WOW! where have all these people come from? Jeremy asks about the LiveCD and suddenly we have more posts to these mail lists in two days than in the last 3 months!
I have been thinking about this since the "Happy Birthday LFS" post from Gerard a few days ago. Since then, Jeremy's quest has certainly stirred up some terrific energy. I think that the LiveCD debate is fairly clear-cut in that the majority want something to stay. The recent posts about What next are more relevant and will probably help to determine what a LFS CD might actually look like. So below, I post a fairly high level, non-technical suggestion about the LFS project. Firstly, Gerard is definitely on the right track in his recent posts, and DJ also hit the nail on the head too with some of his concerns. To paraphrase Gerard's ideas (I hope correctly): * combine the resources/knowledge of the various projects into something more coherent, * Implement PM (Oh yes, oh yes) * Move away from the manual cmmi to an automated build system (Sounds a bit like Gentoo) * Make the LFS book more informative and less "techy/geek" speak. The last point is a great one and where we can *all* get involved. You don't need to be a software hacker, XML guru (where is Manuel BTW?), or whatever to help with writing good material. My own thoughts on where LFS needs to go have been going on for quite some time as I have seen the list activity dwindle and I myself have become more accustomed to using Ubuntu <don asbestos suit />. However, this last few days it really looks like there could be some momentum to actually make some changes and bring life back to the project. I keep coming back to education... That was the goal of LFS and should continue to be it's overriding objective. So perhaps the LFS project becomes some sort of "course" (And I use the term loosely). The "modules" of which, could be something like: * Learning the basics (Command Line, cmmi, security, toolchain, blah blah) * Scripting/Automating (A subject about how LFS get built, the tools, the process etc) * Basic Useful Applications (A sort of mini BLFS where we get networking, X and maybe Firefox/TB type apps installed) * Building your Distro (Completing the core build-out adding your chosen apps and utilities and configuring) * Making it your Distro distributable (How to make a liveCD or "your distro", how to make an installer script...) I'm sure you can get the idea: the modules might not be quite right, but breaking the process up into manageable chunks, where knowledge can be given/gained that is pretty mandatory before going onto the next step. I'm sure that it's the educational aspect of LFS that can keep it apart from the usual distributions, but there should be *no* reason why a competent user of the LFS instructions can't end up with a perfect Distro, for their needs that is maintainable and repeatable. In fact this could spur a great many new ideas and innovation... I'd be happy and willing to support this project with some of my time and my somewhat limited skills ;-) Alan LFS ID: (216 2.4.x) -- The way out is open! http://www.theopensourcerer.com -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/lfs-dev FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq/ Unsubscribe: See the above information page
