I was having a go with LFS on a VM and progressing quite well, learning a lot as I went along. When I paused to learn a bit more about networking, LFS released a new version, so I’d rather now restart with that next time around. The way the process works though, I think I’ll confuse myself least by starting with a new base VM and starting from scratch - pun intended 
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What base VM are you using? Went for Debian here.
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Debian stable. I find it a good choice, but check my posts on VMs especially if you’re using Virtualbox. I find Gnome boxes far more stable.
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Great suggestion.
It’s definitely on the list for me too. I thought I’d go through a few other things first working my way up to LFS but as long as it’s done in a way where I actually do everything in my own LFS (because that’s the point for me, to do everything and look at the result and be proud) I can’t think of a better little community to embark on the journey with.
I love the idea of a community distro!
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I figured as much. Have had nothing but tiny problems already. Wondering if i should go Ubuntu or Pop!_OS. I’m leaning towards pop.
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Is your VM running on Virtualbox or Gnome Boxes or Virtual Machine Manager, I wonder? I’ve found Boxes rock-solid under Debian 10 Stable and am on the verge of switching completely away from Virtualbox, sadly. Just not getting my work done with it 
Update:
I’ve experimented further with my Virtualbox Debian 10 Stable guest under Debian 10 Stable host and posted how I got best results on another thread, as I’ve been reporting my ongoing experiments there:
Further update - I’ve summarised what works best for me in this tutorial:
Happy LFS + BLFS building everyone!
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Tried with virtualbox and KVM. Going to do it on Hardware with pop as a build environment.
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It was insanely easy on bare metal. I got mine installed dual booted with arch linux, Just the very basic system, nothing extra. It works on reboot, but I obviously have no network or anything. So I’m now in the process of chrooting back in from arch and installing all the extras.
In some ways this is more interesting that building linux itself from scratch, because now I have choices. LFS requires that you do everything the way it says… (Although I skipped grub since it was already installed in arch) BLFS is much more open. Leaves things a little more likely to break!
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Wow you’ve done it already?! That’s fantastic 
I just don’t have the hardware to spare to try it on, so it’ll have to be VM for me!
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I don’t normally have free hardware, but I had to do a reinstall for some stuff, and figured I’d save 50gb on my hard drive just for this.
It wasn’t hard to do once I got the hang of it. This isn’t really my first rodeo, I’ve fallen off this horse a few times before! Decided this time it was going to happen.
Honestly, the actual base install wasn’t that rough. I mean. I wouldn’t recommend it to someone whose only experience with linux was like, installed pop_OS! in a VM, but if you’ve installed arch or better yet gentoo, you’ll be just fine.
On the other hand, running through Beyond Linux From Scratch so that the system is actually USEFUL, has been much more complex. Everything depends on everything else, and you have to install things, then install something else, then install the original thing again only with the new dependency included…
Hit a bit of a snag for some of it where the makes started failing and I’m not sure why. Had to quit for the night 'cos I’m going cross-eyed and seeing terminals full of scrolling text if I close my eyes…
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@onesubtractone I started LFS as an excuse to get my shell-scripting up to scratch. When I reached the networking sections I stopped a bit to delve deeper. Then they released a new version. What I’m really keen on is BLFS for the reason that it could open the door for me to work on some FOSS projects, which is a current goal. Sound’s like you’re doing really well - inspiringly well, actually! Thanks for sharing your progress
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What you just said right there is the answer to why people use systems with package management.
I read through the LFS docs with the part generally dissing packages and asking why anyone would use them when they could compile their own. And that’s the answer. Compiling stuff can be a pain in the behind if you want to use your computer to do things other than set up your computer. 
Don’t get me wrong I’ve done my fair share of compiling packages, but sometimes source won’t compile and the package works so what’s a person to do.
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That’s very true from a user perspective. I think the first goal of LFS though, is to learn from. Developers need to be experienced with building their code to be able to target different platforms. LFS folk advocating build from code are only emphasising that there is an option to have near-complete control over one’s system by doing that, though it’s a far stretch from most users’ wants and needs, I think.
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I don’t think I’ll be jumping away from package managers permanently any time soon. All this building from scratch stuff is fun for just messing with, but I am an old man and I don’t have the time or the patience to live like this day to day. It’s certainly an experience I don’t regret, and I think it’s a great idea for anyone just to try and see how this whole thing goes together.
But I miss my pacman!
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I’ve been dragging my feet and looking at the release date for 9.0, looks like we’re already half-way through the release cycle. I was having a go with the previous version (8.4, not systemd version) and reached p232, section 7.5 on General Network Configuration, which I know almost nothing about, so I paused to do some learning.
I assume everyone in this group’s working on version 9.0? Systemd or non-systemd version, I wonder?
I’m going to have a crack at getting started with 9.0 (non-systemd) and see how that goes, posting updates on here from time to time. Should be relatively straightforward up to the networking section, at least, hopefully!
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Fri 06 Dec (Completed to end of section 2.2, p 14)
I’m using Debian 10.2 Stable, running Virtualbox 6.0, Debian 10.2 Stable guest VM which will act as host for LFS version 9.0, non-systemd.
Checked and installed required build software on VM host. Corrected symbolic links as required. Ran the test script to ensure ready to proceed.
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Mon 09 Dec (Completed to end of section 3.3, p27)
Created partition for LFS. Enabled auto-mounting. Exported LFS environment
variable for normal user and root in .bashrc. Used script to download all
source packages and patches.
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So I have about a million things on my plate - but I want to do this!!!
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We’re chatting with each other on this forum to encourage and support - so I hope you manage to find time for it The release cycle is about six months, as I said, and we’re about half way through, so in another three months…!
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I’m also doing LFS non-systemd off Debian 10 in a Virtualbox VM, started last week, done virtually nothing so far because I’ve been doing Linux Academy stuff instead. I’m in the Telegram group but realised that I can’t really be bothered to use Telegram that much
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