Frequently Asked Questions

This page is in help of those that are interested in LSD GNU/Linux but still have some question to be cleared out before stepping onto the stage of joy.

What is the current state of this project?
Currently the project is in Stable state and is considered stable enough to be built upon. Major changes are unlikely to happen so you can install from an installation media, start using it and helping out in the development process if you so wish. More about that here.

How is it different than the other (hundreds) of distributions out there?
Following colosely the LFS and BLFS books you can get pretty much the minimum you need to get a Linux installation that you are in control, meaning that the customizations after installation is very easy. The software shipped in it doesn't come with bells and whistles but it works. There are a few things that make the other distributions "bloated" - PAM, ConsoleKit (which is pretty much dead), and other not very well implemented tools that LSD GNU/Linux tries to keep you out from which later can cause troubles even with halting, hibernating or even login into to your setup just because of some god damn rules are borked/shipped incorrectly or even an upstream bug.

The major play in this project is the Pacmanpackage  manager - it is very neat package manager and along with makepkg, shipped with Pacman, handling of software packages becomes a breez. Once you get to know it you will get inloved with it.

LSD GNU/Linux is what you are looking for if you don't want to deal with toolchains and hours of compilation of the base system where everything can go wrong and you will have to start all-over-again. Or you probably came here from Arch Linux, that's perfectly fine. This project will provide you with stable base on which you can expand by doing it your way.

But there are things that the other rolling-release distribution are missing and that is avoiding constant shape-shifting software. LSD GNU/Linux uses the latest old-stable, bugfix or LTS (Long Term Support) releases provided by upstream and using it until the next one is out. An example is Git, currently there are 1.8.0.3 and 1.8.1.3 versions available, LSD GNU/Linux ships the 1.8.0.3 to make sure that no show-stopper and security bugs are present and give upstream time to fix them, if any, in the new major release.

Other minor things you will not notice unless go deep into the packages files (PKGBUILDs) is that the only documentation shipped with the packages are the manual pages and in some rare cases example files. That's because most of the people don't even bother reading the documentation provided and use online resources. But then again, the packages ship correct manual pages, not like Arch Linux. Manual pages from packages are usually more precise then those shipped by the man-pages (TODO: link) package because they are generated at compile time and not "static", what this means is that paths referenced in manual pages are the ones set via the configure script so there are no mismatches in them, i.e. the manual says that the keyboard data is in /usr/local/share/kbd where it actually resides in /lib/kbd. Also, generating the manual pages at compile time ensures they are for the version of the software the package ships and reference to features is not invalid/obsolete. Conflicting man-pages are removed from the man-pages package and not the original ones.

And since testing a package for bugs could take a lot of time the test suite of the packaged software, if there is, is used to make sure that the software provided works as the author(s) inteded. This reduces the possibility of major bugs glide into the software. Keep in mind that not every test suite is good enough for its job, there are also some "excpected" failures here and there.

Another minor thing are the Licesnes. Packages from LSD GNU/Linux utilize to potential of the license funtion of Pacman and makepkg to ship correct information about the License that the software package uses, not like Arch Linux (texinfo for an example). Licenses check is done before bumping a package to new version to ensure consistency.

Which people is it targeted at?
Advanced users! You will have to deal with configuration files, probably your own set of packages and such which requires time an patients. If you can not handle it feel free to use Debian, Ubuntu or other more "user-friendly" distribution.

LSD GNU/Linux uses Pacman package manager, can I install packages from Arch Linux?
No, you can not. The packages builded and shipped in the repositories are builded following closely the LFS and BLFS books and as such their names and dependencies packages are differnet.

There is one thing that can be done - compile and install packages from the ABS tree. This will ensure that packages are at least linked properly against the packages shipped with LSD GNU/Linux but then again an issue here or there may occur while attempting to compile the software and you will have to deal with that.

For more information take a look at this page.

What packages are currently available?
Currently Core holds the base set of packages, some development tools (make, m4, binutils, etc.), test tools (expect, dejagnu), git, python2, tcl, aciidoc and other misc packages.

Extra holds xorg, xfce4, fluxbox, opera, gtk2, glib, dbus and other GUI releated libraries, dependencies and build dependencies of those just listed. Total of ~120 in core and ~90 packages in extra.

Some packages are in testing phase and are not in the repositories but sources are avialable for all of them for you to pick up.

So what packages will be available and when?
Most likely the packages will no grow in number unless people start helping out. Those from Core are the main focus and should be bullet proof, Extra is second. If you find packages missing feel free to get in touch with the people responsible for software packaging or the repository maintainers and you will be granted write access to the repository, then you can maintain your own set of packages.

What architectures it is available for?
Currently only amd64/x86_64. That is because it will require much more work to deal with both architectures and there aren't much people involved in this project, list of contributors can be found here.

Will i686 architecture packages be avialable?
Currently there are no plans for it, the sources however are ready for cooking a i686 build so you can pick up on it if you so wish. Keep in mind that dealing with toolchains, which is the first thing you need to, is not as easy as you may think and the process will require lots of patients.

How can I get support if I get stuck with something?
Preferably, open a discussion at the forums hosted at our website. As an alternative y ou can contact us dirrectly by sending an email to the contributors in the area you have issue(s) with, have a look the wiki page listing contributors about them.

Something missing here?
If you have questions feel free to leave a comment or edit the Wiki iteself, just make sure you read the rules first.