I'd like to counter your comment.

LFS helped me a lot. It taught me how to compile packages manually, and how GNU/Linux components fit together.

Armed with that knowledge, I could do things others could not do:

- Make applications that bundle/automatically download their dependencies, compile them with custom flags (static linking)

- Diagnose build errors buried in deep dependencies when using vcpkg

- Compile programs for esotheric systems: e.g: Intel MacOS X 10.5, an obsolete system noone else on earth is using except the company I worked at

- Create application targetting obsolete systems but using the latest version of its dependencies

- Compile recent programs on esotheric systems, by bootstraping a newer gcc on the newer system, patching as necessary

- Create my own stripped down distro, tuned to my specifications

- Use that stripped distro as a docker container

- Run recent linux on obsolete hardware no longer supported by mainstream distros

- Reformat a cloud dedicated server without physical access by first bootstraping a minimal distro on a ramdisk, unmounting the main drive, partitioning that drive, and installing the new distro on that drive. Reboot and pray.

- Build a cross-compiler for targetting a freestanding environment

- Build latest KDE/XFCE for debian stable. No more "but debian ships with outdated software!!11"

- Build applications on a distro they were not designed for (Zimbra OSE on debian)

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pjmlp a day ago | parent | next [-]

Learning how to compile packages manually it was a common skill long before Linux came to be, and how GNU/Linux fits together could also easily be learnt with Slackware or Yggdrasil.

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Intermernet a day ago | parent | next [-]

As someone who started using Linux in 1996 (Slackware, of course), I learnt the hard way about compiling packages. I remember trying to compile the kernel, and doing "make config" and following hundreds of options, and not knowing that I then needed to do "make" or "make zimage" or "make install" after any of the config stuff. Obvious, dumb, rookie errors, but still understandable for a teenager coming from Windows. Doing LFS really taught me a lot about dependencies and complexity, as well as understanding of the actual boot process. All of this helped me greatly in later years.

	▲	abhiyerra 18 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Your experience sounds exactly like mine. I downloaded Linux 2.6 which took 2 days to compile. Then when I installed it on my Slackware system completely hosed it. But learned so much…

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immmmmm a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I started with Slackware 1.0 on i386.

I certainly do not miss compiling X11!

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fuzztester a day ago | parent | prev [-]

>Learning how to compile packages manually it was a common skill long before Linux came to be

Right. I used to compile many open source packages from source on many flavors of Unix back in the day, for years. Perl, Python, MySQL, many others. Miscellaneous utilities. Esoteric languages. Even Oracle, once, on a Unix server, right at a large manufacturing company site. Even building Unix kernels from source was common on some Unix versions. And not just for a regular install. Many times, (re)building Unix kernels from source, was the only way to get some software packages or hardware devices or peripherals, like printers or terminal controllers or even hard disk controllers, to work on the system. Typically you would edit some config files or settings files manually, change values of params, or in some cases use a TUI to do that, and then rebuild via a makefile. You had to save the old kernel in case the new one didn't work, and if so, lather, rinse, repeat, till everything did work.

And that practice was nothing special. A lot if people did it routinely. Most, in fact, I'd say. Talking about devs and sysadmins here, not end users, although some of the latter probably did it too.

Many apps, tools and utilities came as source code, often in a .tar or .tar.gz file. You would untar or gunzip it into a new directory, and do your stuff, running makefiles, other shell commands, setting env. vars., etc.

	▲	19 hours ago \| parent [-]
		[deleted]

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mobilio 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

For me also helps me to cross compile Nvidia kernel drivers for other version of kernel than running one. Plus compile stripped-down version of X.

All this for running on embedded Linux with 32MB flash drive running from read-only volume powering two kiosk displays.

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motbus3 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I agree with you. Maybe the person from the first comment read first few pages only which basically give some context.

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shevy-java a day ago | parent | prev [-]

None of that requires LFS; I compiled KDE via scripts many years ago. Why would LFS be needed for that? That makes no sense. Debian being slow is their problem, other distributions aren't snail-like like that. The default compiler used in LFS is also hardly a real cross-compiler, it is more a bare-minimum compiler for C/C++. This annoys me because e. g. I need fortran for R, so a bare-minimum compiler isn't as useful as a more feature-complete GCC. And GCC also causes some issues, e. g. like my problem with options.cc.

I think you missed the main argument though - LFS isn't quite as good as it could be. That is a correct statement that was made.

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smitty1e a day ago | parent [-]

"Requires"/"needed".

LFS is about the muscle memory; the documentation; the cohesiveness.

I always recommend it to people and consider it foundational to my understanding of How Stuff Works.

Whether that amounts to a hill of beans in the AI world remains to be seen.

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charcircuit a day ago | parent [-]

It is more how stuff is compiled than how stuff works.

Fundamental things like how processes are scheduled are not explained by LFS.

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gchamonlive a day ago | parent | next [-]

"works" is a loaded term. LFS is how the rubber meets the road, you want how the rubber is made, for that you need something like https://www.baeldung.com/linux/processes-guide or https://linux-kernel-labs.github.io/refs/heads/master/lectur...

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newswasboring 20 hours ago | parent | next [-]

And if you want to get to at least the bottom most visible turtle you go with something like NAND to Tetris https://www.nand2tetris.org/

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charcircuit 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>LFS is how the rubber meets the road

Again I disagree. Way too much time is spent building software than actual practical OS development.

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mid-kid 18 hours ago | parent [-]

LFS is not OS development. You build a distribution by assembling all the components. If you want to develop an OS from scratch, perhaps you're looking for osdev.org.

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charcircuit 18 hours ago | parent [-]

What is the point of making a distro, if not to make an OS? It's the same thing.

	▲	gchamonlive 17 hours ago \| parent [-]
		One supports the other, they aren't laid in opposition, but they are different, well-defined disciplines

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smitty1e 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

OK: "How *nix tools functioned together in command-line days".