I just saw a DistroTube video with this question. Quite a thought provoking question [for this seasoned distroholic at least].
“What’s the hardest Linux distro you’ve tried?” can be interpreted many ways, and I wonder what kinds of answers we’ll get.
Especially these days, with much change underfoot and newer users having a different distrosphere to explore…
What’s the hardest Linux distro you’ve tried?
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No doubt the hardest was the first one. I recall it was slackware with kernel 2.x around the late 90s. Having to recompile the kernel and configure manually the scan line freq for the monitor made it challenging. Ah yes, the man pages I printed them at work, that was all I had access to. No internet.
Still remember that as well. Though I was in school and had plenty time at my hand. Was a very rewarding experience. Not necessarily easy by any means. But it was so much more capable than any Windows 98 or ME. Didn’t crash like the latter. There was a million things to explore. Software to just install which I’d never have been able to afford as a school kid. Also way easier to customize, or read some log files and fix things once I understood how the filesystem is laid out.
And the CRT monitor was fine. Ours just displayed an error message if the frequency was wrong. At some point I grabbed a permanent marker and wrote the mode line onto the back if the monitor. Problem solved.
Your comment on writing down the freq made me chuckle… I did the same! For some odd reason I still have that old CRT…
How were you running a CRT on batteries?
Very big batteries! Haha
Now really I have no idea, I gave the monitor to my dad, a ham radio enthusiast. All his stuff was tagged with similar cryptic notes, only he could understand.
Linux from Scratch
Everything is built from scratch.
First, you need some kind of host Linux system, which then is used to compile and install everything to target environment.
It is quite a huge undertaking, needs lots of time and patience. Basic LFS book is around 280 pages, and it will just give Linux terminal - you will need to go Beyond Linux from Scratch to actually get desktop environment running.
I have installed it twice, as a learning experience.
Linux from Scratch is not a distribution; it’s a documentation how you build your own distribution from scratch.
It is not a distribution, but when you build your own Linux from Scratch, it will become your own distribution - thus it is distribution!
No, your distribution is the distribution. Your distribution doesn’t make Linux from Scratch into one. Let’s say I think your distribution is the best one for me. That does not mean another distribution created with the help of the documentation found at Linux from Scratch the best one too. Those are two different distributions. Linux from Scratch remains the documentation how to create one.
It’s like finding a video tutorial how to program your own program a little game. The video tutorial doesn’t become a game, it remains documentation how you write your own game. That’s comparable situation with Linux from Scratch (in relation to our discussion).
You just asserted elsewhere in this thread, that it’s not debatable. … Seemed like you were already putting forth debate arguments a day ago here.
I am not debating with you if LFS is a distribution or not, I teach you that its not.
No one here agrees to your definition.
Which does not change facts of being true or false.
“What’s the hardest Linux distro you’ve tried?” can be interpreted many ways
it’s a documentation
Rather than merely repeat and invite an infinite loop… I wonder how you’ve interpreted what you just responded to.
I don’t understand what you mean by that. There is nothing to interpret really. Linux from scratch is not a distribution, its a documentation how you build one from scratch. So I’m not sure what else to say about that. Maybe… a car example. :D
Let’s say someone asks you which specific car model you like the most. Would the answer “I don’t like a specific model, but I have a tutorial document how to build my own car from scratch, every single bit of it” a correct answer? To me, no. Because the question was about a specific model. A document how to create one is not a specific model. Hope that makes sense. BTW I’m not trying to be an ashowl or anything. I’m dead serious.
I’m not sure if this is trolling, or some kind of philosophical stumble (like some kind of naive realism ~ hence oblivious to interpretation), or even a personality malady (like NPD, impeding capacity for introspection).
To assert there’s nothing to interpret… is a difficult stance to approach, having already concluded, contrary to present evidence, as if there’s so clearly only one interpretation, so much obliviously so, like the fish asking “what’s water?”, that there’s no interpretation at all…
And so, having dodged answering the question, it’s difficult to know how to proceed.
Also further made difficult by you not answering the question asked about the substance of the question, but answering something entirely different. I wondered (left it open to answer, did not pose it as a direct question), how you interpreted what you just responded to…
as in
“What’s the hardest Linux distro you’ve tried?” can be interpreted many ways
I was wondering how you interpreted that line. Perchance that may lead to clarification as to what led you to simply repeat
it’s a documentation
re-asserting your position, seemed to be missing that this can be, and (evidently through the other comments) has been, interpreted many ways. So I still wonder, how did you interpret that line that restated that the question can be interpreted many ways?
As for your assertion itself, that you’ve double down on, as if there can be no other interpretation… Have you heard of a no-true Scotsman fallacy? The lines are blurred as to what defines a distro, even without someone offering reassurance to interpret a question about distros freely. Would you baulk similarly at various ilk of meta distros and installation scripts and other instructions? If the scripts that fetch the programs that comprise your operating system get from upstream sources, are they no longer a distro either? Where is the line for you, since you exclude LFS? And, we’re all to just agree with your decree? Given thus far^, not my pope of FOSS. Heh.
If I build a car from instructions, then I have that car. … Now you’ve got me hankering after a Caterham again. Heh.
I wonder also how, in your world view, distros based on LFS are assessed. Like on distrowatch, they too draw the distinction, between being Independent, and LFS based.
And still, I am very intrigued by your world view, how you square this away…
Don’t you know what a Linux distribution is? It is an operating system that has the Linux Kernel and is distributed so you can install it.
Linux from Scratch is a documentation / tutorial. There is nothing to interpret. That is the definition. You don’t buy a book how to build a car and say this book is a car that includes a motor and is ready to be installed.
Probably trying to design and build my own custom distro. There’s help like LFS but you still need to read an entire book and learn about a million important decisions to make. I scrapped the idea. It’s just hard and then how am I even going to maintain it?
I successfully had a running LFS build.
It booted, I typed in
ls /saw my folders, thought it was neat and read up on what would be required to get a GUI up and running, then deleted the partition.
Gentoo. I’ve gotten to stage 3 a few times, but somehow I cannot get past it (Be it a VM issue or a skill issue)
Follow the Gentoo wiki. It is all that is needed to get across the finish line. What you will learn along the way about how all of the pieces fit together is pretty valuable IMHO.
SLS Linux. I feel old.
First challenge: getting it.
It was about 25-30 3.5" floppy disks, but you had to download the disk images, and I downloaded them to my PC via a modem connected to the modem pool at the University where I worked. At the time, they had no limits on the use of the modem pool, so I was able to stay connected and just keep downloading until I had it all.
Then, you had to manually create the disk partitions and create the file systems on them. When that was all done correctly, you could run the install script.
I switched to Slackware when it came out. I also downloaded that to a SunOS box at work and used that to write the floppies.
Slackware. 64 disks. Three of them somehow failed verification, and i had to re-download them the next day at university.
With “download” being an euphemism here. I had to get the disk images via email from bitftp@pucc (if anyone remembers), over the 38400 baud line of the department. Get one disk image in 64kb emails, decode and join the attachments, log in on the PC, copy it to disk, and log out. Delete everything on the VAX (the disk quota did not allow for more), and request the next disk image from Princeton.
