Hi Peter, If you're looking for a source-based distro with good support and good package management, I recommend Gentoo as an alternate to LFS. Gentoo's Portage package management system is top-notch, combining a single-command-line installation for many packages with a database that includes versioning control, a mainstream stable tree with a testing branch and easy-to-use querying tools. Additionally, packages are grouped, so an OS version upgrade is as simple as typing 'emerge system -kuva' and waiting for compilation. I have been a big fan of Gentoo because it is acclaimed for having phenomenal hardware support in addition to everything else I mentioned. I have used LFS because I want to learn more about the OS, but Gentoo is excellent when it comes to efficiency as well. My home environment will be a mix of LFS and Gentoo from now on.
-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Peter B. Steiger Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2007 10:29 AM To: LFS Support Subject: Never use another distro, only LFS for me I finally put together another PC out of spare parts to use as a server; up to this point my only linux box acted as server, game machine, personal workstation, etc. and it drove my family crazy when I had to reboot because I was experimenting. Now I can experiment on my own computer while the server keeps working. I figured, I only have this weekend to get the job done so I really don't have time for a full lfs build. Instead, I looked for something I could use out of the box with minimal configuration - give it the IP address of my internal network, let DHCP figure out the rest, and I'm good to go. Not. I picked Ubuntu because I've read good things about it and they even have an installation CD specifically designed for acting as a server. I guess installation wasn't too bad - certainly easier than that of the Evil Empire - but then configuring stuff was impossible. I didn't know where anything was! Despite its being billed as a server edition there is no firewall included in the installation. The docs recommend an easy-to-configure iptables interface called Firestarter... but that's a gtk interface and because I went with the server edition, I didn't get gtk. There's no package management so whenever I ran apt-get I had no idea what it installed or where it put things. If I changed my mind about something and ran apt-get uninstall, it would only uninstall the one package I named and none of the 64 dependencies that went with it. I need to forward ipsec packets to my work machine so I can connect to my employer's VPN server, but the kernel is not compiled with ipsec forwarding. At that point I gave up on apt-get and used fpt to fetch a new kernel source... only to find that I can't build anything because the kernel headers aren't installed. I ran apt-get install kernel-something-or-other-headers and it didn't put them in /usr/include; it put them in /usr/src where I have to run make - but make won't install the kernel headers because it won't run without the kernel headers installed! Next weekend, I wipe out the ubuntu partitions and start fresh with LFS. I learned my lesson. -- Peter B. Steiger Cheyenne, WY -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/lfs-support FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/faq.html Unsubscribe: See the above information page -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/lfs-support FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/faq.html Unsubscribe: See the above information page
