Linux from Scratch(www.linuxfromscratch.org)
103 pointsby sippingabonedry3 hours ago14 comments
  • rando1037472022 hours ago
    LFS takes the wrong approach in my opinion. I did it once manually over a couple of days. I suppose I hoped enduring the pain of waiting for the packages to compile would somehow make me smarter. It didn’t. I didn’t learn much. It was like following a baking recipe. I know I need to add eggs and sugar in the ratio it says but I’d be damned if I could tell you why that specific ratio works.

    It’s just too much to take in at once. You start by building a cross compilation toolchain but… why? And you add the bootloader dead last, even though it’s the first thing you see when you boot a Linux machine?

    I reckon a better approach would be to build it step by step, only adding new things once you’ve discovered a need for them. First you get the bootloader working, then you get it to actually load the initramfs and kernel, etc… you could even create your own extremely simple initramfs first before adding dracut, etc…

    This gets you to a system you can boot and play with asap. And then you can slowly start to discover why you actually need all these things through exploration and experimentation.

    • jan_m_savage9 minutes ago
      This should be said more often, and in many other contexts as well.

      Most educational resources are what- and how-based, only the best ones are primarily why-based, what Wirth once wrote in the preface to some Pascal book (I paraphrase) 'discussions are motivated, so that the learner gets coverage and understanding, instead of memorization'.

    • binarinan hour ago
      I've learned the most from LFS long time ago, when I had no internet. I had a mismatching set of Slackware and redhat source CDs, and LFS itself didn't match the versions on CDs too. Since then I can build anything and anywhere, even if it's not cooperating :)
    • dark-stara minute ago
      I used CLFS (Cross-Linux From Scratch) once to bootstrap Linux on my SGI Indy, and I learned quite a lot from this. That was back in 2008 or so, so way before AI and extensive online guides for almost everything. It taught me how cross compilers work, what dependencies exist in the GNU toolchain, how the SGI boots, and much more.

      Too bad Cross-LFS is no longer a thing. Then again, with all these microcontrollers and ARM and RISC-V systems today, cross-compiling is no longer as magic (and tricky) as it was back then...

    • necovek39 minutes ago
      As pointed out already, LFS is a cookbook, and you learn most by having an idea about how you want to tune your Linux system.

      So at points you want to dive deeper, you do — and go off the beaten path.

      It requires a desire not just to understand how bits and pieces fit together, but how you can make them work even better for yourself and what is and is not customizable?

      Arguably, even if building it today is easier — back when I did it in 2000, you sometimes struggled to find where the canonical source code of the package is, not to mention compilation errors, linking errors, etc. Only then did you get to configuring the init RC system, choosing between them (no systemd yet), etc.

      But a requirement is — IMO — that you are strongly opinionated about how a system should serve you, and look for opportunities to tune it.

    • sixtyjan hour ago
      LFS is known but it is really more a cookbook than explanatory principles.

      Principles can be studied from “Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces“ book - https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/

      Rob Love wrote the book “Linux Kernel Development”. https://rlove.org/

      And then continue with reading LFS.

    • myaccountonhn39 minutes ago
      Setting up Oasis <https://github.com/oasislinux/oasis> taught me more than LFS personally. Everything being statically compiled makes it less magic.
    • nullify88an hour ago
      I learned a lot doing Gentoo stage 1. I was also following the guide like a recipe, but at the time I hadn't been exposed to the underlying machinery that is often automated, abstracted away, or done for me already. It was also a good test on how well I could follow instructions and later on apply my own customisations. Like lego.
    • kaashmoneean hour ago
      I second this a thousand million times. But with AI, i can't help but admit i find myself indulging in building things backwards, now that i can try a couple different approaches simultaneously for it.
    • r3trohack3r2 hours ago
      I liked KISS for this

      It was like automated LFS from git

      FreeBSD’s Makefile system is also in this ballpark

    • zsoltkacsandi32 minutes ago
      > LFS takes the wrong approach in my opinion.

