Frank Peters <frank.pet...@comcast.net> skribis: > I hope that you are right, but when I see distributions like "Linux > From Scratch," which purport to give the user total understanding > and control of his system, not including alternatives to udev I begin > to have serious doubts.
Having built LFS and CLFS systems, I can say the process is not very informative, at least not anymore. It is basically like those old Radio Shack electronics kits where they told you what to solder where, but you still were given very little if any idea how the device worked. Stick udev here, stick pam there, etc. What you _do_ learn is (a) how to bootstrap a Linux OS from another Linux OS (in a bit more detail than you learn with modern Gentoo) and (b) how to use GNU Autotools much more effectively. This is like learning how to solder, but not like learning electronics. I do not see what is so difficult to understand about our position. Imagine if Gentoo started requiring that you use a generic kernel, because upstream software no longer worked if you configured your own kernel. You’d still be getting free-as-in-beer software, but effectively you would have lost some of your liberty.
