Submitted by “Over the past few days, I discovered that the Gentoo Foundation’s charter is in the process of being revoked by the state of New Mexico, apparently due to regular paperwork not being filed by the trustees. What this means is that the Gentoo Foundation is currently hanging for its life by a string, and at any day could cease to exist as an entity. That is the very bad news. The good news is that I was able to talk to Grant Goodyear (trustee) this morning on the phone, and I have confirmed that Grant had received my email about the revocation issue that I sent 2 days ago and that he will be resolving this critical issue in the next couple of days by filing the appropriate paperwork with the state of New Mexico, and this paperwork will also remove me as President of the Foundation.”
unscathed !
lol
I really hope that everything goes well with this. Gentoo has been my favorite distro for years and it would really be a shame for the gentoo foundation to dissolve.
I, too hope everything goes well.
I’m not a Gentoo user myself, but I believe most Linux users have to admit that many nice stuff comes from Gentoo community, in terms of patches and documentation to various things that can easily be applied to most distributions out there.
What turned me on to Gentoo was that it seems to be one of the first distro’s out there to run on new hardware, probably because of it’s installation procedure. Or maybe it is because of the kind of people that run Gentoo.
I started with Gentoox on the Xbox. Then I installed it on my fileserver, then on my main desktop. Just last night I installed it on my 2-day-old PS3.
I think it was the first Linux distro to run on the new Intel Macs as well.
The free software world is merciless like that. If there’s not enough interest, things start to decay and are abandoned. I don’t just mean users, you need developers too.
Perhaps they should ask themselves what’s missing from Gentoo. What makes it special, as a Linux distro? Why would I want to use it or develop it?
I mean besides the emerge system; some people regard it as stupid, both because it requires compilation and because it doesn’t really teach anybody about Linux. And even if it was all that, there are several other equally good package management systems out there.
And also don’t say Gentoo is “stable” or “fast” or other completely subjective perceptions.
Perhaps emerge was just a fad and it’s fading out. You can’t keep a distro alive just based on the fact that at some point the packaging system had a clever angle.
Edited 2007-07-23 23:59
actually gentoo is a great teacher for what’s happening in your linux installation…and… no there are no many equally good managers, especially for sources? none…
It’s actually what you want to be.
If you want a rock solid installation you set the minimum or none optimizations for the packages.
If you want speed you set all optimizations you wish for, preying to your god not to break anything.
Ofcourse you can always choose the middle ground.
Binary distros? well, you stick with what others have already chose for you…
“Just the packaging system?” oh please…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentoo_Linux
If you really want to know how your linux system runs, use slackware or LFS.
Any package management immediately adds a layer of complexity and that means less control.
“If you really want to know how your Linux system runs, use slackware or LFS.”
I’d love you to clarify the answer, and am surprised that slackware users don’t use swaret. Although I’m not even sure why Slackware is even relevant. I’m not sure people learn GNU this way. The *only* thing I can think of is using commands they wouldn’t always.
The only thing you *could* say as regards the silly comment about Slackware is that you have to learn how portage works, but then thats what makes Gentoo the easy to manage meta-distribution it is.
The package-management on Gentoo. If you are familiar with it, is to provide a balance between ease of maintenance vs micro-management which it does well. If there was a *better* way. I would use it.
I suspect your post is some kind of Distro smackdown comment, but I’d love to hear what you mean, as Slackware was my choice of Distribution, before Gentoo.
I’m actually giving your post more credence than your post deserves.
I would argue that LFS/slackware/Gentoo are not about leaning GNU. Although because of the time to set-up you learn something from help files, compiling, customizing , tailoring etc etc, but very little else. Gentoo is not an education tool. In reality the strength of Gentoo relies on some familiarity with the programs available to GNU to start with.
I’m confused by the term control. If control is downloading, and installing a program. Then you have a radically different version of control than me, windows users routinely do that.
Gentoo offers more control;customization…and *maintainability* in a meta-distribution. I suggest you look up use flags.
Slackware has and always was about *stability*…and nothing else, and does so exceptionally well, but this is at the cost of *any* optomisation not cutting edge, not as customizable, greater maintenance…but then thats not the point of Slackware, and I would be arrogant to suggest that I could set up a binary distribution as stable as Patrick Volkerding
LSF does offer you true customization…but at the heavy price of maintenance which is the main advantage of Gentoo.
I’ve posted really badly, I actually should be making these points.
1) There are different Distributions, because there are different *needs*, my need is I like to choose my applications. I want cutting-edge, package-management, stability, fun and Gentoo offers me this…at the cost of compile times.
2) Package-management is the *killer-application* of GNU simply because maintenance for *users* is so incredibly easy.
On reflection I should just have modded you down for being off topic.
Edited 2007-07-24 05:51
Oh man, and I warned you about this. OK then, let’s see some facts and figures. Prove to me that a Gentoo system prepared in a certain way is more “stable” than one using distribution X, and/or give some figures about how much faster it is. And I’d like the figures to be based on a broad range of similarly configured installations, to make for relevant statistics (as opposed to your gut feeling). Oh, and it would help if you could demonstrate exactly how the fact that you chose your own compile flags impacted on the speed and stability, more than the impact of distro-specific dependencies or the quality of the original code of all the software packages.
Dude. If you want to really learn how a Linux distro is put together, build a Linux From Scratch installation. Where you have to understand the architecture, manually compile everything (and I mean manually, not editing a flag file and issuing a couple of emerge commands), which includes inferring dependencies yourself and making decisions about the final system. You have not compiled shit until you’ve compiled strange stuff that doesn’t even use automake, until you’ve compiled yourself a weird beast like the old XFree, or prepared an entire Gnome ecosystem and allowed 1.x to coexist with 2.x peacefully. ‘Cause stuff like that is what separates the distro maintainer from the emerge user.
Being told what -O2 does and staring at passing screens of compilation stuff does NOT teach you Linux.
OK, what am I looking at here? Because apart from Portage I don’t see anything out of the ordinary. OK, it was the first distro to go 64bit, as I’m sure there are plenty things that other distro’s pioneered. They contributed stuff to the gcc, good, many contributors to other distro’s do that all the time. It’s portable, lovely, it’s Linux, of course it’s portable. The init replacement is a nice thing, not that replacing SysV init hasn’t been dealt with or at least thought about by any other distro around.
I repeat: where’s the special stuff? Where’s the magic? Why should a developer put his time and effort into furthering Gentoo? What does a user get that’s so special?
Edited 2007-07-24 09:11
Customization, baby! Gentoo is what you want it to be. It’s that simple. You can make a rock-solid distribution using nothing but very stable packages, or you can live dangerously and use brand new packages – you can even write your own ebuilds if the packages you want aren’t available or don’t allow for the kind of customization you want. I maintain my own set of ebuilds for several gnome-packages because the official ebuilds lack options.
Of course, I’m an old LFS’er, so my view is that Gentoo is LFS on Steroids – good for daily work due to lower maintainence. You can learn quite a bit from installing and using Gentoo – it depends on how you use it and how you install it. I learned a lot from LFS and I’ve learned a lot from Gentoo (though most from LFS). However, most Gentoo users are using Gentoo because of the option of the infinite range of customization. And that’s what Gentoo is about. No other distribution make it so easy. LFS allows for more low-level work but at the cost of easy maintainence. The binary distributions do not allow for customization though Arch Linux (or Slackware) might be good alternatives. So far I’m sticking with Gentoo though I’m keeping an eye on Arch Linux.
Very true, and this is the danger Gentoo faces right now: its core of developers and other “do-ers” who keep the whole entity on the road, imploding.
Equally good, perhaps, but none I think as unique as Portage. If you choose Gentoo you know you’re signing up to long, tedious updating processes, so it’s not something one does unless one sees benefits in this approach, or simply fancies a challenge. I’d have to disagree on the “not learning anything” item though: I’ve learned a great deal about the inter-relation of various core and non-core programs when they don’t build
and I think you learn a bit by osmosis as well, if you actually just watch the compiling process some of the time (YMMV).
