Learning Linux the hardcore way: Linux From Scratch

I 've made my own linux from scratch based distro (not released yet) and i think this is a good project, there are some quirks but at all is a good book and the recipes are very accurate. Some package are little old for my taste, then i substitute many of them, but for now i can compile everything i want into my box, even some unsupported packages as KDE 3.5 or some others. I add it RPM based installation using RPM 4.6 and i think is very solid for now, i expect to release some alpha version for this winter.

I've said this many times. I'm geeky enough that I'd read about source-based distributions, ports software systems, and thought I'd "enjoy" compiling from source. Turns out I hate it. One of the greatest things about Linux distributions is that they generally build the whole thing from kernel and userland to the entire application repository.

Having complex compiling jobs fail after nearly a day on the CPU, suffering through a three-day-long ports upgrade of FreeBSD that only ended when I pulled the plug. It's too much pain.

Steven: Then ALFS is for you; http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/alfs/

@hkwint;

How easy it to patch the kernel is it w/ ALFS? I ask this because I have a couple of pieces of hardware that are in need of driver patches for (somewhat) exotic devices.

Sadly never used it, as Gentoo can be seen as 'automated from scratch' as well. But easier. So hence Gentoo.