Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
On 7/8/07, Grant [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 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 Great post Kent. I'd love to see more features to attract unskilled users, but I'd hate to have that slow down the development of features that I would actually use. The main camps we seem to be divided into are: 1. we don't want unskilled users and: 2. we do want unskilled users and most align with #1. It will be interesting to see how it turns out. I still think there is a huge long-term benefit to a large user base, even if many of those users start out unskilled. - Grant Personally I don't think it's about Gentoo not wanting 'unskilled' users, but that said I know I am an unskilled user in many eyes so I suppose that's my survival instinct kicking in. ;-) I think a more accurate message is 'Gentoo welcomes all, but as a potential Gentoo user you must be willing to learn. Gentoo does not attempt make *anything* 'easy or pretty' in preference to providing complete control.' Add what you will. that's just a start. My issues, as a low-end, non-power Gentoo user, is that there are some applications that I'd absolutely love to run, such as mythfrontend via a web browser, that continue to be beyond my skill set. I've worked hours upon hours and failed. I know if I chose a different distro I could run it out of the box. That done I'd lose portage and lots of other things I really value far more so I forgo fun stuff to have a really stable system. It's disappointing I don't have the skills to make it work but I figure over time I can possibly gain them. It's something to work toward, right? - Mark -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
On Thursday 05 July 2007 02:40, Walter Dnes wrote: I use Gentoo precisely because it's easy. I am not a programmer, and cannot do a manual project. I rely on others' makefiles. My programming expertise consists of... [snip . . .] I echo Walter's comments on my use of Gentoo. However, I am not sure as others have argued that Gentoo keeps newbies away. Well not all newbies anyway. When I started using Gentoo back in 2003/04 my total experience in Linux was absolutely minimal. I had only booted Knoppix a few times. If it wasn't for the handbook, docs and of course the forums, I would have probably walked away defeated. Thankfully, Gentoo was a relatively painless and rewarding experience (despite that back then I was installing from a stage 1, and it was failing for a number of reasons). Having had a chance of experimenting with Fedora, SUSE and Ubuntu I found SUSE the easiest to update/upgrade, but nothing compared with the ease of portage and its configuration options. I would probably disagree that Gentoo is a dying distro - would think of it more of a maturing distro like it was mentioned earlier. The natural evolution of Gentoo may be that portage hands over to paludis soon as a superior package management system, but who knows? -- Regards, Mick pgpdduNqsyyHK.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
Jerry McBride wrote: On Wednesday 04 July 2007 08:13:59 pm Philip Webb wrote: 070704 Colleen Beamer wrote: Danyelle Gragsone wrote: If gentoo became an *easy* distro like sickbayon or ubuntu.. I would stop using it. Seriously.. user friendly distros is not what I am looking for.. I am looking for a distro to have one fun and learn. I second this sentiment. Since starting to use Gentoo in 2004, all other distros pale in comparison. Yes, there have been a couple of hurdles, but it was all learning. I view these, not as annoyances, but challenges. I love what I have learned about my system with Gentoo and there is *no* other distro that has a package management system that is better than portage, IMHO. So, thanks from me to all the devs! :-) Thirded (smile). Fourth one here... Gentoo has been one of the most rewarding linux experiences that I've had in years. The only thing that even comes close is LFS... but then upgrading it is a nightmare. I'd like to tell the previous four people to move on to meaningful challenges like reverse proxying HTTP to split media and application serving or db replication or ldap backended mail systems or hell anything other than installing a base system. :-) Come on, installing an OS shouldn't be complicated in this century. Given a choice I prefer my