On 7/4/07, Grant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
In December 2006 I started a thread titled "Is Gentoo Healthy?" in
which I was roundly put down for raising the possibility that the
decline in the number of Gentoo users could possibly affect the
remaining Gentoo users in a negative way.
<blatant bias>
I see people leaving gentoo as some sort of self voluntary step in the
natural progression of a distro. People moving from Gentoo to
$OTHERDISTRO raises the average intelligence of both distros ;)
Is everyone still toeing that line? The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter
hasn't been published in almost two months. Is Gentoo destined to be
just another distro starved for contributors and struggling to stay up
to date? If so, I really misjudged it. The meta approach of Gentoo
is superior to any other in my mind, and I think it's growth and
potential are being stunted by the "we don't need them" attitude which
perpetuates Gentoo's lack of usability features for beginners.
The problem is if you focus on usability for newbies, you'll focus
less on features and customization, or you'll have to find a way to
hide this customizability because customization confuses newbies, and
spending time dancing around the lesser populace is time wasted on
doing practical stuff ( While I'll admit theres got to be a half-way,
or gentoo will never get any fresh blood, but I'd prefer to entice
fresh blood from people who have some potential to improve the distro
)
And if your introducing a newbie to Linux, maybe gentoos not the right
thing to teach them. Thats why we have distros out there like linspire
( .... ) .
IMO, gentoo is already user-friendly enough, if you take it from the
perspective Gentoo is LFS + Userfriendlyness.
Gentoo needs as many users as possible to reach its potential. It's a
short-sighted mistake to think that non-contributing users do Gentoo
And theres no point in targeting a distro at an audience who still
don't know what a power button is, and are confused about downloading
attachments from hotmail. Some usuability is good, but you need some
boundaries of sanity, and I think gentoo is currently hitting the
perfect target audience for people who want control and customization,
and are willing to experiment with things to get things done.
( and if you really want to introduce a total noob to gentoo and don't
mind wasting some time... your best option is to set up for them, and
show them it just works, and then show them information on a strictly
'need-to-know' basis when they come asking )
no good. Non-contributing users become contributors as time passes.
Car mechanics all start as car drivers.
- Grant
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