71–80 of 108 posts
for as long as i've been running and tinkering with linux, i really need to run this marathon before i get much older. i don't think it'll happen til i quit my job and have more time to actually enjoy using my computer :(
If you have scripts that help then it is very simple. And it can be done on a weekend or two.
Making bespoke linux distros should be quite a good fit for LLM agents, especially given the recent results with the LLM-authored web browser.
Why? If you really care that little about the properties of the Linux distribution, just run one of the many that already exist. Linux From Scratch was never really about running the system anyway -- Most people go through it as a learning exercise and then run a maintained distribution anyway; I would think it's a tiny minority that maintains an LFS system for a long time.
It definitely is. See the bootscripts:
https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/development/chapte...
Admittedly the main problems I had was with configuring the linux kernel. I have no good solution to make this simpler. That config file is sooooooooooo huge ... no clue how to handle this. There is no way I have enough time to sift through all the options. Or compare what changed from kernel to kernel version. Anyone has an idea how to handle this on your own?
Making bespoke linux distros should be quite a good fit for LLM agents, especially given the recent results with the LLM-authored web browser.
Creating is easy, maintaining is difficult.
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I actually tried this back around 1999 as well. At the time, it felt like I was just being told "type this" and "type that", with very little explanation of what anything meant or why it was done one way instead of another. Maybe after all these years it’s worth giving it another shot? Does it work on a VM?
Last time I did it in around 2020 the reasoning behind every package, and the meaning of most compilation flags was explained. It was a good experience. Yes it works in a VM. A tip is to create regular clones as checkpoints if you fuck something up along the way.
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I've completed it along with BLFS and I just don't really agree. Like, yes you get pretty familiar with autotools, sed, and patch. However, a lot of LFS is in fact just managing disk partitions and moving files around. LFS also glosses over a lot of pretty important parts like kernel configuration. The docs from both Gentoo and Arch, on the other hand, are much more complete and practical in explaining things and als…
Gentoo I understand but Arch? Does Arch go into compilation that much?
That's where you end up learning a lot about linux which is particularly practical. Other Linux distros, especially for the desktop, hide a lot of this information behind nice guis.
[1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/General_recommendations
From "20 Years of Gentoo" ( https://blog.nawaz.org/posts/2023/May/20-years-of-gentoo/ ): "Even more common: “Oh, I’m not going to use Gentoo. I want to go all the way and use LFS!” They never heed my warnings about it. Every one of them either quits in the middle of the install, or soon after, and swears off source based distributions for life. Slackware and LFS are the Haskells of the Linux distribution world. Peopl…
> Slackware and LFS are the Haskells of the Linux distribution world. Haskell is hard. Both Slackware and LFS are simple. I don't see the comparison. LFS is even better in that it provides a ton of documentation. Slackware unfortunately lost out to the modern world. But heroic effort by Patrick.
I dunno man, a lot of people still use it! Been on it every day about 4 years now, there's a modern ARM port in development, so it might not end up going away for a long time.
That Slackware is difficult to use on the level of Gentoo or LFS I think is mostly a meme and an overstatement; it's just very old-school. It has a nice installer and a good wiki.
Many of the gripes that I hear of managing other linux systems I seldom or never have experienced on Slackware. It doesn't get in your way or flippantly change things from one release to the next. It's a rock-solid choice.
This was probably the best thing I've done to learn the ins and outs of a running Linux system: I think it would be amazing to re-do it with a modern Linux stack (systemd + Wayland), but it can really remove all the "magic" from the full OS implementation for you. However, I've done it in 1999 and ran that system until 2001 when it became too much of a trouble to recompile everything and battle dependencies manually…
Why didn’t you just use Chat GPT to get your answers? /s
In all seriousness, I think the recent growth of Linux has been because information has become so accessible. Instead of having to peruse years of newsgroups posts, you can just ask a question and get an answer (that you should really fact check).
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I actually tried this back around 1999 as well. At the time, it felt like I was just being told "type this" and "type that", with very little explanation of what anything meant or why it was done one way instead of another. Maybe after all these years it’s worth giving it another shot? Does it work on a VM?
> Maybe after all these years it’s worth giving it another shot? Does it work on a VM? I think it works in a VM just fine. I would recommend having some scripts to aid with compilation though. Even simple python scripts should suffice and probably others already did so. For the most part everything compiles well; if you have a few scripts that automate some parts, you could do this on a single weekend or two. It is q…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Slackware and LFS are the Haskells of the Linux distribution world. Haskell is hard. Both Slackware and LFS are simple. I don't see the comparison. LFS is even better in that it provides a ton of documentation. Slackware unfortunately lost out to the modern world. But heroic effort by Patrick.
> Slackware unfortunately lost out to the modern world. But heroic effort by Patrick. I dunno man, a lot of people still use it! Been on it every day about 4 years now, there's a modern ARM port in development, so it might not end up going away for a long time. That Slackware is difficult to use on the level of Gentoo or LFS I think is mostly a meme and an overstatement; it's just very old-school. It has a nice insta…