tools extremely powerful AND easy, but I'm a professional sys admin with a large pragmatic streak and a low tolerance for technology that makes me jump through hoops. This is coincidentally why Mysql continues to be used in a hundred time more places than Postgres. I find Gentoo to be both easy and powerful most of the time so I have few complaints. However his idea that installing an OS has to be some sort of trial by fire to prove your worth is wacky. I say bring on the easiness. Make a big fat button after the liveCD loads that says Just install it for me in a nice default kinda way so I can start playing with this whole USE flag thing I've heard so much about and be done with it. Yes, yes you can still choose to set things up yourself and frankly I still find command line fdisk to be much simpler to use than any other tool. After that we can start working on a big fat button that says I handle all the USE flag stuff rather than having to figure out if equery, ufed, emerge, eix, qpkg, and whatnot tells you what you want to know. Wouldn't that be nice? Gentoo got lucky (or maybe I did) when it was the only distro I could get to install on a office server some idiot has spec'ed with a bleeding edge gaming motherboard that refused to boot any other Linux distro. I ran through the lengthy install because I was out of options and then found I liked the system. I like to think I've been an asset over the years for Gentoo (1500 helpful posts on the forum and counting), but how many busy professionals have taken a look at the install and decided fsck that, I've got ninety other things I could be doing and walked away? kashani, Gentoo user for five years and remembers when they added the *, the bright green for new USE flags, and then sorted the active USE flags first in the emerge output and still thinks the person(s) who came up with those UI tweaks was a genius. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
On Wed, Jul 04, 2007 at 09:40:10PM -0400, Walter Dnes wrote: emerge is along the same lines. make menuconfig is the limits of my expertise. I remember RPM hell with Redhat linux, trying to find an RPM package for a program I wanted, where the developer hadn't linked it against a bunch of stuff I didn't have. I can take a text-only basic system, emerge gimp, and emerge will pull in and build, in the right order, all the necessary X libraries, GTK, etc, etc. I end up with a functional TWM desktop. emerge bbkeys emerges blackbox key-controls... after first emerging blackbox. Try doing that with RPMs. What makes you think that you can't do that with RPMs now? Seven years ago they were a nightmare but things have moved on since then. The same goes for deb files (can't think of any other major ones off the top of my head). Paul -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
On 7/5/07, Paul Waring [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On Wed, Jul 04, 2007 at 09:40:10PM -0400, Walter Dnes wrote:
emerge is along the same lines. make menuconfig is the limits of my
expertise. I remember RPM hell with Redhat linux, trying to find an
RPM package for a program I wanted, where the developer hadn't linked it
against a bunch of stuff I didn't have. I can take a text-only basic
system, emerge gimp, and emerge will pull in and build, in the right
order, all the necessary X libraries, GTK, etc, etc. I end up with a
functional TWM desktop. emerge bbkeys emerges blackbox
key-controls... after first emerging blackbox. Try doing that with
RPMs.
What makes you think that you can't do that with RPMs now? Seven years
ago they were a nightmare but things have moved on since then. The same
goes for deb files (can't think of any other major ones off the top of
my head).
Paul
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
* Binary Dependency
* No USE
* Binary Dependency Breaks = No solution other than choose which of
the 2 programs you want to lose.
* Forceful ignorance of binary dependencies triggers stupid stuff like
spontaneous removal of all of libc.
( i think thats the sort of headaches he was referring to with rpm-hell )
Conclusion on binary based distros:
wait for upstream to fix.
Conclusion on source based distros:
you can fix it yourself, and today.
I'd rather be able to have breakages I can work around ;)
So not only is gentoo healthy, imo, its a very healthy test-bed for
the whole world of OSS.
