[dndn1]

I followed LFS and BLFS instructions verbatim when I was a kid with so much time on my hands. Enormously informative and also empowering to get from source code to a complex usable system and to be aware of every package.

Even just skimming the passages about security and other bits now, this is still an epic resource to get real grounded knowledge about pieces of the complex systems I can merely use nowadays.

[_joel]

This and doing stage 0 Gentoo install, which subsequently broke in interesting ways on running emerge. Fixing that was probably what got me enough 'real world' skill to be able to do it for a living.. 20 years later, here we are. Still grateful for the ricing :)

[bombcar]

Gentoo was what finally make me understand what LILO was doing, and how GRUB worked, and why it was better.

[RetroTechie]

Same here. But looking back, it also shows the limitations of a modern desktop OS: there's too many big, complex components, all with intricate interactions, to set it up manually. Because -let's be honest- (B)LFS is a great learning resource, but a totally impractical way to get an OS up & running.

Automation is key here. Check dependencies, download archive(s), unpack, apply config options, compile, run tests, (optionally) build binary package, install: it all has to be automated or it quickly becomes unworkable.

I'd love to see more built-from-scratch OSes that include development tools, do something useful on modern hardware, but are small(er) to the point that it's easier to wrap one's head around the whole. Think Forth-based with a simple GUI, Oberon, Plan 9, Inferno or similar.