Live data from Hacker News

Linux from Scratch

linuxfromscratch.org

81–90 of 108 posts

Re: Linux from Scratch

#81
post #41

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.

> Haskell is hard. Both Slackware and LFS are simple. I don't see the comparison.

LFS/BLFS is hard to maintain as a primary OS. Gentoo is practical and easy in comparison. How many people do you know stick to LFS?

The point isn't so much about hard/simple, but jumping to the extreme instead of the pragmatic approach.

Re: Linux from Scratch

#83
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creating is easy, maintaining is difficult.

Agreed. Even with scripts, I have no idea how to maintain different linux kernel versions that are newly released.

I'm focusing only on graphics, graphics buffering, and EFI booting (and NVME if needed).

Re: Linux from Scratch

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Linux From Scratch was never really about running the system anyway 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 th…

starting from a 'known good' config file (olddefconfig, allnoconfig) and then carefully iteratively switching options around is the only methodology ive had any success with.

I've had some good experiences with using Gemini to help me explore Kernel config options (e.g. "whats the minimum set of config options i need to have enabled to faciliate feature X?")

LLMs in general are very knowledgeable about the Linux kernel (unsurprisingly!) which is why I made my original comment. You can ask them about relevant places in the kernel source tree to look at for a given mechanism, and they'll point you to the file and function without having to 'look'.

Re: Linux from Scratch

#85

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 lack time, just go to the first part where you have an actual cross compiler. Back that up, re-use it later when you have more time. If you have scripts that help then it is very simple. And it can be done on a weekend or two.

thanks, i'll take that into consideration when i finally get to it :)

Re: Linux from Scratch

#87
post #7
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, it's where I got a lot of my linux knowledge. I think that Gentoo or even Arch would provide pretty close to the same education level, though, with a lot less time to install.

Having installed Arch myself a couple of times, i think i would disagree. Not really much in that process that teaches you how linux actually works. It's more just about managing disk partitions and moving files around than anything else. LFS is just on a whole different level, and is on my bucket list to complete the entire process one day.

[dead]

Re: Linux from Scratch

#89
post #4

It's been years since I went through this, but whenever someone asks me what they should read to get a deeper understanding of what a Linux distribution is, I point them to this.

Yup, it's where I got a lot of my linux knowledge. I think that Gentoo or even Arch would provide pretty close to the same education level, though, with a lot less time to install.

I learned so much installing and using Gentoo about 20 years ago

Re: Linux from Scratch

#90

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 lack time, just go to the first part where you have an actual cross compiler. Back that up, re-use it later when you have more time. If you have scripts that help then it is very simple. And it can be done on a weekend or two.

For me, I have the time, I just don’t want to spend it sitting in front of a terminal and troubleshooting issues. It feels too much like the day job.

When I have more than a week off I usually start itching to start a project… just in time to start it, then abandon it when I start back up at work.

Post reply on HN