BLFS version 6.3 is the complement to the LFS 6.3 book. It has been 18 months since the last release of BLFS and almost 12 months since LFS-6.3 was released. Though we would like to release BLFS versions as quickly as possible after an LFS release, this version lagged a bit due to Editor inactivity. However, early on in 2008 several new Editors were brought on board which helped stimulate a flurry of activity. Many new packages have been introduced in the 6.3 version, as well as many updates, refinements and additions to the existing packages.
The BLFS book now provides build and configuration instructions for almost 500 packages (many more than that if you want to count each individual package in the autotooled X Window instructions). Some of the new packages introduced in this version are: Dash, ksh, D-Bus bindings, Wireshark (formerly named Ethereal), rxvt-unicode, Gutenprint (formerly name Gimp-Print), Pidgin (formerly name Gaim), GnuTLS (and many of its dependencies), Qt version 4.x, GnuPG version 2.x, and Amarok. Major updates include GNOME-2.18.3 (with several new GNOME packages), KDE-3.5.9, Firefox-2.x, Thunderbird-2.x, and most (if not all) of the mainline server packages. As always, the list of packages that have been upgraded or added as well as configuration and build command changes are annotated in the Change Log.
As always, the main thrust of BLFS development will be to support the changes in the current LFS development book, but we're releasing this version of BLFS so that builders of the stable LFS book can continue on into BLFS with known good instructions that should be 100% compatible to provide a semi current and very stable Linux platform.
Enjoy!
Randy McMurchy
August 24th, 2008
Last updated on 2008-08-24 14:01:22 -0500