Hey there, i ahve been using ubuntu for about half a year now, But i am not too happy with it. I would like to change, to sth where i know what is on my hd. ALso i would like to know what is under the hood of linux and find out more. So i am thinking of either LFS or gentoo. But i am still not sure. Could you please give me some ideas and tell me which might be that bit easier??
Tane

between the two, gentoo is easier to install(much less typing) and maintain.

I'm sure Gentoo would be a lot easier. I haven't tried LFS yet (need to find another spare drive), but I've had great luck with Gentoo. If you feel the need to know everything about your install, you can do a stage 1 (also assuming your NIC works correctly from the install disk). If the computer is slower, go with a stage 3. You probably wont miss much if you don't do a stage 1.

If this is going to be your main install, I would go with Gentoo. You will learn about configuration and what is there, but you will have a nice package management system. Portage makes installation of kernel configuration dependent packages easy. I don't know what you can do about package management in LFS, so you might end up doing a lot of compiling if you go that way.

Either way, installing Gentoo will be a lot faster than making your own distro. If you're going to want to use one of them soon, go with Gentoo.

My recommendation is to go with Gentoo. Later after you have explored with Gentoo for a while, try LFS on a spare drive.

Thanks for the quick responses. For now i would like to have a Distro which just works, so i think i will do what shuuhen said. install gentoo have a good look, and leave an additional space just for LFS, since i am quite interested in compiling everything from source. Well i have had a look Gentoo and found out about the Jackass! Project(Sorry can't post the link for some reason). Is this the one i want, since i am not quite sure. Should i use the guide on that website or the official one. i would also like to know what processor familie i should choose. I have a Centrino. So would that be the Pentium 3?
About LFS, i do have Ubuntu on my system and a partition where windows is on. So would it be possible to delete that partition and install LFS on it. I dont quite like the idea of package managers. I prefer do to everything from source, but i have just encountered some problems with compiling from source and package managers.
My aims are to really understand linux and find out about everything possible, so i am really torn between the too. Both have advantages and disadvantages. LFS which takes long time but i will learn a lot, and gentoo which will be faster but i wont learn that much. I am also afraid that gentoo will install something i really dont want?

When you install Gentoo, go with a stag 3 as stage 1 is no longer supported and really a waste of time. What you get with a stage 3 is a base Linux system - ie a CLI, no X server and very few utilities. From there it's up to you which direction you take.

Almost everything is compiled from source in Gentoo although some packages are in the binary form. If you are going the way of the Jackass then follow his manual as that install is slilghtly different than the official one.

The hardest part (at least for me) in installing Gentoo was compiling the kernel properly. It took me about 5 or 6 tries before I got one that was good. Now it is almost second nature. THe point is don't give up on it, it will get easier. Just follow the handbook to the letter and you shouldn't have any problems.

Compiling the kernel correctly definitly will be one of the harder parts. I got a working kernel the first time through with Gentoo, but I had kernel configurations fail on Debian and Yellow Dog before that.

There are some downsides to package managers, but Portage is the best system I've seen. Since I installed Gentoo on my PowerBook, I haven't had to worry about dependencies for anything. Compiling everything from source will get old after a while. It is good to get plenty of experience with it, but it gets to be a pain when a configuration or compile fails due to a missing dependency. With YDL I've spent weekends on compling dependencies only to have the compile for the program I want fail, probably due to the version of gcc.

I'd go with the official Gentoo install. To me it looks like you'd learn more from it (you will learn more about configuration) and the optimizations won't mean much on a different processor. After you get into using Gentoo, you can learn about CFLAGS and USE flags. These two small things can let you configure the compile to your preferences easily. The CFLAGS are how the Jackass Project optimized an install of Gentoo for specific processors.

Like alaskazimm said, a Gentoo stage 3 install will be a basic set of utilities and programs that will let you install what you want on your system.

Well considering I am still quite a newb, i think i should maybe go with gentoo and have a look at LFS later. Thanks everyone for your time.
P.S. Is there a gentoo Distro section in this forum?

No but there is no specific section for Gentoo inhere BUT there is plenty of members using this distribution, so you can just ask away in the general forum etc.

Gentoo has their own forum here:

http://forums.gentoo.org/

Where you will meet members with familiar names from LQ

I have been aiming to try Gentoo, thanks for the info. I'm a linux noob also... >_>

Hi everyone, thought i would just tell you what happened.
I managed to get Gentoo up and running, my kernel compilation i think was really bad since i am not too sure what i have to do. But it was easier than i thought. Now the only thing i have to do is get my network up and running and then i can start to install lots of fancy stuff.
Thanks very much for everyones help.
@ Katron I am sure you will do fine just read the manual and if you have any problems the gentoo forum is the best place to go. It has helped me alot

I would probably go for Gentoo at first, because it is a bit easier to install than LFS, and then either try LFS on a spare hard drive or in a virtual machine later.

I've been into Linux for a while, and currently running Arch, however once I get better hardware, I wanna try setting up Gentoo or Funtoo in Vbox to see if I like it first before committing to a serious install on any hardware, as I've been curious to try a source distro for a while now.

