For those of you who don’t know, Linux From Scratch is a project that teaches you how to compile your own custom distro, with everything compiled from source code.
What was your experience like? Was it easier or harder than you expected? Do you run it as a daily driver or did you just do it for fun?
I did it during the gcc 3 transition. I used a very new gcc 3 (maybe even pre-release), which wasn’t at all recommended. A couple of (most?) C++ packages didn’t compile (some change having to do with namespace scope), which meant I had to fix the source of some packages (generally pretty trivial changes, usually having to prepend
namespace::to identifiers). Overall this problem was pretty rare, like it affected less than 1% of C++ files, but with things like Qt or Phoenix (or whatever Firefox was called back then), with thousands of files, I had to fix dozens of things. I guess running into problems made it more interesting and fun actually.Did I learn anything? The main thing I learned is about all the different basic packages and what sort of binaries and libraries are included in them and why you need them. Also about some import config files in
/etc. And a bit of shell experience, but I dare say I knew most of that stuff already. How much you learn depends a lot on how much you already know.Overall what I learned was not very deep knowledge, nor was it a very time-efficient way to learn. But it was a chill learning experience, goal-oriented and motivating. And it made me more comfortable and confident in my ability to figure out and fix stuff.
Also it’s obviously not practical to keep that up to date, so I switched back to a distro after a couple of months of this.
I found it was useful for learning bits and pieces of the extra knowledge around working on a Linux system. Yeah, you’re not going to learn how a kernel works or how anything about data structures. But you will learn how to apply a patch, be exposed to a lot of work with the shell, and come to appreciate the work that goes into a modern distro.
Has anyone here ever tried punching themselves in the dick repeatedly?
Yes, I tried installing arch before.
The consensus seems to be: go for it for the learning experience.
I would agree. It’s useful to know all the parts of a GNU/Linux system fit together. But the maintenance can be quite heavy in terms of security updates. So I’d advise to do it as a project, but not to actually make real use of unless you want to dedicate time going forwards to it.
For a compiled useful experience gentoo handles updates and doing all the work for you.
Gentoo’s USE flags are fuckin’ amazing.
Did it for shits and giggles once back in 2006. I think everyone serious about learning Linux at a “pro” level should go through the process at least once, even if the system gets wiped afterward in favor of a more usable distro. Teaches you what the standardized core components are and what they do, and gives you a clear understanding of how Linux is structured. That knowledge will carry on over to other distros and will make it much, much easier to troubleshoot issues with your system if you know how the parts of that system work.
For those unaware or who never used it, it has a huge setup guide with copy/pastable commands to guide you through each step. They don’t just give you a pile of source code and tell you “good luck”.
That is just the gateway drug to bootstrapping.
Check out https://github.com/fosslinux/live-bootstrap
if you want the real hard stuff.
Its on my bucket list. Maybe a fun project after I retire
“Welcome to the first day of the rest of your life”
Haven’t tried LFS yet but I have had my share of compiling custom Arch kernel (basically just making it smaller and boot a little bit faster), or cross-compiling various stuff for embedded and having to crawl through some of the lower level stuff.
It might be that time of a year to give LFS a try now that you mention it.deleted by creator
That was the time before kernel modules, so compiling your own kernel was definitelly required for anything but the most basic setup (no graphics, no audio).
Just open usenet on your phone ffs /s
I did LFS some years back, but only enough to get to a basic working system. It eventually devolves into doing similar steps to compile each piece of software, which after you’ve compiled a bunch of packages already kind of becomes repetitive. The path of getting there is pretty fun though, it’s a lot of reading and I learned a lot… including that I’d never want to maintain a system like that.
Good learning experience though.
Didn’t know about this, might give it a try later on, thanks for sharing 🌻
I did it back in 2020 when we all had nothing better to do. Got as far as installing X11 and Openbox, and halfway through setting up the toolchain for Firefox.
It was fun - the kind of fun digging a big hole is. It’s not for everybody, but I sort of enjoyed it.
I ran it as my primary distro on my main machine for a while way back when. I don’t recommend that.
What I do recommend is going though the entire process even if it’s just in a VM. It’s incredibly educational and will teach you a ton about Linux and OS construction in general. I used to recommend it to everyone I was teaching linux/ Unix too and all the students who actually went through it and completed it now have successful IT careers. 100% an incredibly valuable teaching resource, you will look at all OS’s with new eyes after you’ve built one bit by bit from source by hand.
I’ve done it before. It’s not particularly difficult, just very time consuming. And at the end, you’re left with a distribution that’s not really that useful without repackaging everything you did into a package manager so you can do updates without borking it.
Great as a learning tool to see how the whole GNU/Linux stack works, but not something you’d use practically.
Before the ArchLinux wiki became as good as it is, people like me used the Gentoo and LFS wikis as documentation for Linux.
There isn’t quite enough time in the world for me to be able to use LFS in anger as much I would wish. We make do with source distros with source managers like Gentoo (surprise!), Funtoo and others which give the source distros users just enough helping hands of dependency management.
Real tears would be shed were for LFS to disappear.
I have never done Linux From Scratch but I have been using Linux long enough that I remember that is how things were. Compiling the kernel was pretty routine. Getting XFree86 up and running could be true black magic though. You were literally controlling how the electron beam moved across the screen.
One of my systems is running Red Hat 5.2 ( not RHEL - the pre-Fedora Red Hat ). I think it has GCC 2.7.2 on it.
For some reason, I want to get a recent kernel and X11 running on the Red Hat 5.2 box. It would be cool to get Distrobox running on it while leaving everything else vintage. I had been thinking that LFS might be the right resource to consult. This article will hopefully kick me into gear.