--
Kent
ruby -e '[1, 2, 4, 7, 0, 9, 5, 8, 3, 10, 11, 6, 12, 13].each{|x|
print enNOSPicAMreil [EMAIL PROTECTED][(2*x)..(2*x+1)]}'
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Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
On 7/5/07, Paul Waring [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Jul 04, 2007 at 09:40:10PM -0400, Walter Dnes wrote: emerge is along the same lines. make menuconfig is the limits of my expertise. I remember RPM hell with Redhat linux, trying to find an RPM package for a program I wanted, where the developer hadn't linked it against a bunch of stuff I didn't have. I can take a text-only basic system, emerge gimp, and emerge will pull in and build, in the right order, all the necessary X libraries, GTK, etc, etc. I end up with a functional TWM desktop. emerge bbkeys emerges blackbox key-controls... after first emerging blackbox. Try doing that with RPMs. What makes you think that you can't do that with RPMs now? Seven years ago they were a nightmare but things have moved on since then. The same goes for deb files (can't think of any other major ones off the top of my head). Paul Well, in the world of audio RPMs anyway the problem always was that different audio apps used different versions of libraries. Last time I used Fedora (maybe 3-4 years ago now) none of the RPM managers would automatically go find all the right libraries for some odd audio app I wanted to try out, and then even if they did if I decided to take the app off my system there wasn't a good way to clean up after the fact. Beyond that I never had a major Fedora upgrade go cleanly. My Gentoo machines are now multi-years old and they just update each week or two as new revisions come out. I'm sure things are much better today but I still hear folks complain about this sort of this on the pro-audio lists once in awhile. I couldn't have written a better description of my use of Gentoo than Walter did. I'm pretty much exactly the same sort of user. Gentoo works great for me. Cheers, Mark -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
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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--
Kent
ruby -e '[1, 2, 4, 7, 0, 9, 5, 8, 3, 10, 11, 6, 12, 13].each{|x|
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Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
On Tue, Jul 03, 2007 at 09:07:24AM -0700, Grant 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. My personal feeling is that Gentoo has dropped off the radar a bit, and is no longer being talked about that much beyond its own community, which probably means that it won't see much growth. Ubuntu is the distribution everyone is talking about at the moment, and no doubt that will suffer the same fate in a year or so. Is everyone still toeing that line? The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter hasn't been published in almost two months. The problem with that, as far as I am aware, is a lack of volunteers, although I don't remember GWNs being absent for this long before. Apparently it is coming back in July, so hopefully its absense isn't permanent. 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. I don't think Gentoo is starved for contributors, at least not judging by the number of developers listed on the website (I've no idea how many of those are active though). In terms of usability features, if you want a nice easy distro that does more or less everything for you, you go for Ubuntu (or perhaps Fedora 7), not Gentoo. They're not really aimed at the same type of user - even though I run both, it's for different purposes (Gentoo for development and breaking things, Ubuntu because sometimes I just want multimedia to work without having to mess around with USE flags and trying to track down which packages I should emerge to get the right codecs for a particular format). 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 no good. Non-contributing users become contributors as time passes. Car mechanics all start as car drivers. To be fair, I think Gentoo has one of the better programmes for getting active users to become developers. There's plenty of documentation on the website, plus the developer manual, although I'd personally like to see a bit more emphasis on non-coding developers (e.g. website updates, press work etc.) for those people who want to get involved but don't like fiddling with bash scripts. Paul -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
If gentoo became an *easy* distro like sickbayon or ubuntu.. I would stop using it. Seriously.. user friendly distros is not what I am looking for.. I am looking for a distro to have one fun and learn. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