Sidenote: I always thought it was quite handy for the developers having all their users accustomed to compiling stuff, as they can tell the bug-reporter to tweak ebuild X or modify USE-flag Y, then rebuild and report the results. Easier than trying to replicate a tricky bug on your own system, and the reporter gets to join in the sense of accomplishment (and immediate payoff) if the fix works.
You certainly won’t hear me saying either
“Fad” implies no intrinsic benefit once the novelty factor has worn off, which (as you may have guessed) I’d strongly refute. It’s not for everyone’s taste, but it is an utterly unique approach with its own strengths (and weaknesses) and it remains Gentoo’s strongest selling-point. For my part, I find the payoff is a sense that the OS I use every day is, in some sense, lovingly crafted by my own hand (though I acknowledge the contribution made by the processor and autotools
This might be considered something of a conceit, but that’s how Gentoo makes me feel and why I continue to love using it.
Edit: tag typo. [tagpo?]
Edited 2007-07-24 00:51
And the only one. And once interest in that starts vaning it brings down the whole thing.
Let’s face it, Gentoo = Portage. OK, it was fun for a while, I guess it made some people get closer to their Linux and some feel more in control and placebo’ed some into feeling they get a “faster” and more “stable” install in return.
And since none of the above is particularly well anchored in reality, yeah, I’d say there’s “no intrinsic benefit once the novelty has worn off”.
Look, I’m not particularly trying to bash Gentoo. There are serious objections to Gentoo being fit to survive in the Linux distro world. Gentoo fans can (a) change Gentoo to improve its fighting chances, or (b) let it go. I say it again: the FOSS world is a very harsh one. It’s survival of the fittest, and Gentoo got the terminal pox. People should grow up and learn to live with it, shit happens, distro’s die, it’s a fact of life.
Let’s face it, Gentoo = Portage. OK, it was fun for a while, I guess it made some people get closer to their Linux and some feel more in control and placebo’ed some into feeling they get a “faster” and more “stable” install in return.
And since none of the above is particularly well anchored in reality, yeah, I’d say there’s “no intrinsic benefit once the novelty has worn off”.
Ahem. Could you please explain how “feel more in control” is not “particularly well anchored in reality”? Cos you know very well that is BS. You _are_ in control; _you_ decide what you want your system to have and what not, you decide how everything is compiled and so on. You can’t do that with f.ex. Ubuntu (or okay, you _can_ but only if you tear it down completely and start compiling the stuff yourself, but then you miss the whole point of using it..)
And well, the compilation flags do have some meaning, actually. If you select the wrong ones, you do get an unstable system. If you use -O2, you do get a tad faster apps. Though, the performance boost is really very very negligible, nothing to call home about. But as I use -Os, I get stable apps and they’re smaller in size. On my jukebox with low memory I find this pretty useful. I did just compare /usr/bin/nautilus compiled with -O2 to the same compiled with -Os and the difference is 300kB. Considering how big of a difference it is on a single file it must have quite an impact on the system as a whole. On a system with low memory that is very handy.
EDIT: fixed typo
Edited 2007-07-24 09:52
Simple. You are not in control. All that most of Gentoo users are doing is monkeying around and getting a false feeling of control.
Half of all they do is use emerge. That’s not different from any other decent package management system, feature-wise, except with Portage you have to wait hours sometimes for stuff to compile. But I digress. The point is, there’s no particular control in simply using a packaging system, no more or less than on other distro’s.
The other half of the grand illusion consists of mucking about with compile flags. I doubt a lot of people could seriously sit down and explain what -O does. I mean, really does, not “it makes the programs more stable/fast”. And when the compilation is done they sit back and say “yeah, I can tell it’s faster/more stable”. Please. Give me proof or stop saying that.
So if there’s any BS flying around it’s pretending that compiling everything from source yields any significant result. The only sure thing is that you’re torturing the poor machines for nothing. OK, emerge as a packaging system has it’s management merits, but so do other ones. Too bad it is badly crippled by the whole compilation thing.
Let’s turn that around. How many people can create a .deb package? An .rpm? With gentoo, a version bump is as simple as copying an ebuild to your overlay and changing the version number associated.
Explaining what ‘O’ does is dead simple. It saves you from manually typing out the separate flags for the various optimization levels, as defined by the gcc info files.
The general bullshit flying around is that most gentoo users are like the funroll-loops parody site, as well that the portage tree is without real merit. See my other post, I’m not going to copypasta it.
EDIT: And I guarantee you, if I was to bash the “general” Ubuntu userbase, I’d be modded to hell with good reason. Curious you’re moving up.
Edited 2007-07-24 17:48
That’s exactly the point, you’re not in control, not much, with either binary or source packaging systems. You’re looking for control in the wrong place to begin with. A packaging system should manage packages, period. Add, remove and cleanup packages, with minimal fuss.
If recompilation will only produce marginal and hard to quantify results, why bother? Why stress your hardware doing it? Why not leave it to distro maintainers, who probably know more about it than you do, and just take the binaries? If the packages are flexible enough you can still get enough choice in your package selection.
I’m not bashing the Gentoo user base, I’m saying that the main Gentoo strong point is largely a fad. Which seems to be supported by its continuous decrease in popularity (both userland and developers) and the general lack of purpose that seems to plague the decision makers and produces flames and bickering rather than something useful. But I guess time will tell.
For the most practical of reasons, it means they can package and support programs whose resulting binaries are, by license or patent, not redistributable.
USE flags place you in control features to build and dependencies to pull in.
If you need to debug something, you specify the ‘debug’ use flag on the package and add ‘-ggdb’ to your CFLAGS, and after recompilation you can provide a meaningful backtrace for whatever package, while staying within the bound of the package manager. How does you distribution cope with that?
hmmm…
dev-lang/php-5.2.2-r1 USE=”apache2 cli crypt ctype gd iconv mysql ncurses nls pcre readline reflection session spell spl ssl tidy truetype unicode xml zlib (-adabas) -bcmath -berkdb (-birdstep) -bzip2 -calendar -cdb -cgi -cjk -concurrentmodphp -curl -curlwrappers -db2 -dbase (-dbmaker) -debug -discard-path -doc (-empress) (-empress-bcs) (-esoob) -exif -fastbuild (-fdftk) -filter (-firebird) -flatfile -force-cgi-redirect (-frontbase) -ftp -gd-external -gdbm -gmp -hash -imap -inifile -interbase -iodbc -ipv6 -java-external -json -kerberos -ldap -ldap-sasl -libedit -mcve -mhash -msql -mssql -mysqli -oci8 (-oci8-instant-client) -odbc -pcntl -pdo -pdo-external -pic -posix -postgres -qdbm -recode -sapdb -sharedext -sharedmem -simplexml -snmp -soap -sockets (-solid) -sqlite -suhosin (-sybase) (-sybase-ct) -sysvipc -threads -tokenizer -wddx -xmlreader -xmlrpc -xmlwriter -xpm -xsl -yaz -zip -zip-external”
a little explanation for what u see…
anything between use=”……” is what we call use flags and can be turn on or off depending on what you want to be compiled….
tell me now the other package manager with such control…
I’m sorry but that is a basic understanding of how compilers work. If you use a certain compiler flag u get advantages and disadvantages (speed over stability and vice versa). You can look in forums.gentoo.org. There are many discussions for optimization flags you can use.
Also consider that a binary distro needs to keep legacy so they compile the packages for generic architectures like i686 or older in order to work for such machines while gentoo and all the other source based distros are compiled exactly for the architecture of your cpu and that means that your programs take advantage of specific abilities that cpu engineers have added and you have payed for…
Can you explain to us why is it a fake feeling that you get far more control and speed tuning with gentoo?
When we are talking about a source based distro (not just gentoo) i think it’s a fact that you get an advantage on how you control your system…
“Can you explain to us why is it a fake feeling that you get far more control and speed tuning with gentoo?
