Free scratch software for linux

Linux From Scratch (LFS) is a project that provides you with the steps necessary to build your own custom Linux system.
There are a lot of reasons why somebody would want to install an LFS system. The question most people raise is "why go through all the hassle of manually installing a Linux system from scratch when you can just download an existing distribution?". That is a valid question which I hope to answer for you.
The most important reason for LFSs existence is teaching people how a Linux system works internally. Building an LFS system teaches you about all that makes Linux tick, how things work together, and depend on each other. And most importantly, how to customize it to your own taste and needs.
One of the key benefits of LFS is that you are in control over your system without having to rely on somebody elses Linux implementation. You are in the drivers seat now and are able to dictate every single thing such as the directory layout and boot script setup. You will also know exactly where, why and how programs are installed.
Another benefit of LFS is that you can create a very compact Linux system. When you install a regular distribution, you end up installing a lot of programs you probably would never use. Theyre just sitting there taking up (precious) disk space. Its not hard to get an LFS system installed under 100 MB. Does that still sound like a lot? A few of us have been working on creating a very small embedded LFS system. We installed a system that was just enough to run the Apache web server; total disk space usage was aproximately 8 MB. With further stripping, that can be brought down to 5 MB or less. Try that with a regular distribution.
If we were to compare a Linux distribution with a hamburger you buy at a supermarket or fast-food restaurant, you would end up eating it without knowing precisely what it is you are eating, whereas LFS gives you the ingredients to make a hamburger. This allows you to carefully inspect it, remove unwanted ingredients, and at the same time allow you to add ingredients to enhance the flavour of your hamburger. When you are satisfied with the ingredients, you go on to the next part of putting it together. You now have the chance to make it just the way you like it: broil it, bake it, deep-fry it, barbeque it, or eat it raw.
Another analogy that we can use is that of comparing LFS with a finished house. LFS will give you the skeleton of a house, but its up to you to install plumbing, electrical outlets, kitchen, bathtub, wallpaper, etc.
Another advantage of a custom built Linux system is added security. You will compile the entire system from source, thus allowing you to audit everything, if you wish to do so, and apply all the security patches you want or need to apply. You dont have to wait for somebody else to provide a new binary package that fixes a security hole. Besides, you have no guarantee that the new package actually fixes the problem (adequately). You never truly know whether a security hole is fixed or not unless you do it yourself.
Enhancements:
- The LFS LiveCD Team is proud to announce the release of the x86-6.2-3 version of LFS LiveCD. This version is built using LFS 6.2 and many Beyond Linux From Scratch packages from the Subversion branch. Source packages for LFS 6.2, and the LFS book itself, are included on the live CD. The CD is also suitable as a host for building x86 and x86_64 Cross LFS systems. Other features and bugfixes: the CD supports hibernation; the CD file system can be written to; the CD contains a visually pleasing and easy-to-use window manager, XFce...

Beyond Linux From Scratch or BLFS in short, is a project that continues where the LFS book finishes. It assists users in developing their systems according to their needs by providing a broad range of instructions for installing and configuring various packages on top of a base LFS system.
Why would I want a BLFS system?
If you are wondering why you would want a BLFS system or dont know what LFS is then you dont want to be here just yet - you should head over to the LFS Project Homepage where all will be explained.
What can I do with my BLFS system?
Nearly anything! An LFS system is primed to become a system that fits whatever need you have. BLFS is the book that takes you down your own custom path. You could build an office workstation, a multimedia desktop, a router, a server, or all of the above! And the best part is you only install what you need.
Enhancements:
- Version 6.2.0 of BLFS has been released. Version 6.2.0 is the complement to the LFS 6.2 book. More time has elapsed between the release of the previous version (6.1) and this one than in any other release cycle. Much of this is due to the fact that LFS 6.2 took much longer to be released than was originally anticipated. Many new packages have been introduced in the 6.2.0 version, as well as many updates, refinements and additions to the existing packages.

mach allows you to set up clean build roots from scratch for any distribution or distribution variation supported. In this clean build root you can then easily generate pristine packages. mach is written in python.

