Quote: Original post by twix

Quote: Original post by owl
It is easier to mantain and protect a small system than a huge buggy and secretive provider-dependant one. For a clueless user, there are iMacs.

Ah, but it's a million times harder, and more importantly, more time consuming to set it up and get it working to your satisfaction. On another note, I have never had any problems maintaining a Windows XP system

Of course. It's a trillon times harder to make a good game, than to play it.
Following you logic, nobody should make games.

But like many things that requires much time and energy to be committed to it, the end result is quite worth it.

Quote: Original post by owl

Quote: Original post by twix
It may be a fun project, provided that you have nothing, and I mean absolutely NOTHING worthwhile to do with your time. =\

Like what? I think this idea is quite worthwhile if you are interested.

Being able to set up a fully functional OS+web-server in only 8MB knowing exactly which things your server is running (for example) sounds like a good idea to me. Can you do that with any other OS?

I admire the fact that you can (and yeah, I've screwed with LFS before -- just for fun). But now that I'm actually using Linux to get work done I can't be offline for two months to flip through the documentation for every little GNU utility.

Quote: Original post by owl
Of course. It's a trillon times harder to make a good game, than to play it.
Following you logic, nobody should make games.

I don't know why you'd say something like that. I'm sure you yourself can see how illogical it is.

So it seems time is the big issue here. And right now I don't have much time since classes have just started for the spring semester. I've read the introduction since posting this, and most likely I'll read through the rest and maybe experiment this summer, since I'm not going to take any summer courses this year. I don't have any special need to try this, it just seemed interesting.

Quote: Original post by Ravuya

Quote: Original post by owl

Quote: Original post by twix
It may be a fun project, provided that you have nothing, and I mean absolutely NOTHING worthwhile to do with your time. =\

Like what? I think this idea is quite worthwhile if you are interested.

Being able to set up a fully functional OS+web-server in only 8MB knowing exactly which things your server is running (for example) sounds like a good idea to me. Can you do that with any other OS?

But now that I'm actually using Linux to get work done I can't be offline for two months to flip through the documentation for every little GNU utility.

I would never ask you to do such a thing. Each one to his own, as someone above said.

Quote: Original post by twix?

Quote: Original post by owl
Of course. It's a trillon times harder to make a good game, than to play it.
Following you logic, nobody should make games.

I don't know why you'd say something like that. I'm sure you yourself can see how illogical it is.

Of course I can, for a moment I thought it was you who couldn't.

Quote: Original post by owl
Of course I can, for a moment I thought it was you who couldn't.

Oh, come on now. Let's be reasonable here. Why would someone want to make a game? Because they have an idea that isn't implemented in any other game that they think would be really cool. They really want to play a certain game, and it doesn't exist. If that weren't true, then the limit of our aspirations here in these boards would be to clone existing games. Kinda depressing, no?

And oddly enough, that's precisely what you're suggesting, just for operating systems. When making a LFS, are you creating something that fulfills a need that cannot be done just as well, nay, better by one of the existing solutions? Do you even have any prospect of doing so in the future?

I challenge you to say yes. [smile]

Quote: Original post by twix

Quote: Original post by owl
Of course I can, for a moment I thought it was you who couldn't.

Oh, come on now. Let's be reasonable here. Why would someone want to make a game? Because they have an idea that isn't implemented in any other game that they think would be really cool. They really want to play a certain game, and it doesn't exist. If that weren't true, then the limit of our aspirations here in these boards would be to clone existing games. Kinda depressing, no?

No, what's really depressing is to not follow your aspirations because someone else is already doing it. I belive Linux has a great potential on solving certain problems that no other OS can. And not only that, it has the potential of teaching people how to do it in the process. It movilizes people all arround the world into learning and creating things for everyone else. It makes technology/knowledge reach places where expending lot's of money in licences every year is not an option. It helps governments on being confident about the security of their information. It is a tool for movilizing people's neurons beyong their pockets. And IMHO, that a good thing.

Quote: Original post by owl
No, what's really depressing is to not follow your aspirations because someone else is already doing it. I belive Linux has a great potential on solving certain problems that no other OS can. And not only that, it has the potential of teaching people how to do it in the process. It movilizes people all arround the world into learning and creating things for everyone else. It makes technology/knowledge reach places where expending lot's of money in licences every year is not an option. It helps governments on being confident about the security of their information. It is a tool for movilizing people's neurons beyong their pockets. And IMHO, that a good thing.

Some of that is certainly true, but I won't get into what I agree with and disagree with, because here you've completely dodged the question. If you recall, we were discussing whether it is a good investment of time to make a LFS. You say it's much easier to maintain and secure, I say that not only is it neither of those to any large degree, but it also takes forever to set up. You say that I'm saying we shouldn't program games. I say that you're not making any sense.

We're not talking about people aspiring to make OSes for a living, we're talking about people who want to get work done using a good OS.

Has our discussion here run its course? [smile]

I had an LFS system running as my main system for several months, before I moved to gentoo. It was indeed a good learning experience and I think I gained a lot from it.

However, I had nothing better to do with my time. It took a significant length of time to set up the initial system, and that's basically just the kernel, libc, binutils, etc + bash. Nothing else :). I had to boot into windows to read the documentation on how to install anything more.

Right throughout the time I had it, and up until the time I removed it, I was having to install new apps - and this sometimes took a long time. No-one had written nice build scripts for me, I had to resolve all the dependancies for myself and download and install everything. Sometimes I simply could not get an application running.

So, do what you like. But don't expect it to be easy. Even redhat/mandrake linux still has issues when setting up and using. I like linux, but I'm not a fanboy. I am quite willing to admit that linux has many faults. However if it's worth it to you to overcome those faults - go ahead. Just be aware that using LFS has a lot lot more faults for you to overcome yourself that have been solved for you by using a more "mainstream" distro.