your favorite partitioning tool, such as GParted . Downloading Initial Source Code Once you have your partitions ready, you'll need to head over to Chapter 3 to download the source code for all necessary packages and patches. As far as I'm aware of, all of these packages are absolutely required, so your system won't run without these. Then again, the front page of LFS brags that a system can be tweaked down to a mere 5MB, but you really have to know what you're doing in order to accomplish that. Compiling & Installing Your Base System After making a few more changes as final preparations as defined in Chapter 4 of the documentation, you will begin to build the bare-bones of your LFS system. By following the guide, you'll be compiling the tools which will make up the toolchain which you will then use to build the rest of the basics. Once you've completed that, you'll "chroot" into your new system (which is the equivalent of restarting into your new operating system, except you are not literally restarting and the change only applies to your terminal window) and begin compiling everything else that will make up your new operating system. Once you have a simple configuration going, you can begin to install other software that will make your system truly yours. What other software you should install is completely up to you, your wants, and your needs. Just remember, there is no package manager as the software's source code is