On Tuesday 03 July 2007 09:07:24 Grant 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. 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. 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 no good. Non-contributing users become contributors as time passes. Car mechanics all start as car drivers. - Grant Personally I love Gentoo, IMHO the compile aspect of it ( the part that I love most of all ) is what keeps beginners and novice GNU/Linux users away, the target audience will always be those who don't mind taking the time to build a fully customized system even if it takes a day or two. Gentoo does indeed need more users to become contributors, I have been a Non-contributing user for some time now, just promoting it when ever possible, I even got my company to switch many Windows workstations to Gentoo development stations, a few months ago my company offered to pay me to work full time on any free and open source project that might benifit them in the end, I jumped at the chance and applied to work in different areas of Gentoo (mostly C/CPP and Perl development areas), after many unanswered e-mails and one telling me to be patient I gave up and applied to work in the KDE project ( in two days I had my own SVN and started porting code to KDE4 ), I personally think Gentoo makes it hard to contribute in many areas, this might be why few Non-contributing users become contributing users. -- Guillermo Antonio Amaral Bastidas # Free Open Source Software Advocate $ irc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] @ blog: http://blog.guillermoamaral.com/ @ site: http://www.guillermoamaral.com/ % gpg: http://downloads.guillermoamaral.com/public.asc signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
Danyelle Gragsone wrote: If gentoo became an *easy* distro like sickbayon or ubuntu.. I would stop using it. Seriously.. user friendly distros is not what I am looking for.. I am looking for a distro to have one fun and learn. I second this sentiment. Since starting to use Gentoo in 2004, all other distros pale in comparison. Yes, there have been a couple of hurdles, but it was all learning. I view these, not as annoyances, but challenges. I love what I have learned about my system with Gentoo and there is *no* other distro that has a package management system that is better than portage, IMHO. So, thanks from me to all the devs! :-) Regards, Colleen -- Registered Linux User #411143 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
070704 Colleen Beamer wrote: Danyelle Gragsone wrote: If gentoo became an *easy* distro like sickbayon or ubuntu.. I would stop using it. Seriously.. user friendly distros is not what I am looking for.. I am looking for a distro to have one fun and learn. I second this sentiment. Since starting to use Gentoo in 2004, all other distros pale in comparison. Yes, there have been a couple of hurdles, but it was all learning. I view these, not as annoyances, but challenges. I love what I have learned about my system with Gentoo and there is *no* other distro that has a package management system that is better than portage, IMHO. So, thanks from me to all the devs! :-) Thirded (smile). -- ,, SUPPORT ___//___, Philip Webb : [EMAIL PROTECTED] ELECTRIC /] [] [] [] [] []| Centre for Urban Community Studies TRANSIT`-O--O---' University of Toronto -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
On Wednesday 04 July 2007 08:13:59 pm Philip Webb wrote: 070704 Colleen Beamer wrote: Danyelle Gragsone wrote: If gentoo became an *easy* distro like sickbayon or ubuntu.. I would stop using it. Seriously.. user friendly distros is not what I am looking for.. I am looking for a distro to have one fun and learn. I second this sentiment. Since starting to use Gentoo in 2004, all other distros pale in comparison. Yes, there have been a couple of hurdles, but it was all learning. I view these, not as annoyances, but challenges. I love what I have learned about my system with Gentoo and there is *no* other distro that has a package management system that is better than portage, IMHO. So, thanks from me to all the devs! :-) Thirded (smile). Fourth one here... Gentoo has been one of the most rewarding linux experiences that I've had in years. The only thing that even comes close is LFS... but then upgrading it is a nightmare. -- From the Desk of: Jerome D. McBride -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
Jerry McBride wrote: On Wednesday 04 July 2007 08:13:59 pm Philip Webb wrote: 070704 Colleen Beamer wrote: Danyelle Gragsone wrote: If gentoo became an *easy* distro like sickbayon or ubuntu.. I would stop using it. Seriously.. user friendly distros is not what I am looking for.. I am looking for a distro to have one fun and learn. I second this sentiment. Since starting to use Gentoo in 2004, all other distros pale in comparison. Yes, there have been a couple of hurdles, but it was all learning. I view these, not as annoyances, but challenges. I love what I have learned about my system with Gentoo and there is *no* other distro that has a package management system that is better than portage, IMHO. So, thanks from me to all the devs! :-) Thirded (smile). Fourth one here... Gentoo has been one of the most rewarding linux experiences that I've had in years. The only thing that even comes close is LFS... but then upgrading it is a nightmare. I was preparing to install LFS but was told that Gentoo is LFS with a neat little package handler on steroids. They were right too. :-) I moved here from Mandrake 9.1. I couldn't imagine surfing without Gentoo. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
