[PLUG] Linux from scratch

[Pravin Sonawane]

On 08/15/2011 04:18 PM, Mayuresh wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 12, 2011 at 09:53:06PM +0530, Pravin Sonawane wrote:
>> Hello all,
>>
>> I am new to Linux and this is my first mail too.
>>
>> I want to learn Linux in and out and was thinking the best way to do this
>> would be to build our own distro from scratch.
>> I know we'll have some pre-requisites to it like learning make first. But
>> that's what we're here for right? :-)
>> So what say?
>>
>> Reference:
>> http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
> 1. If you are really new, it will be good to start with a distro that will
> get you going fast and then you can start your experimentation. Perhaps
> keep a stable installation handy on one partition and use an experimental
> on the other.
>
>
> 2. Decide what your focus of learning is on. Some of the areas to learn
> could be (roughly in increasing order of exposure):
>
> - Basic familiarity with a Unix style environment. Learning a shell,
>    several basic Unix tools, editors like vi or emacs, common applications
>   (mail clients, browsers, window managers etc.) : choosing and customizing
>   them to suit you the best etc.
>
> If you are indeed new, you might want to spend some time with above focus
> before venturing into other things.
>
> This learning is what will mostly dominate your life as a "user" once your
> technical curiosity of how things work is satisfied.
>
>
> - System administration
>
> You get a good feel of "how it all works" questions, if you really get to
> see, tweak, mess up and recover several configuration files etc. Try
> insisting on using system administration by editing config files etc
> yourself rather than using some cosy GUI utilities. This way you can
> familiarize yourself with better with overall "personality" of Unix style
> systems.
>
>
> - Building applications and kernel etc from sources. Creating minimalistic
>    configurations.
>
> You mention learning make etc. But make as a skill doesn't matter much for
> above focus. But overall you'll get to learn about typical Linux
> application development environment, configurability, deployment etc.
>
> You can do this on almost any Linux system, though Arch Linux and *BSD
> systems are slightly more inclined towards encouraging a user to build
> things from sources. (LFS? We'll come to that later.)
>
>  From personal experience I can say, this desire to create everything
> custom or compile everything from sources easily turns into an addiction,
> though after a while you might feel you are not getting enough returns for
> the effort, as you don't seem to derive much value add as a against a
> vanilla build (often).
>
>
> - Creating applications / participating in OSS projects etc.
>
> A background with previous point will give the right perspective and some
> of the skills to participate in such development.
>
>
> - Creating distros focused on certain goals.
>
> LFS perhaps, but preferably with hands on experience on most of the above
> aspects. I'd say, let's not confuse "creating a distro from scratch" motto
> with "learning linux from scratch".
>
>
> Mayuresh.
>
> _______________________________________
> Pune GNU/Linux Users Group Mailing List


Thankyou Mehul and Mayuresh for your replies :)

Yes I am finding my way through the system. I use Ubuntu 11.04 and I am 
learning shell scripting. I am still far from tweaking configuration 
files though I've successfully installed Drupal and many other softwares.

As rightly pointed out by you, I should first focus on 
learning/understanding the system in its depth and breadth first. I very 
much like the idea of being associated and participating in OSS projects 
(through SourceForge,Google Code, etc).

I would like to know if PLUG develops applications.. I would be very 
much interested in being a part of the development team.


Regards,
Pravin