Hello,

Im rather new to LFS and was wondering if you could give me a few pointers. I read the beginning of the book (version 4.0) and im a little confused about the 'How things are going to be done' section.

1). Does your LFS need to be done ON the computer that will be using it? Im using a up-to-date machine which has my gnu/linux distro but I'd like to create a LFS for a old P133 that I have. Can I do this? Or will i need to work on LFS ON the machine I plan to install on?

2). Is there GRUB alternative documentation? I perfer GRUB over LILO.

Thats it for now. Thanks!

Yes there is grub alternative documenation.

As far as what machine it has to be done on, no you can compile it on another machine (on a seperate HD) and then move the hd to the other computer. Just watch for your optimization flags after you chroot and start Chapter 6. Make sure you keep them low enough to work on a P133 and not super high and for say AMD or whatever you are using.

I think the only time you'd have problems might be cross architecture compiles. So unless you are on a mac and building for PC arch, I think you should be fine. I think you could do the mac for a pc thing, but it might require a bit more work (and check the hints) to get it working.

Cool

Thank you - Perhaps you can give me some words of encouragement aswell.

I read a few of the LFS threads and it sounds like keeping the system up to date is a big issue (i.e.: takes a lot of free time) but my reason for trying out LFS is this;

I was in search for a thin distro to install in which i could try out the new version of gnome. I do not like KDE and im sick of finding a 'distro' that will get me half way there (lets say it has SOMe updated packages but not all) I want to create a thin, very solid GNOMe desktop machine for web/mail/music playback while serving a small website and ftp.

Just sick and tired of weeding through all the conf's mandrake/RH, etc. seem to modify into complete foobar.

Would you recommend LFS for the creation of a solid, light -weight desktop machine? - lots of pages to read, need to do many things i've never even touched, need some encouragement!

Thank you.

first of all http://hints.linuxfromscratch.org - contains all kinds of useful short docs on how to set things up, in includes docs on how to cross-compile for your slower computer.

And, yes, it takes a lot more time to keep your system up-to-date. You don't run one command like "apt-get package" and install it, or something similar to upgrade your entire system. It's all up to you to download and install newer versions of packages and replace old files with the new ones.

I'd say LFS is great for someone learning how linux works, and even better for some who are looking for exactly what you are. However, as Gerard has mentioned, keeping your system up to date with each Gnome release will be ALOT of work.

You might want to look into Debian or Slackware before jumping into an LFS blindly and hoping it's exactly what you want. However, I wouldn't want to discourage this project. I would strongly suggest you give LFS a try if you have the time/patience and then if it's too much work, switch over to something like Debian that updates the packages very easily for you, but doesn't have the bulk and "extra" unneccessary things RH does.

Cool