On Wednesday 04 May 2005 11:03, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Hello, > > i just returned from a meeting with IBM which was about getting > support for Gentoo Linux (hardware and software). The people from IBM > told me that it's possible for Gentoo to become officially supported > on IBM server hardware (xSeries, pSeries and zSeries). > > They told me about their hardware offerings to the Debian Project so > that they could certify their distribution. I think this is a great > chance for gentoo to become more common for productive use. > > Is there a general interrest in doing this and how can this start?
Interest; yes, believe that it will happen in the (forseeable) future; absolutely not. The biggest showstopper is that needs to be fixed first is lack of predictability: - Gentoo is extremely customizable (USE-flags, compiler settings, etc.). To achieve predictability all those customizable options need to be locked. - moving Portage-tree; if I install a system today, it wont be the same as a system I installed one month ago. - no standard method of installation; supported OS's are basically clicking next, next, finish. Installation is done, system is identical. With Gentoo you get a lot of choices for a single component (e.g. vanilla-sources vs. gentoo-sources, vixie-cron vs. dcron, etc.). A default needs to be defined. Second showstopper is lack of (LSB-)certification; Like it or not, the typical managers in this world say if product x isn't y-certified we wont use/support it. Gentoo needs a profile for a LSB-compliant system. There are more items that needs to be resolved before it's even possible to talk about official support. Good news is that with the current "Gentoo-framework" it's possible to fix both problems for example by creating a profile, lock everything in this profile and make sure old ebuilds are not removed during a sync. Other options are also possible (e.g. creating a separate tree). See GLEP 19 for more details. The only problem is lack of interest/time/priority from the developers/community. If you want support from a company as big as IBM, you need to start smaller (e.g. NX, MySQL, Open-Xchange). If these companies are willing to support their products on Gentoo, then maybe bigger companies will follow. -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
