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Upgrades Software Linux

Linux From Scratch 6.0 Released 60

Posted by CowboyNeal from the rolling-your-own dept.
Bubblehead writes "The Linux From Scratch community is pleased to announce the release of LFS 6.0. This major revision of the book includes a number of major package upgrades, including GCC 3.4.x, Linux kernel 2.6.8.1, and the Udev software package, allowing for dynamic creation of device nodes. The text has also been vastly re-written for improved readability."
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Linux From Scratch 6.0 Released More

Linux From Scratch 6.0 Released

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  • Why use this? Isnt package management and things like Debian's Dpkg, rpm and stuff are for?

    That and I know nobody who uses this.

    • Re:Unless youre making a tight embedded system.... (Score:4, Informative)

      by A beautiful mind ( 821714 ) on Friday December 10, 2004 @01:35AM (#11049282)
      I guess there could be multiple possible reasons. For example, it's good for learning (some parts) of how does your system work, or it could be good for "power users", or as you mentioned, for embedded systems or you could be a professional and just know how to design a good system. I'm sure there are much more reasons why someone would use systems like LFS.
    • Packages tend to contain binaries with set dependencies and features. Doing this you can easily include specific features and disable certain features in software. Also, this allows you to run a far more optimized and specialized distro.

    • Re:Unless youre making a tight embedded system.... (Score:5, Informative)

      by ThePeices ( 635180 ) on Friday December 10, 2004 @01:39AM (#11049289)
      The reason for LFs's existance is for learning. People who are wanting to learn the internal workings of a linux system would be well served by this distro/book. Its an excellent way to see how every aspect of a linux system runs and is built. You build every stage of it, and its fun to boot.
    • Some want the advantage of completely bootstrapping without the wussiness of Gentoo ebuilds (just kidding).
      • You don't need to joke. Gentoo is far too easy to build and run.
        • Smaller user base? Less support? less market share? If you want linux for wusses, install Fedora, if you want to do it ALL from scratch, use this, and if you want something in between, gentoo works well.

          What's the problem?

          Linux sucks anyway. It's all about the BSDs.

          If there's a joke there, I missed it.
          • Quite a lot of people claim Gentoo is hard work. It isn't. As long as you follow the cookbook and type the commands in the right order, it is a breeze. The only thing that is taxing be patience. Your patience might run out while you are building everything from 'scratch'. On the other hand, with Gentoo all of the hard work is done by 'someone else', FreeBSD's portage is not much different compared to Gentoo, download ready-to-be-cooked package and there you go.

            The youngsters have it too easy. When Redhat ha

            • FreeBSD's portage is not much different compared to Gentoo

              I shouldn't have to explain what is inherantly wrong with this statement.
              • Sorry, there is nothing wrong here. I am comparing both vs building everything out of source, collected from the sources themselves, not someone else's workings. I am not discussing who came first or who imitated what. Functionally they do the same thing and that's what I was stressing.
            • There are times you want to patch, configure, and compile from source, and there are times when you just need a working system ASAP. That doesn't make either one wrong.

    • Same as building your own car (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Friday December 10, 2004 @03:16AM (#11049579) Journal
      Why bother? Why bother building your own house?

      Yet there is a group of people who do this.

      I knew one couple who had actually had their own house build according to their design but the husband who was my collegue couldn't understand why I didn't like the read made windows desktop.

      LFS is the most extreme way to get a linux system unless your firstname rhymes with a popular OS. What does it do? Well nothing except really show you what makes up a system. It won't teach you anything about programming but it will teach you a lot about just how complicated a modern computer system really is. The amount of code needed to create even the most basic system is insane. Start adding stuff like a grahpical desktop and you might start to have a better understanding of how all the software packages work together to make your desktop.

      It is like stripping a car engine. Doing it doesn't make you a better driver but it can be a rewarding learning experience nonetheless.

      Some of us are not satisfied to work with blackboxes. Just like those people who want THEIR house to be THEIR house LFS allows you total control over your system. Of course most users use a "regular" distro for their actual work but just maybe they have come to understand their systems a little better.

