What if LFS wasn't in book form anymore. What if it's an interactive program instead. A 100% merge of LFS, BLFS, ALFS, <any>LFS.
It starts with running the LFS program (be it a real program or collection of scripts). What is now the LFS book is on-screen instead. You read the chapter portions as you work your way through an installation. You still have 100% control but you can decide fully manual (today's style) or fully automatic style (when you've done it before and you just want to get the end result). As a package is installed (manually or automatic) present the user with a wealth of information. Talk about the package that's in process of being installed. Talk about whatever makes sense - anything from a high-level overview to nitty gritty details where/why/how to configure the package (prior to, during, or after the installation). Let's take an example from today's distributions. If you want to install a full desktop environment (Gnome and/or KDE for example) you end up with dozens if not hundreds of packages and several hundred MB worth of disk space used. The last time I asked to have KDE and Gnome installed I ended up with over 600 packages downloaded, a gigabyte later, and hours of waiting. Great, I now have the environments fully installed. What exactly do all those 600+ packages do and why do I need them? Or a different example, you know you need a program installed. You install it. Then you are left hanging: "Okay, now what. It's installed. Somewhere. There are configuration files. Somewhere. I'm sure there is documentation that answers those questions. Somewhere." If nothing else it would be nice that after a package is installed it outputs (a) page(s) of information right on your screen where the files are, how it's pre-configured (if applicable), why it's pre-configured the way it is. And more importantly - provide a starting point to customize the product. If nothing else, a courtesy line "Package installed. The docs you need to read now are in /usr/share/doc/package/file - they'll explain how to configure it and start using the product." Just some more food for thoughts. While we're discussing let's also take the time to think outside the box. Abandon, at least in theory, anything that is currently LFS, pre-conceived notions and otherwise, and see what happens when we re-invent LFS and the way we do things. G -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/lfs-dev FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq/ Unsubscribe: See the above information page
