(long)Re: Why would I want an LFS system? (fwd)
Hello,
this is mainly only my opinion, if you want to talk to the real
project leader, talk with Gerard Beekmans (cc). Or join the lfs-dev list
=)
They forgot to bring the following paragraph in context from the LFS
intro:
"Another analogy that we can use is that of comparing LFS with a finished
house. LFS will give you the skeleton of a house, but it's up to you to
install plumbing, electrical outlets, kitchen, bathtub, wallpaper, etc. "
IMO LFS has structure but no walls or floors, BLFS (when finished) brings
the wall and floors.
Debian gives you a warm and nice house, easy to install and relatively
stable (depending on what platform). But it is quite the same as the
neighbor ... and IMO quite old style.
Our stable LFS versions are in the case of *newly* ported platform, way
more stable and better common feel than Any big distro I have tried. Took
me 4 download of different distro to get ONE working, debian and Newworld
G4 isn't flying high but works great on old G3, Mandrake and SUSE are
great for newworld G4 but ouch for oldworld. Sparc, alpha and m68k all are
either old , buggy or both.
It is a base skeleton, you know how everything has been built and it can
be optimised with your own patch, own ./configure and so on. be as close
as FHS and LSB as possible or totally not care about it.
For the bleeding edge stuff comment , " <Overfiend> "*PANT* *PANT* YEAH
BABY!!!! FRESH COMMITS TO CVS!!!!" *PANT* *PANT* " On LFS-dev I have
seen more bugs worked out of pacakges than many other mailing lists /
active members. My Worstation uses a base of LFS 3.0 on PPC system, it
behaves 98% the SAME as my LFS 3.0 on X86. The enduser experience is 100%
the same. Sometimes CVS is the only way to go even under Debian ;-)
On this comment : " Even worste, I do not think someone is able to follow
every security patches for all sources a Linux system use (even for a
small system) " Usually our changeLog between versions does help as a good
check list. In my case I keep a list of everything compiled and installed
on my system along with version and main location web page and FTP.
Organisation makes wonder, Debian is having good tools for it.
Many of my ranting about Debian comes from the fact that Debian is
probably the worst starting Distro for LFS on any platform, most of the
exceptions to build the CHROOT environment are Debian issues. Some of
them related to glibc version others are just odd behaviors not found in
other Distros. Glibc version is one issue and one Glibc version + Athlon
is having one issue. Then some X86 only behavior not behaving somewhere
else.
installing Debian takes about 3-4 hours totally configured and ready to do
serious work from the partitioning to the final reboot.The SAME from LFS
can take days as in 4 or 5 days before being totally functional and
efficient OS. + host Distro install (yes we can't boot straight off) but I
do have a tar of the build env for x86 and PPC handy...
IMO, debian can look at our documentations and errors we fixed or worked
around and we can do the same.
For the size comment, Debian is the cleanest Distro I have seen regarding
dep and installed support for xyz functionality. But we can still shape
our dependencies better than precompiled .deb or .rpm for single task
machines
I use debian too and apt-get --compile <something> isn't really teaching
anything nor letting you do it your way ;-)
We LFS users/builder read more often the README, INSTALL and other
documentations before compiling the things. Therefor a bit more aware of
what we do. It is also true that we have a lot of beginners that just Copy
and Paste the intructions, and then come around... it's not working ...
WHY !?!?
Common ideas : I am planing on making a BSD Fromscratch too, as is Debian.
My side mark comment on that for the anti BSD license, If there is demand
for BSD , do it, no one will lose from the knowledge shared between linux
and BSD.
There is many things under work from LFS , I suggest you look at
hints.linuxfromscratch.org
blfs.linuxfromscratch.org
bugs.linuxfromscratch.org
We sure would like to have as many man power than Debian ;-)
Philippe
> fyi, details see archive on lists.debian.org
>
> On Tue, 29 Jan 2002, Inglima Modica Davide Silvio wrote:
>
> > > http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/intro.shtml
> >
> > If we want to do something serious about that we should politely point out
> > that:
> >
> > [snip: some good points about debian]
>
> I honestly thing you guys are a bit too touchy. It's not like that LFS
> blurb is an attack on our One True Distro (TM) *cough*, but rather a few
> points about why it might be attractive to some to run LFS. Personally,
> I have much more confidence in the Debian QA and Security folx than I
> have in my own skills, but I'm still considering LFS (for educational
> purposes mainly). They're not saying Debian is bad (unless you
> explicitly choose to interpret it that way) - they're just saying it's
> not the only way. Choice, remember? :-)
Debian is a great One True Distro (TM) keep it going.
Philippe
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