      But to answer your question directly. If you got to ask why then it is not meant for you. It is like asking why people climb mountaints. Because they are there.

    • Using package managers inevitably leads to bloat, which is bad, which is why some of us use LFS (including me).

      The option to use compiler optimizations is also available to speed everything up as opposed to generic builds used in rpm's and deb's. You could always use Gentoo though, if you're lazy.

    • Why use this? Isnt package management and things like Debian's Dpkg, rpm and stuff are for?

      I've used LFS and my package management system is /usr/local/src. I can see at a glance what I have installed -- and what version. I don't use modules in the kernel, and I don't have to fish around for split-up nonsense such as imagemagik, imagemagik-libs and imagemagik-dev. If I'm not sure whether or not to install something in /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin, I consult the LFS html'd book which also sits in /usr/local

      • I don't use modules in the kernel

        Excuse my naivety, but this is because you compile the modules you would use into the kernel correct? Does LFS go over this? Any suggested readings on that topic? Thanks.

        • LFS uses modules, I believe. When you 'make menuconfig' on your kernel source, you have a choice of either 'n', 'y'' or 'm' for each desired feature of driver. If you say 'y', the feature gets compiled into the kernel, 'm' means you want that feature to be a module.

          If all your features and drivers get configured with 'y', then you no longer need the mod utilities or a /etc/modules.conf (whatever it's called) and you don't need any aliases for those drivers and you don't need any directory deep down inside

  • Hmmm (Score:2, Funny)

    by Punboy ( 737239 ) *
    I wanna read Linux from Sniff tho.

  • Learning From Scratch (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Xetrov ( 267777 ) on Friday December 10, 2004 @01:42AM (#11049300)
    As a distro, LFS probably isn't what most people want. If you want to compile from source, then gentoo is probably the way to go.

    On the other hand, I dont think there is a better way than LFS for learning Linux and what all the different packages are for. It is a good way for linux newbs (but probably not computer n00bs) to learn about their new OS. Once that's done, head over to an easier-to-maintain distro such as debian.

    • Re:Learning From Scratch (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Thats exactly what I did. I started with mandrake, I hated it, went back to windows. Then in 2002, I decided to give redhat a try. Still hated it, but not as much. Slowly I realized it wasn't the OS I hated. It was the blindness I had. I was just doing what google told me to do, no clue why I needed all this crap installed by defualt by every major linux distro, or what half of it did. I would just google for what I wanted to do and type in blindly what google told me to do. Finally I found gentoo. This hel
    • As a distro, LFS probably isn't what most people want.

      Err, LFS is not a distro at all. In fact, it's almost exactly the opposite, but it's the first step in making your own distro.

  • hooray (Score:1, Redundant)

    by rubee ( 826908 )
    just what we need, more linux distributions :-).

    • Re:hooray (Score:2, Insightful)

      by A beautiful mind ( 821714 )
      I think this is the oldest, not the latest distribution...
      • Well you're wrong. Slackware is the oldest maintained distribution, there's some debate over which of SLS and two others was actually first. LFS is actually quite recent, because it only became necessary after prepackaged distros were common - before that, everyone was using what was effectively linux from scratch.

  • Source (Score:3, Funny)

    by Punboy ( 737239 ) * on Friday December 10, 2004 @01:47AM (#11049318) Homepage
    "The text has also been vastly re-written for improved readability"

    Now if only they'd do that to the kernel source...
  • If you build this distro yourself, how can it be updated?

    • Re:Huh? (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      by yourself? *sigh*

    • Why LFS is valuable (Score:4, Insightful)

      by petrus4 ( 213815 ) on Friday December 10, 2004 @02:49AM (#11049483) Homepage Journal
      It basically becomes your perogative as to what gets updated and when.

      If you're wondering what LFS's primary use is though...or what it seems to get used for a lot, is the creation of new distributions. People will build an LFS system, and from that you end up with Yoper or GoboLinux, to name but two.

