[gentoo-dev] SFVLUG presentation

[gentoo-dev] SFVLUG presentation

[Steve]

Dear Mr Robbins, 

  Hello, my name is Steve Petrovits
(l8tr2000@yahoo.com), I can often be found in #gentoo
on irc as iLLf8d. I'm an active member of the San
Fernando Valley Linux Users Group. I was asked to make
a presentation for the group, and as my topic I chose
Gentoo Linux. I've been eager to try your distribution
since my first exposure to your site. I currently run
Gentoo, Debian and FreeBSD and have eagerly awaited a
ports based Linux distribution for quite some time.
I'm writing you to gather a bit of information not
found on the gentoo site.  I am scheduled to give my
presentation on Saturday July 13th, this coming
Saturday, a response before then would be greatly
appreciated, tho I know you're very busy.  I'm very
new to Gentoo, and have only been running it for a few
weeks, although, I've been quite happy with its
performance.  I've combed the sites documentation and
links for background info on the project, and any
insights as to the possible course of Gentoo in the
future, however the site is all business. I plan to 
try to cover a number of links from your projects,
portage, your social contract, features etc... all of
this info is easily found on the site.  There are a
few questions I have that aren't covered which will
add greatly to my presentation, hopefully someone will
have a bit of time to answer them for me. 

When was the project started (was the plan always to
create a distribution)?

When did the project reach critical mass?

The site plainly states that Gentoo is for the
experienced user, as Gentoo matures are there plans to
make it more accessible to a broader range of user
experience levels?

Through daily operations I've noticed a hands off
approach to package and or system script
configurations, a number of standards across other
distributions are left at default.  I started to
notice this, even during my install when I added a
user and noticed that his home path wasn't even
defined, when delving further I discovered that almost
everything related to this function was left at
default as is much of the system after the install.
Will this approach remain into the future?  

How large is your core team, and active developer
base. (is it larger than listed on the sites
developers page)?

Lately it seems that distributions come and go, a few
that come to mind are (Sorcerer, Storm, Corel) how
strong is Gentoo's current position, and developer
support?

Are there any plans to simplify the installation
process?

I've noticed that you've published a number of
excellent tutorials and papers on IBM developerWorks,
is IBM using, or have they expressed any interest in
Gentoo as a packaged server solution in the future? 

Is Gentoo linked with IBM in any way?

I've been lurking in #gentoo for what must be a year
now, logging conversations for useful install info,
and watching devel/user interactions. I've noticed
that developer accessiblity and the number of
experienced users in channel has dropped, although
theres also been the creation of a forum onsite, and a
number of new channels on OPN. What is the reason for
this shift (maturation of the dist and less demand for
support, fervored development leaving less time for
user interaction, a change in support venue etc.. )?

What are your plans for Gentoo now and into the
future?

If you were giving this presentation, what information
would you add that could not be found on the site? 

Is there any information, in the form of handouts or
otherwise that you would like me to distribute to the
group? 

I've got a number of other questions i'd like to ask
(related to my own gentoo experience) however, I know
you're quite busy therefore    I'll try to catch you
in IRC at your convenience. I apologise if any of
these questions were covered on the site, I have a
tendency to drift over to the most interesting
sections and forget my presentation research entirely.
 Thank you for your time. 

                                          Steve
(l8tr2000@yahoo.com)

PS. On a personal note I'd like to thank you and your
developers for all your work and for this great
addition to the Linux Community.

__________________________________________________
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Re: [gentoo-dev] SFVLUG presentation

[Grant Goodyear]

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I can't speak for Daniel Robbins, but here are some of
my own observations:
 
> When was the project started (was the plan always to
> create a distribution)?

You can read about the early history of Gentoo, to some
extent, in the "Making the distribution" articles listed
in the articles section of gentoo.org.

> When did the project reach critical mass?

In early 2001 I knew every developer's nick in #gentoo.
Even then, however, the distribution had already reached
a critical stage -- it was sufficiently advanced and well-
designed that it could have survived even if Daniel Robbins 
had decided he was tired of it (which, of course, did not
happen).

The explosion in popularity occurred about the time we
released 1.0, but I don't remember exactly when that was.

> The site plainly states that Gentoo is for the
> experienced user, as Gentoo matures are there plans to
> make it more accessible to a broader range of user
> experience levels?

There are people working on a gui installer (including
the folks at www.latinux.com.ve), but Gentoo will always
offer a manual install option.  We are actively working
on making quality control more of a priority, which 
should make the distribution more accessible.  That
said, we will _not_ sacrifice Gentoo's flexibility for
accessibility.  Many users have described Gentoo as
"maintainable LFS", where the user has control over
essentially everything, which is precisely where we
want to be.
 
> Through daily operations I've noticed a hands off
> approach to package and or system script
> configurations, a number of standards across other
> distributions are left at default.  I started to
> notice this, even during my install when I added a
> user and noticed that his home path wasn't even
> defined, when delving further I discovered that almost
> everything related to this function was left at
> default as is much of the system after the install.
> Will this approach remain into the future?  

One of these days somebody will add a decent adduser
script to Gentoo Linux.  I keep meaning to hack the 
openbsd script to work with Gentoo, but I never seem
to get around to it.

To answer the question you asked, we do prefer to 
leave configuration up to the user, although we
generally do also make sure that packages have a 
sane default configuration.

 > How large is your core team, and active developer
> base. (is it larger than listed on the sites
> developers page)?

The developer page is actively maintained, so it
should be up-to-date.
 
> Lately it seems that distributions come and go, a few
> that come to mind are (Sorcerer, Storm, Corel) how
> strong is Gentoo's current position, and developer
> support?

I think it's pretty good.  More importantly, though, 
all of Gentoo is GPL, so even if all the current developers
decided to go elsewhere the distribution could survive.
Additionally, no other distribution has the flexibility
of Gentoo Linux, so I think it's unlikely that Gentoo will
become "just another distribution" anytime soon.

> Are there any plans to simplify the installation
> process?

See above.  It's not a high priority for us right now,
however.  Also, the current install method will always
be available.
 
> I've been lurking in #gentoo for what must be a year
> now, logging conversations for useful install info,
> and watching devel/user interactions. I've noticed
> that developer accessiblity and the number of
> experienced users in channel has dropped, although
> theres also been the creation of a forum onsite, and a
> number of new channels on OPN. What is the reason for
> this shift (maturation of the dist and less demand for
> support, fervored development leaving less time for
> user interaction, a change in support venue etc.. )?

Um, information overload?  As I write this reply there
are 268 users in #gentoo.  Gentoo information is now 
spread across #gentoo, the forums, the mailing lists,
and bugs.gentoo.org.  I make a serious effort to monitor
the mailing lists and bugs.gentoo.org, and that's often more
than I can really manage on a daily basis.  I know there
are developers who can only keep up with bugs.gentoo.org,
which is why we so strongly urge that when people find
problems they report them there.  
 
Okay, I need to get back to work.  I hope some of this helps.

-g2boojum-


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