Beyond Linux From Scratch (BLFS), the complement to the Linux From Scratch book, is now version 6.3 RC1. After 15 months of work since the last release of BLFS and approximately nine months from the 6.3 release of LFS, Beyond Linux From Scratch will guide the reader through additions to the system including sound, printer and scanner support, networking and much more.

With the help of the BLFS book, you will learn how to build and configure almost 500 packages. New packages were also included in Beyond Linux From Scratch, such as: Wireshark, rxvt-unicode, Gutenprint, Pidgin, GnuTLS, Qt 4.x, Amarok and many others. The most important updated packages are GNOME 2.18.3, KDE 3.5.9, Firefox 2.x and Thunderbird 2.x, and almost all mainline server packages.

Beyond Linux From Scratch continues where the LFS book finishes, by helping developers build their system as they please, and by offering a detailed manual (more than 1,100 pages at this moment) with instructions for installing and configuring different libraries, applications, etc. on top of a LFS system.

Linux From Scratch is a project that tries to teach users about the internal mechanisms of a Linux system. If you want to start your own Linux distribution by using the instructions in LFS, you will need to have a certain level of knowledge of Unix system administration and you should know how to use the command line.

When you install a normal Linux distribution, you always get a lot of programs that you might never use. An LFS-based system could fit in 100 MB, depending on what you need. If you continue with BLFS, you can build your own multimedia Linux distribution, office workstation, server, router, or combine all of them and create a general distribution. You alone can decide what to do with the knowledge you gain by using LFS and BLFS.

Download Linux From Scratch 6.3 right now from Softpedia.

Download Beyond Linux From Scratch 6.3 RC1 right now from Softpedia.