Arch and Gentoo - Which is more hardcore/educational?

[darkphoenix22]

I am currently a maintainer of a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu called infinityOS. However, I am beginning to realize that I've much of what I can learn while being (enjoyably) babied by Ubuntu and aptitude.

I was looking at Arch and Gentoo, but was wondering. Which one would force me to learn more?

Thanks,
Ryan

PS You can check out my distribution at http://infinityos.net

[darkphoenix22]

Hmm. Perhaps this would be better placed on the "Distributions" forum.

Mods feel free to move it if you'd like.

[curaga]

LFS would be my suggestion. It's more intended at teaching anyway than a standard distro.

[LinuxID10T]

LFS would definitely be educational... But you need SERIOUS experience before diving into it. Arch really isn't that hardcore. Gentoo the past few years has moved from being hardcore to even having a live installer. Honestly, you are just as well off with Ubuntu as you are with either Arch or Gentoo these days. While Ubuntu may seem like a beginners distro at first, it is actually quite powerful.

[Dragonlord]

LFS if you want to learn Linux. It's very unforgiving but I would not be where I am today without it. Arch I don't know but Gentoo is often more chore than educational (so more hard than core). So if you don't want to get down and dirty with LFS you can also just stick to Ubuntu and company.

[darkphoenix22]

LFS sounds like a good summer project.

It seems made for VMWare too. :P

[chithanh]

Gentoo is a very good distro to learn about Linux. After some time of getting used to it, you could even make it your primary OS. With LFS this would become too cumbersome.

Some Gentoo-based distributions have an installer but you will not get the same learning experience from that.

If you are really interested in acquiring general knowledge in this matter, then I suggest that you take a look at FreeBSD too.

[darkphoenix22]

Well, it seems like I'll be doing on a reading course this summer for university credit for doing a LFS build. I'm calling it "Seeing Linux in the Eyes of its Creators".

In the spirit of open source, I'll likely release my build and papers under the Creative Commons once I'm done.

Here's my pre-proposal:

I was also wondering if I could do another reading credit where I
build Linux from scratch using no install system. I would be using the
documentation from the "Linux From Scratch" project. I would also have
a history overview of how the Linux kernel and GNU userland were
developed and the philosophies and development models behind the
project.

You can see the documentation here, http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/ .
I would also likely be using the folowing as sources:


- A documentary on Linux called "Revolution OS":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_OS

- Richard Stallman's biography "Free as in Freedom":

http://oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/

- Linus Torvald's biography "Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental
Revolutionary"

- "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" by Eric M. Raymond (this is the essay
that convinced Netscape to go open source):

http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/

- "The Art of Unix Programming" by Eric M. Raymond:

http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/

Thanks,
Ryan Oram

Perhaps it would make a good reading course for those of you also in Computer Science.

[darkphoenix22]

On a side note, there's something else I've been working on. I call it "the infinity Manifesto".

Here's an excerpt:

infinityOS was created due to a belief that the means of the production, distribution, and consumption of our media should be completely free and open. Even if our media itself may not be free-of-charge. It is intended to be a platform on which one may use his media, free of restrictions beyond those of copyright itself.

In order for society to prosper, we must be able to control and customize our tools and means of communication. Through a system of open and universal digital rights management, I intend to bring the control of the media back to the people.

I'll probably release it with my next release of infinityOS.

[RealNC]

Good luck with your 100.000th Linux distro which actually does the same things as the other 99.999.