Linux from Scratch

[bookwyrm]

Greetings.

Been playing around with LFS (Linux From Scratch) a bit, and I'd recommend it, for Linux beginners. Building your own Linux distribution from source is an excellent way to learn how Linux works. After LFS, you can continue on with BLFS (Beyond LFS) and install Xfree, and a Window manager of your choice, along with various networking protocols.

Other versions are BELFS (Bleeding Edge LFS), and ALFS (Automated LFS), which is a series of scripts, to automate the build/install process.

In development is HLFS (Hardened LFS) which is supposed to be focused on security.

They're also working on a CD-Bootable distribution, presumably to make building your own easier, because all the proper tools are included, minus the proprietary mess from a distro.

Give it a look.

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

Enjoy!

[forhire]

This is very cool for someone who really wants to dig into the inner workings of linux. It's very cool to build your own distro. This could have some real uses for application distribution.

Personally, I find Knoppix (http://www.knoppix.org/) a little easier for the non-geek to get their feet wet w/linux. Because it's a live-demo it doesn't install anything on the machine unless you want it. So you can test drive without risk.

From the site:
"KNOPPIX is a bootable CD with a collection of GNU/Linux software, automatic hardware detection, and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, SCSI and USB devices and other peripherals. KNOPPIX can be used as a Linux demo, educational CD, rescue system, or adapted and used as a platform for commercial software product demos. It is not necessary to install anything on a hard disk. Due to on-the-fly decompression, the CD can have up to 2 GB of executable software installed on it."

[bookwyrm]

Good point.

Knoppix and Gnoppix (the Gnome-based variant of Knoppix) are both good ways to try Linux before committing.

I'm in the midst of compiling my LFS build, it's been both fun and interesting. Learning quite a bit.