      Shameless plug: I started a series of blog posts exactly because this. https://serversfor.dev/linux-inside-out/

      Unfortunately due to some cervical spine issues and a surgery I wasn't able to finish it, but I am planning to pick it up and continue.

      • viralpoetry2 minutes ago
        Thanks for posting this, I hope you will continue
    • gigatexalan hour ago
      Compiling the packages doesn’t teach much it’s all the glue in between. No? It’s the startup scripts and the configs and creating a kernel and all the things.

      It’s on my list of things to do when I have some free time

    • self_awarenessan hour ago
      You know, you could also just read about each step to learn more. I mean if you feel you're following a baking recipe, you can just... read about it more. And then have LFS as a simple way to experiment if you want to change anything or not. Also, technically you don't need to have a bootloader installed on your main hard drive if you already have it on another disk.

      I mean, eh... last time I checked, this was Hacker news. Yesterday, there was an Ask HN topic on how to enable dark mode on HN. Is this the new hacker culture? Complaining that the resources merely point in some direction instead of specifying details?

  • lukeify2 hours ago
    You can tell it's written by real Linux users because the landing page UX doesn't make it immediately obvious where to even start reading.
    • myaccountonhn29 minutes ago
      My journey was: Start off by clicking LFS among the links, and then "Read online" in the sidebar, and then being lost. I see a header, "Current Stable" but I can't see the link to the actual book. I only see the errata, the security advisory and a link labelled... stable LFS systemd? Maybe it's that one? Yes, yes it is.
    • voxelghostan hour ago
      It is indeed glorious.
    • partyficialan hour ago
      it's like their brain is unaware of the concept of a timeline
    • essephan hour ago
      ... At the top? You're expected to read all of it! :)
    • khantto2 hours ago
      [dead]
    • boomlindean hour ago
      Took me half a second to realize I would probably start with "LFS :: Linux From Scratch is the main book, the base from which all other projects are derived."
      • lukeifyan hour ago
        You mean the link to a page which _also_ doesn't have the main book?
  • nandanadileep293 minutes ago
    The best way to learn linux !
  • Celeo2 hours ago
    From the news page:

    > Bruce Dubbs - 2026/09/01

    > The Linux From Scratch community announces the release of LFS Version 13.1.

  • bmenrigh2 hours ago
    For a long time (probably 2002-2010) I really wanted to do LFS. But I've been on Gentoo since 2004 which, over the last ~22 years, has probably exposed me to almost everything LFS would have, plus a lot more it wouldn't have. I still wish I'd did it way back when. I probably would stumbled through fewer issues had I.
  • aboardRat42 hours ago
    What's the news? This manual has been with us since forever.
  • haunteran hour ago
    The last release of the no longer maintained sysvinit version is here (the default is systemd now) https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/downloads/12.4/
  • lrvick2 hours ago
    We did that, but in containers. https://stagex.tools/
  • lioetersan hour ago
    List of (not all Linux) distributions that can be bootstrapped from source:

    https://github.com/vasi/bootstrappable-distros

  • dangan hour ago
    Related. Others?

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    Linux From Scratch 7.1 Published - 3.2.6 Kernel + GCC 4.6.2 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3677350 - March 2012 (13 comments)

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    Ask HN: Linux from Scratch.. Should I try it? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1779665 - Oct 2010 (58 comments)

    How to build custom Linux from source code - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=743843 - Aug 2009 (1 comment)

  • cientificoan hour ago
    The fastest way to learn and remember what Linux is about
  • halyconWays2 hours ago
    I did LFS once, a long long time ago (days of RedHat 7.3, I'd say, 2002), and it was quite educational! It's a good way to learn the fundamentals of what comprises an actual Linux system
  • charcircuit30 minutes ago
    This whole project wastes time that could be spent learning operating system design and it spends it telling users to download files and run ./configure; make; make install 100 times.
  • bellowsgulch41 minutes ago
    LFS is really, really bad. Also, reading the Linux kernel documentation to understand how to do it right is infuriating because it too is really, really bad.