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You could try using something like Gentoo first. You'll get to learn a lot, just by trying to set it up on your system. And even then if you feel you need to di

You could try using something like Gentoo first. You'll get to learn a lot, just by trying to set it up on your system. And even then if you feel you need to dig deeper, you could try LFS. LFS is something which people can use to create their own distros (I think I read somewhere that ArchLinux was created using LFS), which reminds me you could even give ArchLinux a shot. Pretty nice distro. ;-)

philcrissman 16y ago
Yeah, Gentoo and Arch are both good (or were when I last tried them, several years back). Daniel Robbins is also working on new Gentoo kernels and portage trees (and has a _ton_ of Linux documentation/tutorials) over at http://funtoo.org http://funtoo.org
- naner 16y ago
  several years back I used Gentoo back when they still had regular release numbers instead of dates (1.2 I think) and stage 1 installs. Back then the docs were complete and extremely comprehensive and the Gentoo Forums were amazingly resourceful. The distro and the community have slowly degraded in quality since drobbins left. (This is not necessarily related to his departure.) Anyways, it was great for learning. Before that I tried Red Hat and was confused as hell. I couldn't troubleshoot anything. With Gentoo I constantly broke things but was able to find out how to fix them relatively easily. I quickly built up an understanding of how everything fit together. Maybe Gentoo is still useful in this regard but it certainly is not what it used to be.
phamilton 16y ago
I'll recommend Gentoo as well. It gives you exposure to a lot of the system, and there is a lot of documentation. Now, you will blindly follow a lot of guides and not understand some of the things your are changing. But over time you will start to recognize exactly what these tweaks were. Compiling a kernel is a great example. Over time you will start to dive in and tweak the kernel. You will try a non preemptive kernel. You will compile modules in instead of loading them dynamically. (you probably won't notice much of a difference, but you'll do it anyway). Gentoo is a great tinkering environment.
hardik988 16y ago
Thanks. Somebody else also suggested Gentoo to me and I think it's high time I explore beyond Ubuntu.

philcrissman 16y ago

Yeah, Gentoo and Arch are both good (or were when I last tried them, several years back). Daniel Robbins is also working on new Gentoo kernels and portage trees (and has a _ton_ of Linux documentation/tutorials) over at http://funtoo.org http://funtoo.org

naner 16y ago
several years back I used Gentoo back when they still had regular release numbers instead of dates (1.2 I think) and stage 1 installs. Back then the docs were complete and extremely comprehensive and the Gentoo Forums were amazingly resourceful. The distro and the community have slowly degraded in quality since drobbins left. (This is not necessarily related to his departure.) Anyways, it was great for learning. Before that I tried Red Hat and was confused as hell. I couldn't troubleshoot anything. With Gentoo I constantly broke things but was able to find out how to fix them relatively easily. I quickly built up an understanding of how everything fit together. Maybe Gentoo is still useful in this regard but it certainly is not what it used to be.

phamilton 16y ago

I'll recommend Gentoo as well. It gives you exposure to a lot of the system, and there is a lot of documentation. Now, you will blindly follow a lot of guides and not understand some of the things your are changing. But over time you will start to recognize exactly what these tweaks were. Compiling a kernel is a great example. Over time you will start to dive in and tweak the kernel. You will try a non preemptive kernel. You will compile modules in instead of loading them dynamically. (you probably won't notice much of a difference, but you'll do it anyway). Gentoo is a great tinkering environment.

hardik988 16y ago

Thanks. Somebody else also suggested Gentoo to me and I think it's high time I explore beyond Ubuntu.