On 7/3/07, 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. 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. 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 no good. Non-contributing users become contributors as time passes. Car mechanics all start as car drivers. - Grant Hi Grant, I think Gentoo is 'healthy', in the sense that it continues to thrive. On the other hand I have, over the last 6-9 months started to think of Gentoo as 'mature'. The distro has apparently become what it is going to be. While that may not be all I hoped for it is clearly worth while and a contributing member of the group of Linux distros so that's great. As a non-developer, general work-a-day Linux user I do feel that Gentoo has lost some of its energy. Maybe that's all part of becoming a mature distro. When I first started with Gentoo in (I think 2000) this was a very lively place and it was clear that there was a real push on to grow the tools, grow the distro, grow the user base. While I think that today those metrics would still be considered valuable, it is not my view that there is a lot of energy being put into taking things to the next level. (Whatever the heck that might be!) Anyway, I value Gentoo greatly. It's been a really great distro to me. Folks have treated a non-IT Linux dummy like me with great respect and for the most part a pretty gentle hand. I've learned a lot when I wanted to. The documentation, in my mind, is second to none which makes my life easier. (Sometimes) What's in Gentoo's future? I haven't a clue. I have wondered a few times in the last year if I'd have to look for another distro one of these days.but I never have. Two to three years ago that thought never entered my mind. Cheers, Mark -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
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. 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. 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 no good. Non-contributing users become contributors as time passes. Car mechanics all start as car drivers. - Grant Hi Grant, I think Gentoo is 'healthy', in the sense that it continues to thrive. On the other hand I have, over the last 6-9 months started to think of Gentoo as 'mature'. The distro has apparently become what it is going to be. While that may not be all I hoped for it is clearly worth while and a contributing member of the group of Linux distros so that's great. As a non-developer, general work-a-day Linux user I do feel that Gentoo has lost some of its energy. Maybe that's all part of becoming a mature distro. When I first started with Gentoo in (I think 2000) this was a very lively place and it was clear that there was a real push on to grow the tools, grow the distro, grow the user base. While I think that today those metrics would still be considered valuable, it is not my view that there is a lot of energy being put into taking things to the next level. (Whatever the heck that might be!) Anyway, I value Gentoo greatly. It's been a really great distro to me. Folks have treated a non-IT Linux dummy like me with great respect and for the most part a pretty gentle hand. I've learned a lot when I wanted to. The documentation, in my mind, is second to none which makes my life easier. (Sometimes) What's in Gentoo's future? I haven't a clue. I have wondered a few times in the last year if I'd have to look for another distro one of these days.but I never have. Two to three years ago that thought never entered my mind. Hey Mark, Thanks for the insight. I hope it never happens, but if the day comes when Gentoo suffers a lack of contributors to such an extent that I have to find a new distro, where will I go? Is Debian the only other meta-distro out there? It's not exactly thriving is it? Is the meta-distro concept perhaps flawed? The thought of installing the latest Ubuntu release, wading through a bunch of software I'll never use, and waiting for the next big release before anything is updated makes me wanna throw up. - Grant -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
On 7/3/07, Grant [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: SNIP Hey Mark, Thanks for the insight. I hope it never happens, but if the day comes when Gentoo suffers a lack of contributors to such an extent that I have to find a new distro, where will I go? Is Debian the only other meta-distro out there? It's not exactly thriving is it? Is the meta-distro concept perhaps flawed? The thought of installing the latest Ubuntu release, wading through a bunch of software I'll never use, and waiting for the next big release before anything is updated makes me wanna throw up. - Grant Being sort of pragmatic, if it happens it happens and I'll worry about it then. While I may have my frustrations with Gentoo they are certainly no where near large enough to cause me to even think of switching 8 machines in 2 households to something else. Heck, it's the devil you know for the devil you don't know when you go that way and I still see Gentoo as an angel and not a devil!!! :-) Cheers, Mark -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
