is a part of X, needs an old version of Y; I know you wanted to run the latest version of X but author of Y didn’t…
Go has essentially solved these problems, but only for Go code and in the process threw out (for now, at least) the notion of binary linkable libraries that your code can access, which may or may not be a bad thing depending upon how you feel about dynamically linkable libraries.
I don't think the problem is practically fixable on existing languages whose basic toolset wasn't built to deal with these sort of things. And there is a cultural element in addition to the technical one -- even if you managed to create such a build toolset for languages like C/C++, some (large) subset of C/C++ programmers are going to want to hold on to their hard-won mastery of all things configure/autconf/make and stick with them, even if those tools are all completely horrible (which, IMO, they are).
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3171448 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1159909 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3677350 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1779665 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2336657
The newest of those is past the commenting period. That means any discussion on this can't take place there, so you are either advocating that no one else, particularly new people, has anything valid to say, or your are advocating that we should cater specifically to you. Since neither of these make a lick of sense, what value do you think you are adding?
I'm pretty sure that in another time and place (perhaps reddit, several years back) I too would have presumed that esolyt had a friendly intent. I wonder if I've stopped giving the benefit of the doubt in general, or if my perception of the vibe in certain comment threads is darker.
To those who haven't heard about LFS before: You really should also check out Gentoo which is basically the same thing but more elegant and easier. :)
Right, but the point of LFS is to learn how Linux works, not how Gentoo happens to have set things up.
I have started with Gentoo several years ago (and never tried LFS) but I really learned a lot how Linux works. In Gentoo, you can basically do everything. You are just supported in that by a really nice package manager. But you are starting from scratch. You are bootstrapping the system, setting up compiler flags, setting up build flags and decide about every single package you want to have on your system.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right, but the point of LFS is to learn how Linux works, not how Gentoo happens to have set things up.
What do you learn in LFS that you don't learn in Gentoo? I have started with Gentoo several years ago (and never tried LFS) but I really learned a lot how Linux works. In Gentoo, you can basically do everything. You are just supported in that by a really nice package manager. But you are starting from scratch. You are bootstrapping the system, setting up compiler flags, setting up build flags and decide about every s…
What you learn is exactly what it is that the distribution does, which parts of the system are decided by it, which things are convention and which things are configuration.
Gentoo's great, I ran it for several years, but I'm still glad I did LFS one semester and could really see what's going on under the hood.