      I know a lot of people seem to have difficulty understanding the value of new distributions, but there are many reasons why they are valuable. The first is that for people who are sufficiently technically inclined and proactive, if none of the existing distributions fits their needs for a given purpose, (and yes, it still can and does happen) LFS gives them the ability to put together something exactly the way they want it...with everything they do want, and nothing they don't.

      Another benefit of this system is that it encourages people to be self-sufficient, rather than relying on corporations to provide what they need...corporations who generally care far more about their own interests than those of the user anyway.

      Yet another plus is that it stimulates and encourages technological progress. I've covered this topic before, but anyone who has read Darwin will know that in order for anything to advance according to the evolutionary model, there needs to be a lot of different instances of a given thing...the process needs to experiment with a lot of different mutations before it is decided which mutations are permanently integrated into new generations of the organism. The more different distributions and forms of Linux exist, the more this process in encouraged.

      I think the reason why people dislike the idea of new distributions is because they look at things from a Microsoft-like perspective of usability, which unfortunately involves a couple of extremely negative assumptions.

      1) That the end user is a drooling imbecile, who needs to have things made easy to the point of them being rote. Intellectual participation in computer use is seen as more anathema than anything else.

      2) Because of the deep level of retardation that is assumed in the end user, it is therefore also assumed that the level of usability exists in inverse proportion to the level of diversity. That is, in order to keep things usable it is necessary to minimise the number of different possible solutions to a given problem, or software programs, as much as possible in order to avoid users becoming overwhelmed.

      The problem is that if these two points are adhered to and followed, a number of other very bad things happen. One is that technological advancement grinds to a screeching halt, as we have seen in the current state of Microsoft's software. Because innovation is very difficult when these two points are adhered to, we then get security problems of the kind that we have also seen.
      The other bad thing that this causes is that it promotes the idea that intellectual laziness is not only acceptable, but that it's actually a good thing...when the opposite is in fact true.

      People need to realise that having new distributions isn't going to by definition hurt anyone, and that it is actually very good for Linux as a whole. If you only want to use one distro yourself without deviation, that's fine. But IMHO it is wrong to try and impose your own desire for uniformity, lack of diversity, and stagnation on the rest of the world.

      • Yet another plus is that it stimulates and encourages technological progress. I've covered this topic before, but anyone who has read Darwin will know that in order for anything to advance according to the evolutionary model, there needs to be a lot of different instances of a given thing...the process needs to experiment with a lot of different mutations before it is decided which mutations are permanently integrated into new generations of the organism.

        The difference is that every change made to a dist

      • 've covered this topic before, but anyone who has read Darwin will know that in order for anything to advance according to the evolutionary model, there needs to be a lot of different instances of a given thing...the process needs to experiment with a lot of different mutations before it is decided which mutations are permanently integrated into new generations of the organism. The more different distributions and forms of Linux exist, the more this process in encouraged.

        Screw you, you dirty hippie. I bel

    • Here. [encap.org]

      It's a simple idea, but works well. The FAQ there will explain it all.

    • Re:Huh? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Master Bait ( 115103 ) on Friday December 10, 2004 @02:53PM (#11054591) Homepage Journal

      If you build this distro yourself, how can it be updated?

      I have an account at freshmeat.net, and when certain apps or libraries I selected come out with a new version, I automatically get an email.

  • This looks like a great tool - even if you normally use a packaged distro, you can get your hands dirty and learn how it all hangs together! It's the sort of thing I'd highly recommend anyone doing if you have the time.

    I started with a Slackware distro using the 0.96 kernel, largely archived onto floppies and had to feel my way through making it boot, so I consider myself as having learnt not quite from scratch. But today's folks have it easy, thanks to people who already understand what's under the bon

  • A long time ago, when I was more confused about Linux and kernels and other big words that involve penguins and popcorn, I set up a completely minimal Mandrake base system and then built everything else from the LFS instructions. I think that intermediate level gave me a better grasp of what I was doing.

    I don't know if I'd recommend everyone try it, but it sure was an experience I found valuable when later having to mess with even binary package-based distros like Debian.