When we are talking about a source based distro (not just gentoo) i think it’s a fact that you get an advantage on how you control your system…”
“fake feeling” could you explain that statement.
You can optimize compiling of programs to take advantage of *your* CPU, and lots do the *simple * fact you can do it is part of the control. You can argue the benefits of having an often marginally faster system at the expense of stability in everything *but* gaming is a waste of time…and I’d agree, but then I run my hardware at stock speeds…but understand why someone would overclock their hardware.
If you do not understand the statements “your GNU your way” or “Everything you want *and* nothing you don’t” or “mininimal install with not application bloat” then I can’t help you the reality is there are 100’s of distributions catering to *different* needs. In simply terms my setup is Linux+X+Xfce+OpenOffice+Firefox+K3B+Xchat+Eclipse etc etc and *nothing* I don’t use at the *high* cost of compiling, Even the programs themselves only compile without things I consider useless like support for formats;desktops;libraries I don’t use, like Gnome+KDE+GTk1+Microsoft Codecs+Allegro. But your *right* if Distribution+Binary Package Manager fulfills most of *your* needs without the additional overhead of the time involved in compiling then that is a compelling alternative.
Although you are trolling and you are off topic, but then judging by your post. I think you have heard of Gentoo, but haven’t used it and are playing Distro smackdown. Gentoo is not *primarily* about speed or control although it offers *both* more than all but the base metal Distributions. Its *mainly* about a *meta-distribution*+*cutting-edge*+*stability*+*maintainability*
…but you clearly do not understand that. In fact the fact that it offers these *together* is what makes Gentoo+portage unique
I will go *further* you do not understand *why GNU has many choices of Distribution* which is unfortunate for new GNU users who are overwhelmed by the choices out there.
cyclops please take *more time* to read others posts more *carefully* and *understand* what they talk about…
wirespot said
and i asked him
i hope you understand the difference between a question and a statement.
now ontopic…
from all this things just the meta nature is more or less intact.
cutting edge? like what? kde4? is it in portage? even stable releases by upstream take too long to get in portage (not even think about alpha/beta/rc releases).
stability is connected with maintainability and both are analogous with how many developers are working in the project. Now consider how many developers have resigned and keep resigning. Some herds are depending on 1 or 2 developers ffs…
Please don’t get me wrong, of course i want to see my distro of choise to prosper but there are so many issues while trustees the only thing they care about is how to resolve the foundation…
like they are working hard to make the distro how it was and don’t have time for the paperwork…oh please…
“cyclops please take *more time* to read others posts more *carefully* and *understand* what they talk about…”
Thank you for you stange post. I understand the *distribution* and understand that they have different strengths and weaknesses, and spent a long time why they came about.
“Can you explain to us why is it a fake feeling that you get far more control and speed tuning with gentoo?
i hope you understand the difference between a question and a statement. ”
I do understand the difference between a question and a statement, I even understand subtleties of English which are clearly lost on you. Gentoo’s emphasis is not speed or control, although it has *provisions for both*. He has a complete misunderstanding of the benefits of Gentoo.
He is reinforcing a misunderstanding about Gentoo. If control is the ability to pick and choose compiler-time options; optimizations; packages then that is control, is that fake or real? its certainly more control than is available an any binary distribution. You can only argue that this is unnecessary functionality to *you* who’s distribution covers *your* needs without Gentoo’s overhead.
Can you use compile time flags, which BTW you set up *once* and I personally never play with. Although *others* do, and I understand why someone would want optimize binaries particularly where stability is not critical like games, you are aware its not uncommon to do so. I *personally* would rather have a *stable* desktop. You can argue that the benefits of a marginally faster *desktop*, are not for you, but on a binary distribution you do not have a choice.
BUT again the bottom line is Gentoo’s strength is in its meta-distribution nature which you do not understand. Which I try to explain time and time again.
You do not understand how portage works you have the options of
a) installing an overlay containing not in tree packages
b) adding your own
c) selecting masked packages (normally a release but something is broken)
d) selecting a package.
I have just checked and there are ebuilds available for the SVN of KDE4 although if you are arguing they should be marked stable, you crackers.
The reality is Gentoo is *always* cutting edge while Ubuntu is putting work into its latest “adjective animal” Gentoo syncs to its latest version as often as you like, and as bleeding edge as you like stable; unstable; masked, and often svn. Although with the exception of X compiz-fusion mesa I never do this for an unstable package because of my open source ati drivers, and for every game as I do not care about there stability.
There are *more* developers than there have been check the newsletters, which provide proof. Although more or less Developers just mean more packages supported.
But again the problem is *NOT* developers its administration read the damn post.
Edited 2007-07-24 18:41
But again the problem is *NOT* developers its administration read the damn post.
Administration is utterly boring.
“Administration is utterly boring.”
Administration is not boring its a *skill*. In GNU other than the FSF their is very little work done to expand into other areas’s.
Notable exceptions are things like
Tango
Elephants Dream
Linux Bios
Wesnoth
Open Graphics Project
…I’m going off the top topic, but although Open development is attractive, only in coding has it made a major impact.
But do not underestimate administrators…they often are the ones that do the *real* work, and as you see in this instance they are the cornerstone of any major project.
Seriously real the article *Mexico*!?
what i’m arguing is that if gentoo would like to be called a distro of bleeding edge then there should be many developers working and *contributing* back to kde for their next release and ebuild should have already found their way in portage even hard masked so users can test it. That’s what we call bleeding edge sir! Who cares for kde’s minor releases…
That is what we call *innovation*, *research* and *contribution*.
A common response that i see in many bugs: “well we will see what upstream has to say…”
Most of developers do not care any more to contribute something back, fix bugs or backport a fix (backport in gentoo = lol).
I have already express my feelings for trustees… :p
“what i’m arguing is that if gentoo would like to be called a distro of bleeding edge then there should be many developers working and *contributing* back to kde for their next release and ebuild should have already found their way in portage even hard masked so users can test it. That’s what we call bleeding edge sir! Who cares for kde’s minor releases…
That is what we call *innovation*, *research* and *contribution*.
A common response that i see in many bugs: “well we will see what upstream has to say…”
Most of developers do not care any more to contribute something back, fix bugs or backport a fix (backport in gentoo = lol). ”
Clearly you are confused by the term bleeding-edge. Is is basically the ability to run the latest packages…which it does. Anything you say otherwise is a lie.
If you want to create a new off-topic comment please do so.
You seem to have moved onto the fact that KDE should backport fixes rather than move people onto the *fixed* version…but the strange thing is you want to use KDE4, what do you want?? portage allows for stable; unstable; masked and allows your own and has SVN builds you now want something else Gentoo does not work like that, of course you are aware that you can add patches though your OWN ebuild, although personally I think your too confused about what you want. I would argue that moving users to the latest most stable version is the best use of a Distributors time, rather than fixing up legacy packages, and unlike Binary distributions which are *static* between releases Gentoo is more a moving target thats why it has upstream features. Although it does include fixes for all sorts thats what all those r1 and r2 people see is about. Have you even heard of Gentoo?
But again this is a *NEW* topic.
“I have already express my feelings for trustees”
To be fair you haven’t a single post that focuses on the topic of administration. Your focus has been on Gentoo the product. It would be nice if you could be on topic.
Edited 2007-07-24 19:28
till now i never got off topic because you don’t understand that there is no ideological problem for administration to discuss!
Who cares about politics, GNU, software freedoms and such rants when the main problem is that the action’s by trustees affect in every way the developers and they are the guys who keep project up and running.
It’s simple… if you cannot locate the problems and understand them how will you fix the foundation?
but now you want to discuss what we call bleeding edge.. well that is offtopic for sure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_edge
“technology that is so new (and thus, presumably, not perfected) that the user is required to risk reductions in stability and productivity in order to use it”
So minor releases are NOT bleeding edge cause they are most of them bug fixes and small changes.