I discussed this somewhere else. Ill gloss over each, and add a starting link. Go to that link and read through each installation and see which you are most likely to be interested in. Maybe this will help:

LFS - http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/stable/
If you are into reading, A WHOLE LOT of documentation, and attempting to understand it while you are doing it. The best way to see how a Linux system is put together is LFS. If you do not want to READ every bit of it, then you will just be copying/pasting commands without any understanding, and it will be a fruitless endeavor. Beginner build: 2 days (lots of compile time, usually no issues as long as versions are identical to the book)

Gentoo - http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handboo...?part=1&chap=1
IIRC, This is the grand-daddy of source based installation. A pre-cursor to Arch. Gentoo has gotten easier over the years to install, and even has a package manager called 'portage.' IMO some of the best documentation about Linux Distros in general is at the Gentoo site. But again, this is A LOT of reading to glean any understanding from the process. Beginner build: 1 day (some compile time/lots of troubleshooting and searching for information)

Arch - https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners%27_guide
This is my go to distro. While it doesn't require you to compile everything from source, with custom switches, it does allow you deep control of the system and customization from the ground up. It uses pacman as a package manager, IMO the best package manager so far, and it has what is considered by many to be the finest install/troubleshooting Wiki on the internets. This distro will get you to a working system FAR FAR faster than the other two, with less work, and will still offer you plenty of beginner experience into the guts of Linux. Beginner build: 2-6 hours (no compile time, most of the standard troubleshooting issues are already documented)

Obviously I recommend Arch linux.

That is also my general recommendation if you want a DIY system that you can quickly get up-and-running, as although it's a lot more involved in the install, a person who either follows the Install Guide or Beginner's Guide exactly or just knows how to set it up to start with can set up Arch in about the time it takes to set up Ubuntu.

Gentoo, meanwhile, can take hours on end to set up, and IDK how long Funtoo would take exactly, if you were to use sys-kernel/debian-sources, for your kernel, which Funtoo recommends by default, for example, since it supports the binary USE flag, that would shave some time off the install right there in Funtoo's case.

I assume you could also use the binary USE flag on sys-kernel/openvz-rhel6-stable or whatever other kernel too, though.

I tried nearly 10 times to get a Stage3 tarball installed properly but never could get the kernel properly compiled. When I did, I always got stop errors of all kinds. Gentoo was a no-go.

LFS's documentation is far superior and more thorough than Gentoo's handbook.

To be perfectly honest, Arch is NOT technically a from-source distribution as most of it's packages are binary packages outside the ArchBuilds which are source based.

Arch is more in tune with Slackware as far as distributions go where Slackware's Slackbuilds are source packages with build scripts.

Gentoo is a more true to form source based distribution, but LFS is a true source based distribution. Gentoo is best installed from the Live media rather than Stage 3.

Building LFS is neither hard nor difficult. Yes it's reading, but with any proper Linux distribution, you should be reading documentation anyways. LFS is about having patience and following instructions. My first look at LFS was like: "Geez, can I really do this???"

After a week of building and installing packages, I went for it, and booted it up. I watched it all boot up, and then Login: appeared and I literally yelled out: "YES!!!" As I had built my own from source Linux distribution.

Trust me tane_stelzer, once you build LFS your first time, you'll love it. Just remember these suggestions:

1. Do not deviate from the book.

2. JFS and EXT4 are the most recommended file systems. Although the book doesn't cover JFS as much as EXT2/3/4 I have built a LFS system on it with EXT4 as my boot block. My next goal is LFS on ZFS-root.

3. The packages at the last section of the LFS book from BLFS are recommended.

4. You should at least complete Chapter 3 of BLFS also.

5. Be aware that watching a compiler go to work can be highly addictive.

Hello everybody,

I guess we're all replying to a thread that ended eight years ago because the subject matter still is relevant and the eight-year-old original question still is valid. I wanted to join in here because 1) I use BLFS every day as my only Linux operating system and have built many BLFS systems, 2) I came to BLFS from Arch which I used for years, and 3) today, for fun and because of this thread, I built a Gentoo system for the first time. So I, too, know something about the three systems being discussed today.

To me, Arch is just another Linux distro. A very good one, but not so great for learning the "under-the-hood" stuff mentioned in the first post eight years ago. Or at least, it's no better at that than any other distro, IMO. Linux From Scratch is for that.

Linux From Scratch is where you go to learn what makes a Linux system work and how to build one starting from absolutely ground zero - all from source by hand. It's not for beginners. It's required, IMO, that one knows some basic Linux CLI commands and is already somewhat familiar with the layout of a Linux system.

Gentoo, I just found out, is somewhere in between a slick distro like Arch and a totally DIY system like LFS. It's built from source like LFS. And you create the environment for it manually like LFS. But that nifty Portage package manager actually does the work of downloading and installing the software, including working out dependencies (a giant issue when building a BLFS system).

I'm glad this old thread was resuscitated. I really like Gentoo. I had already learned a lot over the years from ordinary distros like Arch, and even more from B/LFS. But I don't exactly enjoy compiling by hand hundreds of packages one-at-a-time anymore. Gentoo may give me the control, choices, and lean system that I want but without the no-longer-interesting-to-me tedium of compiling software and untangling dependencies.

P.S.: I have always found the wikis and documentation from both Arch and Gentoo extremely helpful to me no matter what distro I was using and for most any problem.