Its hard, but you will understand all how it works if you keep at it. Also its nice skill to have, not to many people can do linux. Some say they can but are using Live CDs and other easy distros. Nothing against them, thats were I started, but its hard to compare ubuntu to LFS, Slack, Gentoo, etc.
Did you end up going LFS or some other route?
aja,
why don't you try gentoo or slackware before you try linux from scratch, or even along side? it will certainly help you learn much faster. I go to school in Pittsburgh and a couple of my comp engineering buddies at Carnegie Mellon started with slack or gentoo before they built their first LFS system. I think it would be a better transition, going straight to LFS is pretty abrupt. I recommend slackware, gentoo's portage is unique, and with slack you'll get a feel for a wider variety of distros and a good understanding of linux as a whole. One bonus with gentoo is the documentation. Their wiki and text documentation is superb. slackware has a die hard following, and the community is less supportive, but it happens to be my distro of choice.
Thanks for the replies guys!
The "harder than I thought" was referring to erm, *cough* ubuntu *cough-cough*. Yeah, You never heard me say that....
I grew up with DOS, so the command line thing is fine for me, very natural. It is driver support that is killing me here. At the moment I am running on the PC in my sig, because no other PC's I own seem to want to play nice with Ubuntu.
I am used to my toys - wireless mice, X-Fi sound card, HP iPaq PDA, PDA cellphone etc... And these seem difficult to get to work. But I am patient and understanding, so I will work at it.
My last exam is wednesday, then the fun starts when I will try LFS, as well as Gentoo as you guys suggested.
I am a PC tech and if I can get a grip on Linux I can make myself much more useful at work. It is one of the best skills to have these days IMO. The company I work for kinda hate Linux and are real Microsoft fanboys. (Hmm, I wonder if I should break it to them that their main firewall protecting the entire call center, every other PC and all 9 servers is running Linux? hehe...)
I am a fast learner, but this will take time. I also have to learn Solidworks CAD software and C programming these holidays for university, so I will be busy
I think I will definitely go the gentoo route, especially because of the documentation factor...