Also in the rest of you paragraph you confuse developers with users and you make new terms (binary are “static”? major distros already working and contributing back to kde or you want me to add the patches and communicate with upstream? im the user! that is developer’s work)
That’s from me…
“Who cares about politics, GNU, software freedoms and such rants when the main problem is that the action’s by trustees affect in every way the developers and they are the guys who keep project up and running.”
I’m beginning to see a theme, what are you on about. If you are trying a “Linus”, its lost on me. I don’t care. Gentoo as a distribution, caters for both free and open-source users by the very nature of it being a meta-distribution.
Again you seem *confused* you argue for downstream fixes, when by your own admission Gentoo unlike a Binary Distribution is not *static*, you are arguing it does not contain latest released like KDE4 and that has been disproved. Not only that Gentoo is as bleeding-edge as you want it to be.
I think you have a *major* misunderstanding…and its *you*. Gentoo does it all. If you need svn they are often available, new releases are put into unstable…but *you* have the option of running these if they contain *features* *fixes* you need, like I say I do this for my graphics card, and games, but everything else I opt for a stable build…you have the choices.
If you are arguing that running that I am running the latest released kernel;X;XFCE that is not bleeding edge. I can even use ebuilds for the code in snv;git.
I use the terms binary for well package managers that deliver applications in binary form. I use the term static because it points out a flaw in you logic. Binary distributions are *static* often picking a stable selection of applications and back porting fixes to these. Gentoo works differently…its a constantly *evolving* distribution. I don’t download every six months. I just synchronize every day. If you do not understand this then you are simply confused about the difference.
In simple terms new releases come out all the time, in Gentoo new releases are testing, and if have obvious blockers are masked with an explanation why, or are put into unstable for more testing by adventurous *users* as every combination of a meta-distribution is impossible to test, sometimes are even ready on the day of release simply because on time taken to test earlier revisions of the application. Although a *user* can override this simple mechanism because he has the power to unmask, mark stable packages, in fact you can run the whole system in unstable although I would advise against it, although many do. I use my example of my Open-source graphics cards drivers as an example of where it offers *real* advantages to overide the simple method in place, but this is an *exception* to the rule, The other example I use is games becuase I unlike my desktop I want *new* features not *stability*.
…but again the choice is yours.
Although I do find it amusing that “im the user! that is developer’s work” yet you think you have a better idea of how to release than the dedicated individuals working for Gentoo, and yet continually show your ignorance at both *what gentoo is* and *how gentoo works*
my friend you are confusing an official maintained kde4 ebuild i’m asking for (with local revisions, patches at least to compile in gentoo, accept bugs in bugzilla, developers focused in nothing else than the particular project etc etc) with a dirty ebuild which just downloads the latest dev code and builds it…
well you think i’m confused and i think you are confused too. call it a draw? :p
anyway feel free to read a part of social contract:
“We will establish relationships with Free Software authors and collaborate with them when possible. We will submit bug-fixes, improvements, user requests, etc. to the “upstream” authors of software included in our system. We will also clearly document our contributions to Gentoo as well as any improvements or changes we make to external sources used by Gentoo (whether in the form of patches, “sed tweaks” or some other form). We acknowledge that our improvements and changes are much more meaningful to the larger Free Software community if they are clearly documented and explained, since not everyone has the time or ability to understand the literal changes contained in the patches or tweaks themselves.”
http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/contract.xml
and tell me now in which way gentoo project contributes e.g in kde?
how many developers are working on kde4?
and not just kde but any other project…
let me remind you that most major “static” distros contribute with innovative code, one guy from suse made a new kde menu, the other guy from ubuntu made a new menu editor for gnome etc etc…
You got caught out on your lack of knowledge on Gentoo basic release system which is Mask;unstable;stable. First by insisting that the later releases of the KDE3 branch were not available. To cover up this you moved onto implying that a *new* release should *automatically* be marked stable on an ecosystem of 1000’s of packages, without proper testing even though as a user you have the possibility of overriding this if *you* think you know better than the developers. I even pointed out possible exceptions to this. Finally you moved onto the fact that KDE4 should be available for Gentoo, after it being pointed out that you could simply use a SVN build for an unreleased *Major* component involving large numbers of users most of whom rely on having a *working* OS hense all the Masking; Unstable; Stable stuff; You have finally Moved onto saying that a yet unreleased package should be part of the main system. I will point out that its not unusual for releases of this Magnitude to have pre-releases available as masked packages, but like I say having official packages of unreleased components is crackers. Your defending your own lack of knowledge. You have wasted this thread by not researching how Gentoo works.
Your final comment is suitably bizarre..and new and I will respond to it. Innovation…I love this word plenty on here use it but its become crass, and real innovation like sugar is ignored.
You are arguing that Gentoo should *not* use Vanilla packages, on a Meta-Distribution. If you so not see the irony of that statement than I give up. Gentoo allows you to use whatever alternative menu you want in KDE…or any desktop allows you to swap and change components however you want. The KDE-Lite package allows you to install the components of KDE you want and no others. Any new component would just become *another* package. Although personally I’m against anything that is is not Vanilla unless its a real fork.
Now the reality is that Gentoo *specific* packages exist…the *sensible* ones. Installers and portage GUI for easier installation and management, and components that add a Gentoo look.
If you are saying that Gentoo does not add bugfixes, or have developers that both work on packages, clearly you have never used Gentoo. In a lot of ebuilds portage sub-directory there is a directory marked files which contain various patches. Which are submitted back to the developers…and the source is available to everyone the code is distributed to.
The bottom line is your a timewaster.
Edited 2007-07-24 23:42
first i never moved from a statement to another.
all i have already said are valid.
You must be new in gentoo so it’s ok by me.
Please consider that i’m not asking for something new
if i remember right they had ebuilds for all alpha,beta,rc releases with patches in portage in old days (missed them ;_;) for kde.
if i also recall right gentoo had also many ebuilds for prerelease of gnome for version 2 (a major release).
so it’s not something new because that time everyone was living at real bleeding edge.
and… no… contribution is in a low lvl.
Most of the times the patches they use are coming from upstream.
For example, recently they removed xine support from totem (they said none from the team use xine lol). Of course it’s easy for me to make a new ebuild but..hey.. is that the freedom u ask for?
What if we have to do with a more complicated installation?
Another example…
There is a well known bug in wxgtk that crashes applications like amule (both stable).
It exists for MONTHS and you know it’s not an easy case. You cannot always make the superman and fix ebuilds or update them your own.
Bugs depends on other bugs and a user can’t make it all by himself.
I think the msg is simple and well known to the management…
Gentoo has to make serious recruits and be more policed, with new ideas and freedom for their developers to make as they wish and have FUN.
For example, recently they removed xine support from totem (they said none from the team use xine lol). Of course it’s easy for me to make a new ebuild but..hey.. is that the freedom u ask for?
You really try to use any strawman argument you can to bash Gentoo? So, if they removed Xine support from Totem, then they did that. You still get to choose more than you get with any binary distro where you can’t decide at all what features are apps compiled with. In a binary distro you just gotta stick with what the package provides.
And well, I don’t know of any wxGTK bugs, all the apps are working just fine on my system. YMMV.
and tell me now in which way gentoo project contributes e.g in kde?
how many developers are working on kde4?
and not just kde but any other project…
let me remind you that most major “static” distros contribute with innovative code, one guy from suse made a new kde menu, the other guy from ubuntu made a new menu editor for gnome etc etc…
Err, that’s utterly stinky BS :O Gentoo devs don’t contribute to any of the open-source projects? Bah! They’re just as active as the devs for any other distro, and you know very well that was a strawman.
If you don’t like Gentoo, then don’t. But stop trolling, please. I f.ex. don’t like Ubuntu, but I’m not bashing it nor am I trolling around, I just choose something that pleases me; yes, Gentoo.
Xine support is in totem.
media-video/totem-2.16.5 USE=”a52 dbus dvd ffmpeg firefox flac hal lirc mad mpeg ogg theora vorbis xv -debug -gnome -nsplugin -nvtv -xine”
He just doesn’t want to *learn* Gentoo. This is not a reference to other Distributions, which do not have the large learning curve of Gentoo etc etc. I’m beginning to suspect he hasn’t even tried it. He certainly can’t use it effectively…and has no interest in building his skills.
