Newer is better except sometimes.

The stable version for Beyond Linux From Scratch has recently been updated to Version 6.3. Xfce has gone missing in this latest version as has X11R6 and XFree86. Also there are dependency upgrades on your glibs, gtk-+'s, pangos, cairos and who knows what else. But existing stable systems need not worry -- the BLFS Version 6.2.0 can still be found in the BLFS museum.

The X11R7 modular build system affords the opportunity to do much more work to install it than the X11R6 build system did. Also one of the programs I use the most, namely xterm, has been set aside as though nobody would ever want to use it. And xterm-223 which is provided with X11R7.2, under extras, is in .tgz format which doesn't fit with the building of all the other programs. Adding insult to injury, a feature that I find useful is broken in the xterm-223. When in xterm, holding down the CTRL key and then holding down the right mouse button presents a "VT fonts" menu which provides several options to make the xterm window smaller or larger (I discovered that SHIFT-KEYPAD+ and SHIFT-KEYPAD- also do larger/smaller). But in xterm-223, that menu causes the xterm window to change to sizes ranging from too big to outrageously huge. It is the exact same xterm-223.tgz file that is found in BLFS 6.2.0. Fortunately, xterm-231 found in Beyond Linux From Scratch - Version 6.3 works just fine, as does the xterm out of xc/programs in the old X11R6 tarball.

I like xterm with 256colors, and the last time I configured it like this:
./configure --prefix=/usr \
--sysconfdir=/etc \
--mandir=/usr/share/man \
--enable-256-color \
--enable-luit \
--enable-wide-chars \
--with-utempter

Then I put this in my ~/.bashrc
TTY=$(tty)
if [ "${TTY%%[0-9]*}" != "/dev/tty" ]; then
export TERM=xterm-256color
fi

I'm not sure what uses xterm-256color except vim, but I like vim.

Though it seems odd that the livecd runs the xfce4 desktop environment and yet it wasn't included in BLFS 6.3, I had success installing two ways: from the xcfe4-installer and from tarballs in this post and this post. I once installed gnome from scratch but I prefer xfce.

I did some more experiments with Firefox 3 and found some ways to make it a little more agreeable. I think Winstripe Modern 3.2 looks better than the default firefox 3. And the oldbar extension gets rid of "AwesomeBar" which some people think is hideous. I never did like Firefox 2. I'll stick with Firefox 1.5.0.12 for a while longer. There is really nothing wrong with Seamonkey; I just got used to using firefox and thunderbird.