[SGVLUG] Possible Presentation Topic

[Dustin]

On Fri, 22 Jul 2005, Marsden wrote:

> A. J. Stasney wrote:
> > Greetings... As a valuable companion presentation to "Command Line Tips..."
> > consider a talk some time this winter on software installation, emphasizing
> > command-line downloading, unarchiving, uncompressing, and if required
> > compiling.  
> 
> 
> I heartily endorse this suggestion! In fact, if y'all schedule it I'll 
> hire a substitute teacher for my Thurs. class and come to the presentation!

It's a good idea if we have a presenter.  Any takers?

In the mean time, I have a highly effective suggestion for those who want
the knowledge badly enough to spend real time at it: install Linux From
Scratch (www.linuxfromscratch.org/).  I'm not kidding.  A year or so ago I
got about two-thirds of the way through before I just ran out of time, so
I can tell you that you will spend quite a number of hours downloading
source tarballs (that's if you have some kind of broadband--I hate to
think how long you'd download on dialup, but you're probably better off
using the live CD, which has the sources already), applying patches,
configuring, and building.  But you will do this in a controlled
environment where the LFS project has already identified versions which
work well together, located the necessary patches, figured out the
dependencies so you build in the correct order, and so on.

It's long and painful and makes Gentoo look like a quickie install, but I
guarantee you'll learn much of what you want to know (actually, a Gentoo
install is like having a script that goes through the LFS book for you).  
If it's too scary to do on your own and someone else is interested, you
might be able to get some interest in a LFS workgroup.

I actually like the idea of LFS a lot.  The problem with it to me is
mainly the utter lack of automation on things like security updates--you'd
better be willing to spend time maintaining the system as well as building
it.  I could imagine doing the install to get just what I want, but I know
that I won't keep it updated forever.  It seems to me you'd have to be
slightly deranged or a real masochist to want to use an LFS system as your
desktop indefinitely (don't get me wrong, I'd love ya for it, but you'd
still be whacky).  On the other hand, if you build it on a spare partition
as a learning experience, that isn't a drawback at all.

There is also something called "Automated Linux From Scratch"  
(www.linuxfromscratch.org/alfs/), which looks sort of like a way to slowly
re-invent Gentoo piece by piece (but I don't know if it handles upgrades
or just the initial install).  If you try it, be sure to let us know how
it worked. :-)

Another way to do this is to install a lean-and-mean base system like a 
Slackware minimal install, and then just build your favorite userland 
tools from scratch.  This way, you don't break the core and it at least 
gets security updates.  The downside is that you're really on your own if 
a build fails, because you don't have the LFS book to guide you.

Dustin