  • Great Learning Tool (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cliffiecee ( 136220 ) on Friday December 10, 2004 @02:25AM (#11049421) Homepage Journal
    I'm on my second installation of LFS. It's not for those in a hurry, that's for sure- It takes me about a month to get a VERY basic system. (Think X and Firefox, and not much else!). I inevitably make some bone-headed mistake, and I don't back up while installing, so it's my fault.

    Also, building something like gnome from source really teaches you the meaning of 'dependency hell.' Seems like every single package requires exactly version "1.1211-1243pm" of every OTHER package, and even some obscure RedHat patches too, in some cases. *Shudder*gDesklets*Shudder*.

    However, I have a VERY good idea of what's on my system and what libraries are being used where. There's NO 'fat' or extra stuff that I didn't put there. I used to shy away from compiling from source- which makes sense on a package-based system. Now there's NO fear. There's even a few interesting package management schemes [asic-linux.com.mx] for compiling from source.

    Booting into my brand new, hand-built, bare-bones system- it's almost as good as if I'd written the software myself :) (And as close as I'll ever get)
    • Also, building something like gnome from source really teaches you the meaning of 'dependency hell.'

      Amen.

      A modular approach is wonderful, but if there is no overarching system that knows how to tie them together, saying it's a PITA to build is an understatement. At least KDE has Konstruct...

    • I thought LFS was great fun to do once, but if you think it's a dependency hell while installing, wait until you've been running it for a year or so and new program X insists on newer libraries. Keeping your installation up to date quickly becomes too complex.

      So, it was fun, but I'm very happy to have moved to Gentoo later on - I still see the compiler scrolling, but now it downloads stuff and keeps track of dependencies by itself :-)

      • Well, libraries have version numbers and you can have as many as you wish on the same machine. It becomes problematic when incompatible API changes slip into a minor revision number or when there are many separate libraries offering closely related services. Some programs like, say mplayer depend on a myriad different libs, one for ogg, another for id tags, another for this codec family, yet another for this codec, and that other codec, etc... it quickly gets out of hand when you need to update or install a
      • Personally I've found it extreemly simple. I just pay a little more attention to the versions of the big packages, like X, KDE, Samba and what not. KDE I scripted and it too downloads from CVS automagically, X I still do manually, but after the large packages are updated, thats most of your libraries right there. Its not too complex, it just requires a little bit of planning.
        • What makes this any different from say... Using Slackware and then compiling KDE, Xorg, Gnome all from source?
          • What's the difference between Gentoo or compiling everything yourself on Slackware? Its exactly the same thing, the only difference is the amount of manual work. When I decided to do a LFS system, I started with a very basic Slackware installation, a kernel, libraries and GCC and went from there, eventually replacing everything.
    • Also, building something like gnome from source really teaches you the meaning of 'dependency hell.'

      Gnome? Hell, just trying to get Firefox installed nearly made me scream at the dependencies!

      Sadly, I have to confess I gave up in the end. I've gone over to Gentoo. It might not be so streamlined, but it's so nice to watch it work out the dependencies for me :o)

      It was well worth it tho, just for what you learn. I'll never be afraid of compiling from source again :o)

    • I built a LFS about 6 months ago from the 5.x series. It was a great learning experience even though most of the time, I was just following instructions. I immediately gained much more respect for the packaged Linux distributions, not because LFS was bad, but because of the detail and complexity involved in putting to gather a working system.

      My first suprise was the level of patching and configuration.I knew that some people described linux as a "hodgepodge" of different components and not a complete sys

  • and for the impatient... (Score:4, Funny)

    by advocate_one ( 662832 ) on Friday December 10, 2004 @03:55AM (#11049682)
    there's Gentoo!!!
  • The followup book Beyond Linux from Scratch goes way beyond compiling a basic system. It has all the instructions and patches needed to get X11, KDE, Gnome, Office Suites, etc compiled from scratch. The 2 books have matching version numbers for compatibility.
    I've built a few of these. They work better than any other Linux system I've seen. Mostly, this is because by building them you learn how to fix something when it doesn't work.

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