On 3/26/21 12:36 PM, Rainer Fiebig via blfs-support wrote:
Hi all!
First, thanks to you and the team of LFS for your work and effort! I
think that in terms of digital self-empowerment LFS/BLFS is the most
important and most valuable Linux-distribution of all.
There is hardly anything to criticize. From my own experience however, I
think that two aspects could be improved in BLFS:
1. Like for LFS, there should be a file with the md5sums
Verification of the packages is important. But having to check each of
several hundreds of checksums individually is really a tedious exercise
without much educational value.
The idea is of course to download the packages one needs and then check
the md5sums with
md5sum -c md5sum_file
against those in the file.
How would we create the md5sum_file if we don't know what files the user
wants ahead of time?
2. In hindsight, I would have appreciated a clear path to a
desktop-environment
I know what the "Introduction" in the book says: "Unlike the Linux From
Scratch book, BLFS isn't designed to be followed in a linear manner."
But in BLFS it is IMO very easy to get lost and frustrated in choices
and especially *dependency-hell* ("Dammit! Not another one!!!"). IMO
this aspect is rather a test for one's resolve than an encouraging
learning experience.
So what I suggest, is a clearly identifiable common thread within the
book or a list with the install-sequence (!) of those essential packages
one needs to have as a basis for a desktop environment.
I think this would make it much easier for the newcomer to build a
complete system and get a motivating sense of achievement - in half the
time. And the gain in knowledge wouldn't be any less, IMO.
This would be very difficult. Everyone want to do it in a different
way. What optional dependencies does the user want/need? Xorg is
designed to be built in order as is xfce and lxde. However there are
jumps out to get dependencies.
About the best way I can think of is for someone to write a hint and
list the order of packages needed for a specific situation. If you
check out jhalfs, there is a way to select what you want and it then
generates a list taking dependencies into account.
Hope this was the right list to post this to.
Yes, it's the right list.
-- Bruce
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