Linux From Scratch

[gregb]

Recently built a pure x86_64 system entirely from source code that installs on a thumb drive. Uses gujin bootloader, uClibc + squashfs for small size, and aufs overlays for all the system directories. / partition is read only. Anyone tries anything I immediately get to see the modifications.

It's a great feeling to be completely in control of your system. I know every piece of code that went into making it work. Anyone else in LOS crazy enough to enjoy this?

It's great fun.

[niller74]

Been building LFG systems a few times and they are actually quite fun. The biggest problem with LFS is the lack of package management, which means that it can be quite a task to find a series of packages that play together. Once you have a running systems package management and updating becomes a tedious task, that require a lot of almost daily research.

Therefore I prefer the Tiny Gentoo approach that evolves around uClibc/Busybox. It gives you the same size as LFS, same compilation optimization and same good feeling at the end, but it also gives you access to package management.

[dave_boo]

These are the reasons that I love Linux.

Being able to do what YOU want with it.

[Crushdepth]

Would there be any advantage / performance gain in compiling a kernel / software for an Atom processor? Just looking for ways to speed up my netbook.

[dave_boo]

Would there be any advantage / performance gain in compiling a kernel / software for an Atom processor? Just looking for ways to speed up my netbook.

Little. The Atom instruction set isn't that terribly advanced (say compared to the Core2) and there's already a lot of optimistations for it in the plain jane kernel.

HOWEVER, a lot of times there are performance enhancements in newer kernels (that wouldn't be specific for Atom). For instance in 2,6,35+ x264 transcoding can be up to 50% faster in regards to FPS.

[jobsworth]

You guys are a little bit more advanced than me but I wish to catch up.

I have discovered sun virtualbox and

in addition to dual booting windows xp and ubuntu 9.10,

I like to run windows xp on linux and linux on windows xp.

There was a mini linux than ran on a 2GB usb drive

but it often crashed and ran out of disk space if any packages were updated.

Right now my problem is disk access on the host system.

ie how to access c:\ on linux - done

ie. how to access /home on Windows XP - more difficult.

On Linux

sudo mount.vboxsf windows-share /host

works.

But how do you do this on windows xp?

Something to do with MiniGW which I don't really understand.

I love this thread.

Please say some more about what you are doing and how.

[Supernova]

Right now my problem is disk access on the host system.

ie how to access c:\ on linux - done

ie. how to access /home on Windows XP - more difficult.

On Linux

sudo mount.vboxsf windows-share /host

works.

But how do you do this on windows xp?

Ext2Fsd is an open source Linux ext2/ext3 file system driver for Windows. Provides support for both read/write access.

Not sure if it will work under virtual machines though...

[joncl]

there is always the vmware player for both OS's and it is free .. but kind of defeats the purpose if you have dual boot.

[gregb]

You guys are a little bit more advanced than me but I wish to catch up.

I have discovered sun virtualbox and

in addition to dual booting windows xp and ubuntu 9.10,

I like to run windows xp on linux and linux on windows xp.

There was a mini linux than ran on a 2GB usb drive

but it often crashed and ran out of disk space if any packages were updated.

Right now my problem is disk access on the host system.

ie how to access c:\ on linux - done

ie. how to access /home on Windows XP - more difficult.

Don't know if jobsworth is still around as he posted this a couple of months ago, but I just saw it.

Easiest way is just to go into the VirtualBox manager under Settings... Shared Folders and add /home to it. It will appear as a new drive letter under Windoze. You'll need to install "Guest Extensions" under the devices tab on the Windows guest OS to make this functional. Will take you about 2 minutes and a reboot of the Windows XP guest OS.

VirtualBox is by far the best virtualization tool in my opinion. Extremely easy to use, and does not require virtualization primitives on the CPU in order to deliver good performance. It also allows for automatically dynamically resizable disks. Great feature if you run multiple guest OS's and don't have several TB of disk space to throw at the problem.

Edit: After posting this I realize he may have been referring to running Windows as the host and Linux as the guest OS. Bit more of a tricky problem there. I would actually just place /home on shared disk from the XP side in this case. Otherwise you have to run Samba under Linux, export /home, and mount under the Windows XP host. I honestly don't have alot of experience with Windows as a host. It makes much more sense as a guest OS.

Edited February 12, 2010 by gregb

[Jdietz]

the linux partitions are available through 'my network' in the XP virtual machine.

[SeanMoran]

I've been running Linux from scratch (as a client OS) since the first Saturday in April last year, and never needed the Windows 98 since then, so that's gone for good.

It's so easy now that even chimpanzees could do it. If you don't believe me that chimpanzees are online now, check out twitter and have a read.