On 09/12/2016, Daniel Schepler <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, Dec 8, 2016 at 12:53 PM, Barius Drubeck <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> Check this one out Daniel. It comes close to what you describe. I >> wouldn't call it highly experimental though. ... >> >> https://www.archlinux.org/about/ [...] >> > That does sound fairly close to my vision of UnFrobbed GNU/Linux (as I've > dubbed it) - except that I would usually prefer to just avoid packaging > instead of patching where possible. e.g. I've unfortunately had to build a > patched version of mozjs-17.0.0 because of polkit's dependency on it; but > so far I've gotten by without having to package openjade, and if possible > I'd prefer to keep it that way and drop documentation depending on openjade > where needed, rather than keeping openjade on life support. > > I've recently gotten it to a point where it's able to boot a bare KDE > Plasma desktop (minus breeze-plymouth, plus konsole and Firefox - except > for some reason Firefox is calling itself "Nightly"). Right now the > biggest issue I have is the brokenness of flex-2.6.2. Plus for some > reason, after configuring the kernel with an Expect script > allmoddefconfig.exp selecting "M" wherever possible (except where the > prompt mentions something like "experimental" or "dangerous") and defaults > otherwise, that kernel won't boot with the dracut initrd; but the same > kernel version built with a configuration closer to what I had on LFS works > fine and can boot into my LVM logical volume. > > So, as you say, a distribution with minimal patches, and minimal changes > from the default configuration, does seem very usable. > -- > Daniel
It sounds like you are having fun :-) You give a lot of detail about specific packages but ultimately yes, it is possible to build and run a very usable bleeding edge GNU-Linux host with minimal patching. If you want to make all the rules, create your own 'distro'. I wouldn't really call (B)LFS a distro in the normal sense of the word, but you can certainly use it to create a usable system and tailor it to your own needs, or even just as a great source of information and a rough guide of how to approach the problems you might encounter... On your switch from patching to packaging you lost me, however. Your initial idea boiled down to two things as I read it: 1. Minimal patching 2. Latest upstream releases On the first point, no discussion. On the second point, my experience with trying to maintain a home brewed system (initially LFS then I went off to explore my own ideas, but regardless...) led me to the conclusion that some form of packaging is the best approach to maintaining a system over time. If you want to rebuild your system from scratch each time, it's not needed. But if you want to keep a running system up to date, you need a way to track what you installed and clean up old stray files when you upgrade things. Simply running 'make install' over the previous version will quickly lead to a mess! -- http://lists.linuxfromscratch.org/listinfo/lfs-chat FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/faq.html Unsubscribe: See the above information page
