[jake_morrison]

Linux from Scratch is educational but fundamentally impractical to use.

I recommend using embedded Linux instead, e.g. with Buildroot. You get an understanding of the fundamentals of the hardware, kernel, and build toolchain. And you can create small hardware systems that do fun things.

I ran Gentoo for a few years, and enjoyed it. Doing the install from stage1 gives you a similar understanding of how the pieces fit together and enables you to fix low level system problems, e.g. with disk failures. The community is also smart, as it self-selects for people who have skills and good attitude. Unfortunately Gentoo is too slow to install and quirky to deploy on servers.