On Tuesday 03 July 2007 19:14, Grant wrote: Hey Mark, Thanks for the insight. I hope it never happens, but if the day comes when Gentoo suffers a lack of contributors to such an extent that I have to find a new distro, where will I go? Is Debian the only other meta-distro out there? It's not exactly thriving is it? Is the meta-distro concept perhaps flawed? The thought of installing the latest Ubuntu release, wading through a bunch of software I'll never use, and waiting for the next big release before anything is updated makes me wanna throw up. - Grant I hope I'm not too of-topic. I've never been able to bring friends to try out Gentoo. Tell them they'll be working for days to get a cli distro working... if they get there, setting up X is sure to be the end of the experiment. What I mean is: Gentoo is for experimented users, and those who'd like to become experimented. I consider myself not to be a noob anymore, after 8 years of using Linux, but my last gentoo install still waits to get finished. I tried to get sound, and that crashed the nvidia module, and now I don't have time to cure that. Now, on the next partition, I have installed Sabayon. It's bloated OK, it's not compiled for my machine OK, but I had it up and running in an hour. I still have to test the idea of installing Sabayon, modifying make.conf and emerging world to see what happens. I think the future of Gentoo could be that: an easy install for the mass, and he opportunity for the geeks to tweak that install or directly go for the total customisation. I'm surprised I haven't heard more about Sabayon on this list, just as if the real Gentoo users feel it's a treason. Thierry -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
Hello Grant, 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. What decline in the number of users? Where are there figures demonstrating this? There also seem to be a lot more new developer announcements than resignations, so it would appear that the number of devs is increasing. -- Neil Bothwick Top Oxymorons Number 38: Government organization signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
On Tue, 3 Jul 2007 19:41:34 +0200 Thierry de Coulon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm surprised I haven't heard more about Sabayon on this list, just as if the real Gentoo users feel it's a treason. Thierry It is nothing of that kind. These, simply, is not the Sabayon list, but the Gentoo one. No matter if Sabayon forked from Gentoo, it is a different distro, like Mandrake or Debian, so, it is not usually a topic for these lists. The Sabayon list is this: http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/sabayon-list Sabayon has many differences with Gentoo, starting with the kernel and the toolchain. Two core pieces, overall, in a source based meta distro. -- Jesús Guerrero [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
On Dienstag, 3. Juli 2007, Grant 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. no. gentoo was for a while the exciting new kid. And everybody flocked to it. Especially 'ricers'. The 'decline' you observed is more of a pruning - the type of users who always use the latest 'distri of the month' are gone, also the users who really do not fit in but used gentoo because it was cool for a while. Every distro has that moment - ubuntu will suffer from that too. Is everyone still toeing that line? The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter hasn't been published in almost two months. that is a completly different problem ;) Is Gentoo destined to be just another distro starved for contributors and struggling to stay up to date? hm, couple of new devs in the last two weeks. What was your question? 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. why should a beginner WANT to use gentoo? To get his hands dirty without being forced to, he can start with a much more 'beginner friendly' distro. There is no reason nor need to dumb down gentoo to fit everybody. Gentoo needs as many users as possible to reach its potential. no. It really does not. The opposite is true. Gentoo does not need to become another dumb 'userfriendly' distro - there are hundreds of them already. It does not need the 'I don't want to learn anything' or 'I don't read documentation' type of user. It does not need the standard-ubuntu-dau that askeds the same stupid (stupid because it is explained in a sticky topic on top of the forum) question again and again and again, because he is too lazy to read an existing thread or use the search feature (look into the nvnews forum for an example). Gentoo needs users who want to use gentoo for its technical merits, not because it is is 'cool'. We lost the 'cool distro of the month' users and it was a good thing. It's a short-sighted mistake to think that non-contributing users do Gentoo no good. Non-contributing users become contributors as time passes. Car mechanics all start as car drivers. There are users and users. There are users who try to help in mailing lists and forums and file bugs. There are users who help fellow gentoo users among their friends. And there are the ones who do nothing at all -except complaining if something does not work (even if it is their own fault). Gentoo needs the first kind of users - and I would go so far to say, that it got them. Gentoo does NOT need the second kind - and we lost a lot of them. I call that win-win. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