Currently, mach supports rpm-based distributions that can work with apt for rpm - hopefully this will be extended to other types of package manager as well.

mach is used for generating GStreamer packages (about 60 of them for each distribution) and Fedora packages. I also use it personally for the Dave/Dina project.

Gscore project is a music notation application. Writing scores becomes as easy as entering text in a word processor.

You can then export it to various file formats (abc is currently supported, other are in progress) and easily share your scores with your friends. You can also import various files, thus you dont need to rewrite scores you already have!

The printing of your scores is not supported yet, but it will be of high quality, since it will use lilypond as a backend.

Writing your music as fast as possible means that you dont need to re-learn a new syntax if you already wrote scores with your favorite text editor (abc, lilypond syntax...). You can also define modes and gscore will use them.

Also, efforts have been made with the user interface: making the software easy to use without having to read tons of documentation.

ISO Master is an open-source, graphical CD image editor that runs on Linux; and bkisofs, the underlying library used for reading, modifying and writing ISO images.
The hard part of this project is the library for working with ISOs (bkisofs). My hope is that people will like this library enough to make their own GUIs using it. So my choice of widget set (GTK, that is) will not necessarily annoy too many people.
Main features:
- Display file/directory contents of the image and and the regular filesystem in two panels and be able to navigate them.
- Display file sizes for files on image/filesystem.
- Sort by name or by size
- Select any number of items in the file browsers.
- Extract selected from image to the filesystem
- Delete selected from image.
- Add selected from filesystem to image.
- Save modified image.
- Create image from scratch.
Enhancements:
- Usability and performance improvements.
- 10 new translations.
- A bug that sometimes caused corrupt ISOs to be written has been fixed.

Beatforce is a computer dj-ing system with 2 players, a sampler, a mixer with manual and auto-fade and some more features.

The user interface and all widgets are designed from scratch and easily support theming and layout changes. Themes are written in XML. The user interface uses SDL as draw library. The widget library is a subproject of its own called SDLTk

To date BeatForce supports MP3, OGG and CDDA input. Due to the plugin concept of BeatForce new formats can easily be added by simply writing a plugin.

The CDDA plugin also support CDDB queries to find title and artist of cds which are currently playing. The song archive support multiple playlists, which can be changed by clicking on a tab. When closing beatforce the database will be stored as a XML file on the filesystem.

terminatorX is a realtime audio synthesizer that allows you to "scratch" on digitally sampled audio data (*.wav, *.ogg, *.mp3, *.au, etc.) the way hiphop-DJs scratch on vinyl records.
It features multiple turntables, realtime effects (buit-in as well as LADSPA plugin effects), a sequencer and MIDI interface - all accessible through an easy-to-use gtk+ GUI.
System requirements:
- A Linux or FreeBSD system with the GNU C library installed.
- XFree86 with DGA/DirectMouse support. DGA should be available in all XFree86 releases after 3.3, but not every X-server provides DGA, so please check that your X-server has that feature.
- The Gimp Toolkit - gtk+ Version 2.0 or above
- LADSPA The Linux Audio Developers Simple Plugin API
- LibXML which comes installed with most distributions
- If you want to use support for Linux POSIX capabilities libcap is required.
- terminatorX supports Steve Harris liblrdf which allows categorizing LADSPA plugins. Although terminatorX can be built without liblrdf support I strongly recommend installing it when you plan on using Steve Harris wonderful plugin collection with terminatorX.
- terminatorX MIDI interface is based on the ALSA sequencer API and therefor requires a working ALSA setup
- To enhance audio file support I strongly recommend installing:
- libaudiofile for loading wav, aiff and au files and sox for pre-listening and loading of file formats not supported by libaudiofile.
- libvorbis for loading of OGG Vorbis (.ogg) streams and ogg123 for pre-listening to them.
- The mad (MPEG Audio Decoder) library for loading mp3 streams and mpg123 or mpg321 for pre-listening of these.
- Note: Most of these libraries are included with current Linux distributions - so you might want to check your vendors package list before building the libraries from source.