Its just another argument because his other posts are so trivial to refute getting more and more difficult to read because he has nothing *real* to say
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=181421 (xine-totem)
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=151528 (amule-wxgtk bug, that is like 9 months old O_O )
those are just some examples…
hiding the problems under the carpet will help nobody
cheers
b00gie
As to the “xine-totem” but you posted
——- Comment #1 From Bugs Bunny 2007-06-09 14:53:32 0000 [reply] ——-
Created an attachment (id=121581) [edit]
ebuild patch adding xine useflag back
I run “stable” and what do I get when I run an emerge
Calculating dependencies… done!
[ebuild R ] media-video/totem-2.16.5 USE=”a52 dbus dvd ffmpeg flac hal mad mpeg ogg theora vorbis xine xv -debug -firefox -gnome -lirc -nsplugin -nvtv” 0 kB
WOW look at that! xine USE flag!
that ebuild submited by a user…
devs dropped support for xine in totem 2.18 (gnome 2.18 will get stable soon as they announced yesterday)
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=176368
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/desktop/gnome/howtos/gnome-2.18-upgra…
cheers
And b00gie what does the bug list say
” ——- Comment #7 From Rémi Cardona 2007-06-09 16:32:19 0000 [reply] ——-
Listen Bugs,
First of all, insulting people won’t get you very far. I already believe I’m
wasting my time answering, but here’s to hoping you may actually listen.
The problem isn’t the ebuild, the proof being you made one yourself in 5
minutes. The problem is the XINE BUGS THAT WE CAN’T FIX. There, I said it.
For months/years, there has always been hard and tedious work trying to fix
xine bugs in Totem with the xine team in Gentoo, with the Totem upstream and
with the xine upstream.
Bugs kept piling and there’s nothing we could do about it. Our solution,
_drop_xine_support_.
If you want it, fine. Do it in an overlay, that’s what overlays are for. If you
want upstream to care about it, provide patches.
But stop whining here, our reasons are well known and well explained. Thanks
for understanding.”
The Bug is with Xine, when the upstream fixes their Bug Xine will be put back into totem.
Come on …….
well that doesn’t fit well for devs who contribute like all the others like you said, does it? :p
please see the big picture. They are unstaffed (that is a fact) and management do nothing about it.
Other projects have leaders and foundations (openbsd anyone? they just created their own) and we denied both.
If you want to say that everything is good with the project, go for it, but it will keep smelling inside.
You want to help gentoo stay alive and kick ass like the old days?
Be more demanding…
Excuse me? Be more demanding?
How about buckle down and become a dev instead of bitching on an unrelated forum?
Heh, sorry if I came across as flaming. That’s usually what a para-by-para response means around here, but actually I just thought your post was a good canvas on which to express my own thoughts on the matter.
You’re quite right (and I hinted at this previously): if Portage does not seem like an appealing proposition, Gentoo itself won’t either (although maybe Sabayon’s popularity refutes this in a way).
Like it or not, Portage defines Gentoo. But what I’m getting at is that many people (I believe the majority) chose Gentoo expressly because of what Portage offers, and I’m not talking about speed or stability because, as you said, these are shaky arguments at best (which is why the Gentoo team disavow these points every chance they get; they don’t want people on board due to hype/misconceptions, because those people will probably leave as soon as reality bites).
The advantages and disadvantages of Portage are likely to be understood by most prospective users long before they fire up the install. I’ve already made a couple of examples of why it appealed to me, here’s another: obsessively minute control. Most distros package KDE, for example, with colossal amounts of cruft and stuff that people simply won’t use. Thanks to Portage, I never needed to trouble myself with any of that stuff. Even Konqueror and the Control Centre are opt-in components (I guess some people might be able to live without them…)
Anyway, sorry to have come across poorly, but my position stands: There will always be people who love to use Gentoo, and others who are dedicated to making it work, because of its uniqueness. Fair-weather friends, Johnny-come-latelys and “sheeple” have never been a big factor in the community’s makeup, and it certainly will not stand/fall on their whims.
I think you’ve said enough of those, so I won’t add any more to them, but one:
Gentoo rocks.
Well, the foundation is still going to dissolve. There are plans to move to the Software Freedom Conservancy and dissolve the gentoo foundation in about 3 months. Also, for the people that don’t think there are any problems with gentoo in terms of community/leadership I ask this, if daniel robbins resigned 3 years ago how come the state of new mexico still thinks he is the president. That seems like a big issue that people forgot to resolve after he left.
“Also, for the people that don’t think there are any problems with gentoo in terms of community/leadership I ask this, if daniel robbins resigned 3 years ago how come the state of new mexico still thinks he is the president. That seems like a big issue that people forgot to resolve after he left.”
Because Paperwork has little to do with Leadership…and nothing to do with community, in fact suggesting there is *any* link is bizarre.
now imagine drobbins like a cruel man who has just found out that he is still the president and take over the project just like that…
Leadership has the responsibility for all small and big issues that demands a solution.
If they don’t like their job then thnkbbhf
Edited 2007-07-24 01:38
“Leadership has the responsibility for all small and big issues that demands a solution.”
I’m glad that you have moved away from the *community* lie, and have focussed on leadership.
I said *little* to do with leadership. Regardless of *any* example, it is not the *role* of a leader to maintain an *administration* role. It can be only considered a failing of a *particular* leader at not fulfilling that position or assigning responsibility, and even then those should be delegated. I’ll use an example.
“He will be resolving this critical issue in the next couple of days by filing the appropriate paperwork with the state of New Mexico, and this paperwork will also remove me as President of the Foundation”
Thats the critical issue…If you even know where to begin doing something like that you are a better man than me. I actually think finding someone who understands, and is able to do that is *tricky*
From the blog:
“I am also, like many of you, not happy at all with the way Gentoo has been going from a development and community perspective.”
Can somebody please explain to me what issues Gentoo is having from the “development and community perspective?”
I use to frequent the forums a lot.. but now I’ve learned to fix and configure all my own Gentoo stuff; so I don’t see the ongoing discussion. For me Gentoo has been wonderful now that I know what I’m doing.
Is the forum community unhappy? I don’t think so, I haven’t really seen many posts complaining.
Is this just a case of trying to figure out who should be the “lead developer” of Gentoo?
1.flames after flames among developers are a common view in mailing lists
2. there is no real work for something new that will bring gentoo forward. Almost nothing have changed from when drobbins resigned… no innovation
3. lack of developers or interest produce delays (2007.0 delayed sooo many times, kde is still 2 versions behind, gnome 2.18 just recent changed from hardmask to testing, livecd installer S-U-X just some examples)
4. developers resign one after the other.
Common reason “there is no fun any more”
1.flames after flames among developers are a common view in mailing lists
——————————————————
Flames for what?
——————————————————
2. there is no real work for something new that will bring gentoo forward. Almost nothing have changed from when drobbins resigned… no innovation
——————————————————
Ok, but Gentoo’s portage makes this a moot point at least in the software side of things. What would I like to see in Gentoo “moving forward?” Perhaps a lower learning curve by catering to Linux newbies. I mean we all could RTFM… But I guess the livecd and installer needs to be perfected, as well as hardware detection and setup. Sabayon Linux goes a long way to put together a “user friendly” live cd with all the bling. It’s just a Gentoo derivative which can still be updated using portage (Sabayon isn’t what I’d call a fork)
——————————————————
3. lack of developers or interest produce delays (2007.0 delayed sooo many times, kde is still 2 versions behind, gnome 2.18 just recent changed from hardmask to testing, livecd installer S-U-X just some examples)
——————————————————
I run a testing system, but if a particular ebuild is unstable, I know how to choose the version I want. I agree some things could be updated to “stable” faster, but overall I can choose what I want when I want it. Version identifiers, i.e. 2007.0 really don’t mean anything. An emerge -uD world brings you up to date. No matter which installation year you started with.
