Actually, I have flirted with LFS many times and have drawn from it periodically for informational purposes. I merely wanted to start a dialog about it and see how many Archers came to Arch from it.
I knew that Allan used it, and the fact that he migrated to Arch in search of a good package manager bears out the historical description of Arch; Linux, with a nice package manager.
I especially enjoy the 'hints' section of LFS.
I am interested in knowing which packaging schemes people chose to use, as a few are mentioned in the hints section, if memory serves.

Aprz · 2010-03-13 04:45:45

Peasantoid wrote:

Educational, but only if you deviate from the instructions somewhat. Otherwise you're just copying and pasting (figuratively or otherwise).

Deviating and researching further than just what LFS provides is what makes it fun.. otherwise it would be boring.

Last edited by Aprz (2010-03-13 04:46:10)

Allan · 2010-03-13 05:10:13

Misfit138 wrote:

I am interested in knowing which packaging schemes people chose to use, as a few are mentioned in the hints section, if memory serves.

I used the "symlink" method for quite a while. You basically install everything to /packages/<pkgname>/<pkgver> and then add symlinks for all those files into the main fs hierarchy. It does limit you using separate partitions for thing without some additional planning. I had some scripts that would add, remove and update packages and do basic conflict checking but I have no idea what became of them...

Note that GoboLinux essentially does something similar. Just in a much more complex (and probably much better) way.

Edit:

Misfit138 wrote:

I knew that Allan used it, and the fact that he migrated to Arch in search of a good package manager bears out the historical description of Arch; Linux, with a nice package manager.

One thing that may be of interest to people. When I was using LFS, I got rid of all unnecessary crap (for me). Locales, man pages, other documentation... The idea was that I had a web browser to find help so who needed to store local stuff. Since using Arch, I have begun relying on man pages a lot more and would not consider deleting those now.

There are some things that I still do not like about Arch, although they are gradually becoming less and less. They are far outweighed by the time gains by not compiling everything (especially big updates...). But I obviously could not resist the urge to compile stuff!

bernarcher · 2010-03-13 07:14:12

Allan wrote:

The reason I discovered Arch was looking for a decent package manager to use!

Quite so!

Pacman was that one tool which finally convinced me of Arch. I had some sketches of my own package manager which went along similar lines. But it is just too much work to maintain all that stuff alone.

Nevertheless I don't want to miss the experience I got from building and maintaining my very own LFS system.

BTW: Reading the LFS books of course helps in understanding. But really doing it yourself is quite another thing. The real fun starts when you got tired of simple copy and paste and try to understand your own ways which inevitably you will.

Last edited by bernarcher (2010-03-13 07:43:52)

droog · 2010-03-13 07:26:54

I did lfs years ago, it was ok. Recently I did a diy linux build http://www.diy-linux.org and it was alot more fun than I remember lfs being.
I learned alot from both. I wrote a bash package manager for my diy install, but lost interest after a few months of maintaining it (In both cases).

SiC · 2010-03-13 09:43:10

I ran an LFS system for a number of years, including building an LFS system on a really slow laptop, which took forever. I learnt a lot in the two years I was using it. Now I like an easy life, I wouldn't go back to be honest. Although sometimes when drunk I am tempted

.:B:. · 2010-03-13 11:12:30

Never used it as a distro, but I have gone through the book (and through CLFS's) many times to build a base system, though. As said before it's an excellent project to get an insight into the inner workings of the OS.

Vamp898 · 2010-03-18 03:06:35

I tried it but from the view of a default user its not much more than a Gentoo without package manager.

ngoonee · 2010-03-18 03:32:59

Allan wrote:

There are some things that I still do not like about Arch, although they are gradually becoming less and less.

May I assume one of the things I still do not like involves the lack of compiling .

I'd actually be interested to hear more of your thoughts on this, versus the bare-bones LFS. What exactly does LFS have over Arch (besides the educational value)?

mfgann · 2010-03-18 21:36:35

I flirted with LFS for a short while. Used virtualbox to play just a little, but never saw the use in going from a Gentoo user to LFS. Gentoo will teach you all the 'fun' parts of hand-tuning, without the ugliness (being unable to uninstall). All in all, I got tired of constantly tweaking things, and didn't really have the time. I am finding Arch to be a good compromise between speed and efficiency vs. convenience. Removing a piece of SW that was hand-compiled is tedious, unless you abandon any libs, man files, conf files, etc.. and then that cruft will build up until you need to wipe it and reinstall. Package management rocked my world when it was new. Why do you think RedHat became the king of the Hill?

lifeafter2am · 2010-03-18 22:04:32

I did it once, mostly for the educational experience. After that I moved onto Gentoo.

leepesjee · 2010-03-18 22:47:18

Misfit138 wrote:

I am interested in knowing which packaging schemes people chose to use

I've done a few LFS installs in the past. Did one with the package user system, which is a bit cumbersome, but gives full control and was a good learning experience.

harman · 2010-03-20 00:31:36

I was thinking of doing LFS to learn more about Linux, but reading some of the opinions here, I'm having doubts! I don't that much free time on my hands I guess, although I do have a somewhat fast CPU (Intel Q6600) so compiling shouldn't be a problem (I think?).

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