Cocoa Geek

There are loads of different Linux distributions around these days, and this number seems to get bigger every week. Loads of them are great and some are really great but how can you actually use one to learn Linux, and what techniques do you use?

One of the problems with learning about a Linux system and its structure is that its just so massive. Particularly for someone not familiar with Unix or another similar system, and although there these days it is easy to get up and running – especially with the advent of really good package managers and lots on online tutorials. But what about the real nuts and bolts of Linux hacking? Where do you start?

This is where Linux From Scratch comes in this is a really interesting book that details hot to build your own Linux distribution. The writers have written this because they find the current distribution not customizable enough and as much as I agree that there could be things done I think for most uses a standard distribution is absolutely great. The real benefit from trying this is that you get a really good insight into the inner working of Linux as well as several major problems with installing like this (How do you compile a compiler without a compiler?). On the whole its very interesting however definitely not something I would put on a production machine, it takes a lot of work to build this and set it up – setting it up for a production environment would be even more difficult!

I shall be playing with this over the next couple of weeks, so I will keep you all informed.