On Tue, 3 Jul 2007 09:07:24 -0700 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. 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. 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 no good. Non-contributing users become contributors as time passes. Car mechanics all start as car drivers. - Grant As an experience Windows programmer who was moving into Linux last summer I started off with Ubuntu. The ease with which it installed and updated itself was a big surprise and pleasure. But then as my knowledge grew I decided to use a more demanding distro which in my case would allow me to learn more about how a Linux system works; and so I chose gentoo. Sure there was a hurdle of a couple of days to get it installed but I have not come up against any problems apart from my own lack of experience. All in all the choice was a good one. Gentoo appears to be very stable and the e-builds seem to be quite up to date - although I have to use the ~amd64 keyword on most packages as x64 support lags behind x86. One problem I have however is knowing how to choose between all the different ways of doing things. I recently tried to get the interface to my Kodak camera working and went down several blind alleys before discovering that each actual alley was no longer the best ways of doing things due to changes in the kernel or new tools. So sure on the surface things do not appear to be changing much in gentoo but that does not mean it does not work - just that it is stable. Paul -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
Grant 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. 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. 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 no good. Non-contributing users become contributors as time passes. Car mechanics all start as car drivers. - Grant The startup I work for was bought last Oct. I spent four months migrating to Redhat ES 4.0 as well as dealing with some odd internal software decisions at the new company. Six months later the whole system still doesn't run as well or give me the flexibility I had with Gentoo. On top of that I get to deal with a poorly implemented, thought out, and extremely frustrating home grown package management tool that wishes it was one tenth as powerful as portage. Hell most days I'd rather have straight up RPM over the internal tools. And for anyone that thinks Fortune 1000 companies back port fixes of their PHP 5.1 package because their chosen distro doesn't include it (or ninety other packages we use) or test better than unknown thousands of Gentoo users running ~x86, let me disabuse you of that notion right now. The grass always looks greener on the other side and in regards to Gentoo, it ain't. kashani -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
On Tuesday 03 July 2007 19:41:34 Thierry de Coulon wrote: I'm surprised I haven't heard more about Sabayon on this list, just as if the real Gentoo users feel it's a treason. Not treason. Just inferior, leechers and off-topic... -- Bo Andresen signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
On Dienstag, 3. Juli 2007, Thierry de Coulon wrote: On Tuesday 03 July 2007 19:14, Grant wrote: Hey Mark, Thanks for the insight. I hope it never happens, but if the day comes when Gentoo suffers a lack of contributors to such an extent that I have to find a new distro, where will I go? Is Debian the only other meta-distro out there? It's not exactly thriving is it? Is the meta-distro concept perhaps flawed? The thought of installing the latest Ubuntu release, wading through a bunch of software I'll never use, and waiting for the next big release before anything is updated makes me wanna throw up. - Grant I hope I'm not too of-topic. I've never been able to bring friends to try out Gentoo. Tell them they'll be working for days to get a cli distro working... if they get there, setting up X is sure to be the end of the experiment. What I mean is: Gentoo is for experimented users, and those who'd like to become experimented. I consider myself not to be a noob anymore, after 8 years of using Linux, but my last gentoo install still waits to get finished. I tried to get sound, and that crashed the nvidia module, and now I don't have time to cure that. Now, on the next partition, I have installed Sabayon. It's bloated OK, it's not compiled for my machine OK, but I had it up and running in an hour. I still have to test the idea of installing Sabayon, modifying make.conf and emerging world to see what happens. I think the future of Gentoo could be that: an easy install for the mass, and he opportunity for the geeks to tweak that install or directly go for the total customisation. I'm surprised I haven't heard more about Sabayon on this list, just as if the real Gentoo users feel it's a treason. no, not treason. Leeches. For using gentoo's rsync-mirrors. But you said it yourself, it is bloated. I do not want bloat. And for your friends - the last two releases have a gnome (argh!) livecd with a (buggy) graphical installer... -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
I think gentoo is stuck with the release of new tools, new ideas.. I've been worried about the Weekly Newsletter too, but you only have to read planet.gentoo.org to see that the wheel stills moving on, and stills healthy. I think there's a lot more gentoo for the years to come. On 7/3/07, 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. 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. 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 no good. Non-contributing users become contributors as time passes. Car mechanics all start as car drivers. - Grant -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