I’m not familiar with the live-cd installer, so I can’t really comment on that.
——————————————————
4. developers resign one after the other.
Common reason “there is no fun any more”
——————————————————
I guess this may be true, but I assume somebody else takes their place. Gentoo seems community driven to me.
Edited 2007-07-23 22:53
Well, for many things. I think most e.g recommendations for changes end up to flames lol
Who talked for newbies? Innovation is an advantage only for newbies?
Even portage, an innovation by drobbins back then, has after many years great flaws and demands serious rewrite. There was portage-ng, not any more…
Sabayon is a nice starting distro that gentoo should support… but i think they have decided not to do it.
well if you dream for a farm of testing machines then yes this is your distro. But many more don’t want to have every now and then broken emerges so they stack with stable versions.
Consider that we are not talking even for bleeding edge here but what upstream call stable and other distros have already stabilize and release in their products while gentoo still track bugs.
New version releases mean many things.
One is that are useful for new installations (i dont think you would like to build a new gentoo installation with 1 or 2 years old cd and stages) and of course it’s also a sign that something is wrong. “You have a schedule. You miss it. You miss it again and again. Fix your management ffs are you blind?!”
not always and a newbies developers doesn’t compare with some guys who have spent years developing in gentoo project.
It takes time to find how things work.
I remember when flameeyes resigned, this guy was maintaining so many things by himself.I think that is a reason they have delayed to stabilize a new kde version. Ofcouse he came back after a while and he doesn’t work on so many things now but the point is that you can not ask from someone to spend all his free time fixing things that should be others responsibility.
Edited 2007-07-23 23:52
Well Debian is on 2.16 so I’d hardly call that a reason. Debian 4.0 was delayed as well, are you sure your not talking about it?
You’re information on point 3 is wrong. I’m running ~amd64 and have KDE 3.5.7 installed. I’ve also had Gnome 2.18 installed for quite some time, so long In fact that i’ve forgotten when it merged (so maybe it was yesterday hehe) it hasn’t been hard masked for quite some time though.
If you’re referring to stable arch then yes, maybe KDE is two versions behind but thats just the way things are with Gentoo…and as someone else has pointed out you don’t have to sit at either arch or ~arch, you can pick and choose *absolutely everything*
As for the livecd, the stage3 tarball approach is still the primary way of getting the OS installed, and it may be primitive but once you know the Linux layout well enough it’s trivial to do from memory and get a nice customed install, The only time i ever use the livecd is when Windows hoses my MBR and frequent releases aren’t that important because existing users can emerge –sync and new users, if so inclined could do a stage3 from any other distro’s livecd (I’ve done stage3 installs over a samba using ubuntu livecd’s)..
Gentoo is never going to be for the same demographic as Ubuntu or other newbie friendly desktop distro’s, thats just how it is and i’m sure if it’s survived this long it’ll survive for years to come.
Edited 2007-07-24 01:44
i hope you understand that stable releases mean fewer bugs. It’s not a feature or an advantage to delay so much to get stable version. Kde is 3.5.5 stable while almost all the other major distro have move to 3.5.6.
If thats how Gentoo works well, something is wrong (and wasn’t always like that).
Bleeding edge in terms of a testing release is not a unique feature tou gentoo. Take fedora and upgrade to rawhide, there you are.
The point is that if you want to be at the bleeding edge like a whole distro then you have to make it stable before all the others, and support the new version from day one upstream release it.
But something like that demands more developers and some passion that i’m afraid they have lost…
Edited 2007-07-24 02:07
“i hope you understand that stable releases mean fewer bugs. It’s not a feature or an advantage to delay so much to get stable version. Kde is 3.5.5 stable while almost all the other major distro have move to 3.5.6.”
I suspect developers would welcome you doing so, so you are able to feedback to problems with building the package, or in the application itself, or effect it has on other packages.
I use Gentoo, I *like* the package management system. Do *you* understand how it works.
kde 3.5.7 is available in unstable, http://packages.gentoo.org/search/?sstring=kde you are simply lying. You have the *option* of choosing to run certain *bleeding* edge unstable packages; *any* gentoo user knows that to do this you simply add the name of the package to /etc/portage/package.use…and do this once. I do this *routinely* for games as I think that games do not effect system stability, and X/Mesa as the open-source ati graphics cards, fix more problems that they create.
You can even choose those svn ebuilds for certain packages…build one yourself, copy the ebuild into…I’m bored your a little liar.
Just looking at the *other* lie I advise you to look at the Gentoo weekly newsletters. I advise you to look at the section marked *Gentoo developer moves* if you look through you can see that Gentoo is attracting *more* developers not less. In fact my one point, is that Gentoo doesn’t need more developers, although they are always welcome as this means a *larger* number of packages can be supported, but people to look after *administration* *legal issues* *unique look* *advertising* etc etc.
Edited 2007-07-24 02:42
Using data from the GWN doesn’t make a solid argument. It does present many new developers, but it doesn’t say anything about developers losing dedication or just going AWOL. If anything, the quality of the GWN, which took a severe beating since early 2006, does seem to confirm some disenchantment in the project by the community since its glory days.
It’s definitely more than a question of *paperwork*. Bring all the *developers*, *artists* and *bureaucrats* you want together, chances they won’t do anything worthwhile without sharing a *common vision*. Now, settling on a common vision isn’t trivial…
This is where leadership comes into the equation. Add an healthy dose of leadership to the vision, you’ll get a guy/gal that will gladly handle that dull paperwork. Dismiss them, you’ll get an advice for the revocation of your foundation because the guy/gal just didn’t cared… Of course, money would do the same trick, but it would remove the fun factor from being a part of a dynamic community.
Gentoo doesn’t lack people, it lacks vision and leadership. In fact, it’s pretty much what drobbins raised up in his blog. Let’s see how it will go, but I doubt the project will get a better image (and everything coming with that) until they fill that void.
Kde is 3.5.5 stable while almost all the other major distro have move to 3.5.6
Do you even know what changed between 3.5.5 and 3.5.6?
Something revolutionary I’m sure.
Maybe it is not stable for a reason.
Put it this way….one distro needs to be the first to have a particular version marked stable and one distro needs to be last.
I have a feeling someone would bitch about either.
“Distro A is so far behind, they’re only at version X of package Y!”
or…
“Distro B is so fast to mark the latest packages stable and that busted package hosed my machine.”
Can somebody please explain to me what issues Gentoo is having from the “development and community perspective?”
According to drobbins:
I am concerned that the “Gentoo” organization caters and accommodates often cantankerous developers rather than its users, and that critical Gentoo projects like Sabayon Linux are treated as second-class members of the community.
I used to be active on the Gentoo forums, from 2001 to 2004. I helped my fare share of Gentoo newbies. But as Gentoo got more popular, the newbies became more and more newbish, and the project leadership had no particular interest in accommodating these less technical users.
Gentoo makes it easy to feel like a Linux guru, and therefore the second generation of Gentoo developers were raised to be pretentious elitists. Gentoo started by lowering the bar, but then it became a club for wannabes that desperately needed to feel superior. So the bar-lowering stopped, and so did innovation. The elitists viewed the silly obstacles as rites of passage.
I haven’t really seen many posts complaining.
I think you’re in denial. Back in 2005, when I basically stopped being active in the Gentoo community, it seemed like 1 out of every 100 posts was someone’s bitter manifesto on why they’re leaving Gentoo. Things seem to have gone downhill since then, so I’m sure there’s plenty of these threads on the forums these days.
The Gentoo community is in a serious funk. It’s not a fun place to be anymore. It’s not the technology isn’t fun. It’s the people that aren’t fun. They’re just not very nice. Gentoo seems to attract the very worst personalities, the ones that live up to every negative stereotype about Linux nerds.
