OneAndOneIs2

Some years ago, as a learning experience, I made my way through the Linux From Scratch book. This is, simply put, a book that tells you how to manually download, compile, and install all the software that goes into a basic GNU/Linux operating system. No copying of pre-compiled binaries, no live CDs, nothing. You take your source code and roll your own OS with it.

It's well worth doing, if you're interested in such things. Use a fast PC tho, there's a LOT of compiling. They're up to version 6.3 now, with the 2.6.22 kernel.

Of course, it's only a very basic system that you get at the end: You're basically on a CLI-only machine without much modern functionality. No X11, no WM, no browser, nothing like that. So there's also the BLFS project: Beyond Linux From Scratch, which helps you to get the extra functionality installed. In my LFS days, I got as far as getting Firefox running within FVWM2.5 on an X.org install. Having achieved this level of functionality... I gave up. It was just a hard-to-manage Linux OS at this point: No package manager, no dependency checking, no automatic security updates. Everything was done by hand, and I got a bit tired of it.

So I switched to Gentoo, and that was fun.

But anyway. LFS is pretty much THE distro to install if you're a DIY-fanatic. It gives you more insight into & understanding of what your PC is running than just about anything else.

But Linux Devices has a project that may well take the crown: He's running Linux's ancestor, Minix, on a minicomputer he built himself, with his own homebrew CPU, made out of 74 Series TTL chips.

You can get more details on how it was done here, and when it's connected, the minicomputer itself serves web pages here.

I'm impressed by his dedication, but I must say, I think I'd have gone the FPGA route if I wanted to invent my own CPU. Maybe I'm just lazy...