I used LFS years back when it first came out. I found it extremely useful in terms of learning a large amount of how Linux works under the hood. If you goal is

I used LFS years back when it first came out. I found it extremely useful in terms of learning a large amount of how Linux works under the hood. If you goal is a weekend or evenings project that will help you understand how libraries work, how startup scripts work and how to customise things then LFS may be for you. If on the other hand you want a systems usable for day to day tasks, avoid it like the plague. If you're thinking of a Linux power user as someone who lives closer to the bare metal, I'd highly recommend Arch (http://www.archlinux.org/ http://www.archlinux.org/). Some people recommend Gentoo, I personally prefer Arch. Arch is like LFS without (all of) the pain, plus you get package management.