Re: [gentoo-dev] LibPNG Problems -- good example of Gentoo inherent stability

[Fuper <futurist@directvinternet.com>]

On Wed, 2002-04-17 at 20:12, Daniel Robbins wrote:
> I'd recommend that people who don't want to have the latest and greatest
> versions of everything (and everything that goes with it), don't use
> --update with emerge.  That should help you avoid most problems.  We are
> still devising a good distributed QA system, but that hasn't been added
> to Portage yet :)

IMHO very little change is needed in Portage --- the libpng conflict was
not a show stopper as it might be in a binary-based Linux distrib. 
Thinking about my experience with the somewhat time-consuming but
relatively straight-forward re-compilation from sources that was
required to update my Gentoo system after encountering a conflict over a
basic library, and my experiences with horrible messes on Redhat and
Debian systems that simply left some applications (KDE!) unuseable for a
while (waiting for developers to create on their computers new sets of
binaries that ANY user can create for himself on a Gentoo system) I've
concluded that a source-based distribution like Gentoo is inherently
stable.  Sure, we stress it, but THAT is the goal --- to make a
distribution that acknowledges and takes advantage of the wonderful
chaos of Linux's multiple, independently developed streams of software.

Actually I'd be a heck of a lot more interested in SHRINKING and
SIMPLIFYING Portage and merging it with a boot loader such that the boot
loader could recover a functional operating system onto an empty hard
drive entirely off the net, entirely from sources.  Then shrink the boot
loader onto a BIOS chip, and then convert unsaved computers to Linux by
popping a new EEPROM onto each motherboard, .....