The intention of LFS is to provide a basic system which you can build upon. There are several things, about tidying up the system, which many people wonder about once they have done the base install. We hope to cover these issues in this chapter.
Most people coming from a Windows background to Linux find the concept of text-only configuration files slightly strange. In Linux, just about all configuration is done via text files. The majority of these files can be found in the /etc hierarchy. There are often graphical configuration programs available for different subsystems but most are simply pretty front ends to the process of editing the file. The advantage of text-only configuration is that you can edit parameters using your favorite text editor, whether that be vim, emacs or anything else.
The first task is making a recovery diskette because it's the most critical need. Then the system is configured to ease addition of new users, in "Configuring for Adding Users", because this can affect the choices you make in the three subsequent topics - "/etc/inputrc", "The Bash Shell Startup Files" and "/etc/vimrc, ~/.vimrc".
The remaining topics, "/etc/issue (Customizing your logon)", "Random number generation", "Man page issues" and "Info page issues" are then addressed, in that order. They don't have much interaction with the other topics in this chapter.