This is a great resource for understanding why most Linux distros are forked from another distro instead of starting "from scratch". Just getting a system running to the point of self-hosting requires jumping through a surprising number of hoops.
Even if you don't want to build all of Linux from scratch, the site usually has good instructions for building lots of popular open source software. It'll point out build flags that you probably care about but never thought to check.
I first followed that book in 2000 and it remains one of the most educational things I've done in my career. For a long time I used LFS as my base server install though I've since switched to Ubuntu Server.
I failed too when I tried, I was too young to really understand enough of what was going on to handle it. But I managed to learn a lot anyway. If only I had the time now to try again.
I tried it as well once when I was younger... Kind of interesting experience but on the other hand, it was mostly just copy pasting commands to terminal and waiting for the to run.