They want Gentoo to be a distro for advanced users. But most advanced users don’t particularly want a distro specifically designed to keep out the masses. When I got excited about Gentoo, I thought that it would make it easier for less experienced users to take control of their computing. I thought it would be a distro that lowered the bar for users of various skill levels. I guess I was wrong.
I’m with you butters. I’ve been using the forums since before they became “official,” and saw PLENTY of the “Why I’m leaving Gentoo” style posts. There’s plenty of unrest amongst the community. Since the explosion of forum use around 2004-2005 I pretty much stopped using it. The community paradigm shifted from friendly, open, and excited, to elitist and stagnant.
Portage was/is innovative. Unfortunately, Gentoo failed to really come out and develop past the infancy stage. There’s a serious lack of identity when you shift into the GUI world, and a common Gentoo “theme” has failed to ever really materialize. I believe this is for a variety of reasons, including those you listed in your post.
I still use Gentoo whenever I can. I think it makes an excellent server, but it’s terribly pathetic when it comes to the desktop – a failure due in large part to the community and those who wish to keep Gentoo for the 1337. Desktop usability has been completely stifled and I’m skeptical whether or not Gentoo will ever be able to catch up to distributions like Ubuntu.
“The Gentoo community is in a serious funk. It’s not a fun place to be anymore. It’s not the technology isn’t fun. It’s the people that aren’t fun. They’re just not very nice. Gentoo seems to attract the very worst personalities, the ones that live up to every negative stereotype about Linux nerds.”
I’m not in denial. I will show 100 posts of people helping people for *every* post that you find offensive.
As for your comments on new users. I find it offensive generally. When Gentoo has made great strides in both installation, and package management by offering GUI options for *both*. As for the elitist stuff *please*
Your post is beneath you, and is reminiscent of *those* *Sony* posts I see so often. I’m actually surprised that you have posted such a crowd pleasing comment.
The harsh reality is, if you look on *freenode* you will see the *largest* irc help channels are all Gentoo.
Seriously I’ve just looked through *my* posts on Gentoo here are some of my responses.
I will say this again these are *my* posts. I find your comment offensive on several levels, for reasons that should be clear. Your post is appalling. I hope I do not have to comment further.
Off-topic
=========
This is good reading and should be essential for new users.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
Asking questions is a *life* skill.
Edited 2007-07-24 03:41
i think Gentoo around 2003-2004 was my favorite linux distro. in fact, i don’t think there is a better linux distribution than Gentoo. package management is fantastic (though the packages aren’t nearly as bleeding edge as they were in 2002/2003).
on the other hand, FreeBSD has proved to have a more mature community and extremely stable package repository. while portage has several benefits over ports (difference between installed packages and dependencies, for example), I like how easy FreeBSD makes it to modify package sources/apply custom patches and install them right from the ports tree.
for the past several months, boxes I previously would have installed Gentoo on, are now getting FreeBSD.
i don’t think there is a better linux distribution than Gentoo. package management is fantastic
Honestly I don’t understand when people say how great Portage is. From my own experience (and that of others) Portage will happily break your system.
What about APT as a really great package manager? (and being improved all the time).
APT doesn’t give you the ability to choose what features you want the installed packages to have. You just gotta stick with what you’re given. I’m sure APT is a nice package manager and all, but in my book it just doesn’t beat portage. Different needs and tastes for different audiences, you know? No point in arguing about which one is better.
My own thoughts about portage? Well, sure, I’d like it if I could just emerge stuff without having to wait several hours for the computer compiling stuff, but then again, I’ve tried a few other distros and never felt at home in any of them. Why? Well, I don’t always know _exactly_ what’s installed and what’s going on, and some packages don’t have the features I would like them to have. So, it’s a trade-off for me. I trade fast installation of packages to a completely custom built system with just the features I want. Nothing more, nothing less.
“i don’t think there is a better linux distribution than Gentoo. package management is fantastic
Honestly I don’t understand when people say how great Portage is. From my own experience (and that of others) Portage will happily break your system.
What about APT as a really great package manager? (and being improved all the time).”
APT is a great package manager. Is this a package manager smackdown?
From your experience…show forum posts at the very minimum that Portage will break your system.
If you do not understand that the power of portage is that it is *very* hard to break your system, simply becuase of the fine-tuned control offered by the files in /etc/portage.
Now if you say you couldn’t get X package to compile or you never got your use flags right or it requires a long learning curve, or even Distribution X + Apt offers you what you want or need from GNU without the hassle of compiling I would believe you.
but when I’m sitting on a machine that has compiled thousands of programs to make up a complete system over years, with thousands of people who do the same I seriously expect forum posts at the very least.
Portage essentially runs batch files to install a program from source….think about that for a while. Its essentially
.configure
make
make install
and little else, explain how *it* could break your system.
I hardly knew you. And that which I did know was called VLOS.
Its funny how any problems with a distribution, immediately invokes install distribution here for X reason. When Gentoo as a product improves consuistantly.
It does have a mature community. I have *never* seen anyone make comments regarding *BSD, Apple, Other Distributions, its a shame people on here don’t have the *same* maturity, and has the best forums I have ever seen. Off-topic I’m quite shocked at how mature the Ubuntu forums are.
I’m actually bemused at the comments regarding the *package management* as that is the *point* of a distribution, we can’t talk about its choice of default application because the point is gentoo is a *META-DISTRIBUTION* its not about *stable* or *fast* although you choose how *stable* *cutting-edge* *fast* you want your system thats the point, at the price of *long learning curve* *micro-mangement* *compile* times*, and that *cannot* change.
The problem that is emerging is simply that *nobody* wants to do the dull things like managing an organizations paperwork…this is not a *new* problem. Anything else is off-topic, and all I see is off-topic. I sympathize nobody and I mean *nobody* wants to do that.
Its a fundamental problem with the GNU community(sic), while Steve stands up and says “Developers; Developers; Developers; Developers; Developers” nobody is standing up in GNU and saying “Lawyers; Managers; Graphic Artists; Musicians; Accountants”. I’d rather see the Likes of Linus focusing on adoption, and skill shortages rather than attacking those groups that focus on such efforts.
>The problem that is emerging is simply that *nobody* wants to do the dull things like managing an organizations paperwork…
>It does have a mature community
So and know think about the second quote. *BSD is organized from A to Z. And people do their work, because they know it’s important for the operating system. This I call maturity.
>and has the best forums I have ever seen.
Most of the real work is done in the mailinglists. Forums are for the mere users. So you see in fact “two communities”. And most developers just don’t care about anything in a forum.
Well the paperwork got behind, like this never happens. It’s being addressed and Gentoo will be around for a long time.
As to the post about wanting Gentoo to be more n00b friendly, sorry but that’s not Gentoo. You must get under the hood and learn, the documentation is about the best around. If you don’t want to take the time to learn and want it to do everything for you (n00b friendly) then go with Ubuntu, Xandros, Linspire, etc. and yes get a Mac.
Gentoo is awesome because I build a system that is exactly what I want and Portage makes it so easy to maintain. I try other flavors but I’m always coming back to Gentoo.
The forums are great, but yes there are the “I’m leaving” posts, name one distro that doesn’t.
I used to use Gentoo a lot from 2003-2005, but about 2 years ago I went off to sea (for purposes of this discussion) and didn’t touch a computer again until about a month ago. I just installed Gentoo from a 2007.0 liveCD and was surprised at how little Gentoo had progressed.
One change I didn’t like was that Gentoo no longer officially supports a stage1 install. That was when you started a new install by bootstrapping your own gcc, libc, and other basic system components, then rebuilding them with themselves. I’m sure it was abandoned to simplify QA by making the installed base more homogeneous. I’ve always thought that having lots of stage1 builds take place was good for Gentoo’s health in that it was a constant test of the system’s “meta-circular stability.” That is, it would tend to reveal more bugs in the bootstrap and subtle bugs down the road than would have been noticed otherwise.
In general, my biggest gripe would be the proliferation of poorly documented USE flags, and uninformative descriptions in many ebuilds. However, for my needs, portage is still a reasonable compromise between flexibility and ease of use.
