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I was about to go hard on this because I came across a similar link a few days ago that had absolutely no mention of the excellent existing project on this topi

I was about to go hard on this because I came across a similar link a few days ago that had absolutely no mention of the excellent existing project on this topic, the LFS project [1]. This page does make multiple mentions of it, but in a very offhanded way. I would encourage the people behind this url to make a case upfront about why someone should use this link as opposed to directly going to LFS, and what do they have that LFS doesn't. [1] http://www.linuxfromscratch.org http://www.linuxfromscratch.org

marrone12 9y ago
Yes, Linux From Scratch has been a product for a very long time.
veganjay 9y ago
Exactly. What are the differences? From an organizational structure, I see that buildyourownlinux.com is brought to us by Linux Academy, while linuxfromscratch.org is not affiliated with any other organization (as far as I can tell). From a technical standpoint, I'm curious what differs. From what I recall, there are several reboots required during LFS - but at first glance I don't see any mention in BYOL.
- Danihan 9y ago
  One works and one isn't maintained.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - pfranz 9y ago
    Are you saying LFS isn't maintained? The last stable version was released in February 2017. RC1 for the next release was made today. http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/news.html http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/news.html
eddieh 9y ago
Seriously though, is this a fork of LFS or what?
jitix 9y ago
Yeah it seems very similar to LFS, including the verbiage on the pages. Wondering if the same people are behind this. I first used LFS to build my own distro back in college and that experience made me learn a lot about the components of the Linux system which is helpful to me even now. I used it again years later to build an extremely lightweight base for docker containers. Its very versatile and I hope this project helps people as much as LFS helped me.
dghughes 9y ago
I have to wonder is LFS maintained? I know a year or two ago it seemed like the documentation and the CD/DVD were quite old. LFS is great no complaints no offense intended I know it must take a lot of work to keep it updated. Then again lower down on the buildyourownownlinux site wget links to a LFS url so it must be the same people or LFS re-branded?
- ngharo 9y ago
  You can always check out the latest[1] version in your browser. Build is from Aug 15th at the time of my writing. [1] http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/development/ http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/development/
pavement 9y ago
LFS feels like a dead project. The project presents itself as a "book." Some of the provided tarballs are riddled with old vulnerabilities (and served over insecure channels (!!!) with no integrity checks), and thus it is relegated to educational purposes only, and should not be used for building a secure, general purpose system. Does it support SATA and UEFI boot disks yet?
- agumonkey 9y ago
  beside that, LFS on its own was weirdly useless to understand linux. More like linux toolchain / sed tutorial. I made a bootable LFS twice but it was strangely broken. BLFS is where linux knowledge is IMO.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - pfranz 9y ago
    I guess it depends where you want the knowledge. When LFS first got started (and a few years before), I found at that time as a home-user, I often had to build the kernel myself (maybe I was trying too hard to be cutting edge), know more about booting (LILO and GRUB), and on occasion I messed up bootable partitions. Recently, I was trying to build a custom version of GCC and dependencies and found LFS docs helpful. From looking over the BLFS now, I haven't had a lot of use-cases for building more userland-ish things. I've tried to avoid compiling X or Display Managers and stick to package managers if I wanted to try a new Desktop Environment. I've found Arch docs (or man pages) really helpful in configuring these kinds of things when I do need it. I can see this being more useful if I wanted to be more of a sysadmin. I remember trying to customize PAM and setup Kerberos years ago and feeling like there wasn't much help putting this all together or troubleshooting (it may have been prior to BLFS). When you said "weirdly useless to understand linux" do you mean the linux kernel in the literal sense? Or the low level system stuff of how things are put together?
    - agumonkey 9y ago
      I meant the whole linux system, not the kernel. I guess I'm wrong since it's not gnu/linux from scratch. But the two are entangled.

marrone12 9y ago

Yes, Linux From Scratch has been a product for a very long time.

veganjay 9y ago

Exactly. What are the differences? From an organizational structure, I see that buildyourownlinux.com is brought to us by Linux Academy, while linuxfromscratch.org is not affiliated with any other organization (as far as I can tell). From a technical standpoint, I'm curious what differs. From what I recall, there are several reboots required during LFS - but at first glance I don't see any mention in BYOL.

Danihan 9y ago
One works and one isn't maintained.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- pfranz 9y ago
  Are you saying LFS isn't maintained? The last stable version was released in February 2017. RC1 for the next release was made today. http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/news.html http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/news.html

eddieh 9y ago

Seriously though, is this a fork of LFS or what?

jitix 9y ago

Yeah it seems very similar to LFS, including the verbiage on the pages. Wondering if the same people are behind this. I first used LFS to build my own distro back in college and that experience made me learn a lot about the components of the Linux system which is helpful to me even now. I used it again years later to build an extremely lightweight base for docker containers. Its very versatile and I hope this project helps people as much as LFS helped me.

dghughes 9y ago

I have to wonder is LFS maintained? I know a year or two ago it seemed like the documentation and the CD/DVD were quite old. LFS is great no complaints no offense intended I know it must take a lot of work to keep it updated. Then again lower down on the buildyourownownlinux site wget links to a LFS url so it must be the same people or LFS re-branded?

ngharo 9y ago
You can always check out the latest[1] version in your browser. Build is from Aug 15th at the time of my writing. [1] http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/development/ http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/development/

pavement 9y ago

LFS feels like a dead project. The project presents itself as a "book." Some of the provided tarballs are riddled with old vulnerabilities (and served over insecure channels (!!!) with no integrity checks), and thus it is relegated to educational purposes only, and should not be used for building a secure, general purpose system. Does it support SATA and UEFI boot disks yet?

agumonkey 9y ago
beside that, LFS on its own was weirdly useless to understand linux. More like linux toolchain / sed tutorial. I made a bootable LFS twice but it was strangely broken. BLFS is where linux knowledge is IMO.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- pfranz 9y ago
  I guess it depends where you want the knowledge. When LFS first got started (and a few years before), I found at that time as a home-user, I often had to build the kernel myself (maybe I was trying too hard to be cutting edge), know more about booting (LILO and GRUB), and on occasion I messed up bootable partitions. Recently, I was trying to build a custom version of GCC and dependencies and found LFS docs helpful. From looking over the BLFS now, I haven't had a lot of use-cases for building more userland-ish things. I've tried to avoid compiling X or Display Managers and stick to package managers if I wanted to try a new Desktop Environment. I've found Arch docs (or man pages) really helpful in configuring these kinds of things when I do need it. I can see this being more useful if I wanted to be more of a sysadmin. I remember trying to customize PAM and setup Kerberos years ago and feeling like there wasn't much help putting this all together or troubleshooting (it may have been prior to BLFS). When you said "weirdly useless to understand linux" do you mean the linux kernel in the literal sense? Or the low level system stuff of how things are put together?
  - agumonkey 9y ago
    I meant the whole linux system, not the kernel. I guess I'm wrong since it's not gnu/linux from scratch. But the two are entangled.