All distros suck in their own special ways. I’ll keep using Gentoo until I find something I like more.
Edited 2007-07-24 05:59
wow, i didn’t intend my posts to become flamebait. I was posting serious questions about the state of Gentoo. Of course so many people are ready to jump on Gentoo because of old paradigms about “watching the text compile” and stage1 installs. Oh and lets not forget about Gentoo “ricing”
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-309752.html (lawl)
cyclops already explained how you cannot assume “elitism” among Gentoo’ers. ty.
And yes, I really did start using Gentoo for the sole purpose of actually learning linux. I choose to take the steep learning curve. Have I learned linux? well lets just say I’m confident I can take on any distribution of linux and at least figure out whats going on amidst all the proprietary scripts. It really does take R’ingTFM.
My original argument was that Gentoo should try to lower that learning curve. Once you understand the “how” and “why” of portage you come to appreciate it, despite the compiling. It takes time, yes, but I leave that for overnight work.
Most of the time, my system is actually stable. Meaning, hibernation to disk and to ram with a Compiz and xfce4 environment, without restarting —ever—. No crashes. No panicks. Yes, I only reboot when I have a kernel update. Sure, I could probably achieve this with any distribution, but the point is that I have created a stable gentoo install.
btw, “stable” and “testing” are the actual qualifiers used by Gentoo, much like the “universe” and adding other repositories in Ubuntu. Granted, my experience outside of Gentoo is limited, because I haven’t had a single reason to switch.. It “just works” when you know whats going on.
yes, its true that there is no “common Gentoo theme” in the desktop environment, because Gentoo’s philosophy is that linux, and Gentoo, and your desktop, is what you make of it.
I use xfce4 and Compiz (nifty for the expose clone). My desktop can have the very same features and content of any other distribution. Such is the nature of portage.
Meh.. in no particular order:
a. a live tree, with rolling updates. (yeah, before anyone points out, Arch is much the same.)
b. easy to maintain a local overlay of stuff. That means that apps cannot just install anywhere like with ‘make install’, and cannot interact with anything outside their sandbox during build and mock install, and you get a warning if they try.
c. no dicking around with drivers and codecs, as source distribution is very much allowed. No software patents here in Europe, either, so there really would be no point.
c.1. which means you don’t have to hunt down and trust shady outside repos, or risk hosing the system when you dist-upgrade and forget about the stuff you installed without letting the package manager know.
c.2. there are, however, developer repositories, which you still don’t have to hunt down. If you want multi-tty emacs, you get the ebuild with a simple ‘layman -a emacs’, and it integrates into your existing software install as outlined above. (There are .debs provided by the author of the patchset, with mixed reports of them actually working, as he took some time off of emacs development I understand.) These developments are then integrated into the main tree, not left dangling forever.
d. control freakery. Gentoo won’t second guess me. If I tell it to eg. load a driver with modprobe, I expect the driver get loaded, not being told that since there is no corresponding entry in xorg.conf, the loader decided against it.
Also, not everyone is running gentoo with -fomg-optimized. O2 is just fine.
There are probably more, but these stand out.
EDIT: almost forgot. When I got this laptop a year and a half ago, I decided to just install a user-friendly distro and save me the hassle. Got myself the latest OpenSuse, Fedora, and Ubuntu isos. These either failed to boot, failed to install after boot, or failed to boot after install. It probably could have been made to work, but if I have to mess around with the system, I’ll do it with a distro that’s *built* for messing around.
Edited 2007-07-24 11:42
Sabayon 3.4a is now released.
I am a Linux From Scratch user and find myself depending on Gentoo howto pages and [kernel] patches, so I hope they sort this out. It shows that you don’t even have to be using Gentoo to benefit from it.
This topic is about *administration* yet it focus of a misconceptions and Misunderstandings surrounding Gentoo and the 100’s of Distributions
Off-Topic well most of this is.
===============================
I call Linux, GNU, and it has very little to do with any political reasoning. I do so becuase I understand the 100’s of Distributions in GNU.
What is a traditional Distribution?
It is a set of in the main open-source free software from a variety of sources that make a complete OS solution, in main these are geared towards a end-to-end desktop solution.
What are the Differences between Distributions?
The main difference between Desktop Distributions is those large applications associated with GNU Desktop. The Desktop itself.
* Gnome
* KDE
* XFCE
* others
and they package types it uses to install applications
* deb
* rpm
* others
The boot loader
* lilo
* grub
* other
etc etc
Localization.
Different Distributions are often geared towards different languages or cultures
Look and Feel and Defaults
Because of the Customization of cursors; Desktop; Loader, to whether something is loaded with one click or two and even ones that emulate certain Microsoft Platforms.
Political
Because of the History of GNU distributions are often associated with different political leanings when it comes to dealing with propriatery applications, or Licenses that do not allow commercial distribution.
Support
GNU is about money and its always been about *support* many *commercial* distributions offer support for there choice of applications, which is paid for, and there are *choices* of what support is offered.
Compile Options+Other Low Level nonsense
Because of the nature of open-source having the code available Different Distributions can fine tune there applications for Different processors and for its choice of political+stability+desktop leanings
Proprietary Applications
Often Distributions come with applications that add *added value* over other Distribution, the practice is often frowned upon, but is not unusual, to have a unique installation utility or codec installation.
Specialist Distributions
These are Distributions that have been fine tuned for
gaming; routers; firewall; multimedia editing; pvr; arcade machine emulation; old machines; consoles; thin clients; embedded devices etc etc a
Cutting Edge vs Stability
Choices have to be made over the selection of packages to test how they play *together* and how well they work. Its not unusual to see packages lacking features, but having *fixes* backported to an application on a Distribution designed for stability, even at kernel level.
This is not an exclusive list or a complete explanation, but should give some idea as to why there are 100’s of distributions.
How is Gentoo Different?
========================
Gentoo is a *meta-distribution*
It ignores the above and lets you have *only* the applications *you* choose, the stability of the packages *you* want; the compile options *you* want, the localization *you* want, the *look* and feel you want. Follow your *own* political leanings, or built for a specialist device and a whole host of tweaks to make it work your way, and can adapt to your changing needs, without *any* application bloat.
The price for this *Rosetta stone* solution is long compile times; knowledge of the large number of programs available to GNU; Difficult installation; Long learning curve.
If these prices are too high you are better *choosing* a Distribution that fulfills your needs, although will never offer a solution as clean as Gentoo will not come with Gentoo’s overhead.
give gentoo back to robbins.he knows what to do with gentoo.
Slackware is pure linux, without layers of crufty patches. The package management (if could even call it that) is as simple as it comes, a tarball.
When you learn how to administer a Gentoo system, you don’t learn linux, you learn how to get around the various masks, be it blanket archs, or hard coded version masks. To fully understand portage, you have to dig into realms of python (not very well written python in my opinion).
You can disagree with me that Gentoo hides layers of how your linux system works, fine. But I’m not the only one who believes this as my comment was modded up. LFS requires you to understand the build chain, the configuration files, slackware requires you to do the same it doesn’t hold your hand.
Gentoo requires you to learn portage first, learn the masking system, and it requires something that shouldn’t be required on a base system, python. RedHat does this as well, so I’m not going to say it’s only Gentoo. But, I don’t feel that I should have to have python, php or any other interpreted language on my base system just to do package management.
I do not agree that Gentoo is an easy to manage system that you seem to say it is. Gentoo has lost a lot in the quality of packages over the last few years, there were a number of times that versions of software that should have been stable were unstable due to patches that Gentoo developers put in their ebuilds. Portage is slow, it takes minutes now to rebuild the portage database after an update when it used to take seconds. Sure, you could attribute that to the larger number of packages. That doesn’t make up for the fact that the base system cannot handle it, needs a rewrite or even a replacement in something other than python.
Sometimes, some Gentoo problems look like FreeBSD ones. FreeBSD ports system, which is based on Makefiles, is already overloaded. The quality of ports is decreasing considerably with time too.