[gentoo-dev] final release ?

[gentoo-dev] final release ?

[M. Zuelsdorff]

I am following the the discussion in the gentoo-dev group for more than a year 
now. All I see is "a problem with this" and "a problem with that". Some days 
ago, something even appeared to be "really fucked up". My question: When do 
you expect Gentoo to become a final usable release?

Best regards.

michael

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Re: [gentoo-dev] final release ?

[Sven Vermeulen]

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On Sat, Dec 21, 2002 at 05:35:19PM +0100, M. Zuelsdorff wrote:
> I am following the the discussion in the gentoo-dev group for more than a
> year now. All I see is "a problem with this" and "a problem with that".
> Some days ago, something even appeared to be "really fucked up". My
> question: When do you expect Gentoo to become a final usable release?

It is very normal that you frequently see problems arise on the mailinglist
but rarely successtories. This is because of human nature: we will swiftly
ask/seek for help (and the Gentoo Mailinglists are a good place to ask for
help) but rarely just mail to tell it works...

Think of it: if you emerge 10 tools, and 9 of them work flawlessly, you won't
mail the mailinglist about those 9 tools do you? No, you're going to mail
about the 10th tool that doesn't work.

So your perception doesn't mean that Gentoo isn't usuable.

Wkr,
	Sven Vermeulen

PS Don't start posting messages like
	"net-www/apache works"
	"net-ftp/ncftp works"
	"app-office/openoffice works"
	"app-sci/octave works"
	"x11-wm/fluxbox works"
	...
	"x11-base/xfree works"
   :-)

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RE: [gentoo-dev] final release ?

[Riyad Kalla]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but after this locking up with the dual
P4s is taken care of I think that is the only pressing issue still on
the board... Everyone else is just having fun with USE vars :)

I have NO idea what is in the bug database, I'm just going off of what
this dev list was focusing on as of recent.

NOTE: I'm not on the team, they release it whenever they want. I'll
trade stability for "timely" release any day. I can't use a buggy
release hardly as much as I can use a stable late release :)

Best,
-Riyad

-----Original Message-----
From: M. Zuelsdorff [mailto:micha@dolbyco.de] 
Sent: Saturday, December 21, 2002 9:35 AM
To: gentoo-dev@gentoo.org
Subject: [gentoo-dev] final release ?


I am following the the discussion in the gentoo-dev group for more than
a year 
now. All I see is "a problem with this" and "a problem with that". Some
days 
ago, something even appeared to be "really fucked up". My question: When
do 
you expect Gentoo to become a final usable release?

Best regards.

michael

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gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list


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[gentoo-dev] Problem reporting (WAS: final release ?)

[Arthur Britto]

On Sat, 2002-12-21 at 08:58, Sven Vermeulen wrote: 
> On Sat, Dec 21, 2002 at 05:35:19PM +0100, M. Zuelsdorff wrote:
> > I am following the the discussion in the gentoo-dev group for more than a
> > year now. All I see is "a problem with this" and "a problem with that".
> > Some days ago, something even appeared to be "really fucked up". My
> > question: When do you expect Gentoo to become a final usable release?
> 
> It is very normal that you frequently see problems arise on the mailinglist
> but rarely successtories. This is because of human nature: we will swiftly
> ask/seek for help (and the Gentoo Mailinglists are a good place to ask for
> help) but rarely just mail to tell it works...
> 
> Think of it: if you emerge 10 tools, and 9 of them work flawlessly, you won't
> mail the mailinglist about those 9 tools do you? No, you're going to mail
> about the 10th tool that doesn't work.

You've just highlighted one of the biggest problems with Gentoo: manual
problem discovery and resolution.  When a package breaks, someone must
(1) manually discover it, (2) search mailing lists for Gentoo and the
application, (3) search the forums for Gentoo and the application, (4)
attempt reasonable diagnostics to insure the problem is not just with
their system, (5) if they are competent they might try to solve the
problem, and (6) share their problem with the community.

Currently, the latest gtkspell ebuild is broken for me.  I assume it
worked for the person who modified it last.  This hidden breakage
remains until manually discovered and shared.

Installing Java for Galeon for 1.4rc1, was a nightmare.  The user
documentation tells you are on your own if you use the latest sun-jdk. 
Yet, the latest is all that will work.  So users go on to try and fail
with sun-jdk-1.3.  The user docs should be authorative or have warnings
that they are not.

Checking the mailing lists is hard if the problem is not new.  Search
engines don't sort by most recent articles first.  Additionally, threads
break on month boundries, making following a thread not much fun.

BTW, checking the forums did revealed a solution for Java.

I've only mentioned a couple of the problems I had, but I ran into many
more that I haven't had time to properly investigate and report. :(

It seems to me, to make Gentoo a painless solution, supporting so much
customization, an automated problem detection system must be put in
place.  For example, Mozilla has tinderboxs that report when certain
builds break.  Additionally, some sort of automated user feedback system
would be good too.  This system might report the configuration for
compile failures/successes and package test results as well.

Unfortunately, the nature of source based installs (slow turn around
time) exacerbates user fustration and makes problem diagnostics and
resolution time consuming.

Hopefully some attention will be applied to this with the benefits of a
higher quality distribution and less wasted time for everyone.

Sticking with Gentoo :),

-Arthur



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Re: [gentoo-dev] final release ?

[Michael]

On Sat, 21 Dec 2002 17:58:56 +0100
Sven Vermeulen <sven.vermeulen@rug.ac.be> wrote:

> On Sat, Dec 21, 2002 at 05:35:19PM +0100, M. Zuelsdorff wrote:
> > I am following the the discussion in the gentoo-dev group for more than a
> > year now. All I see is "a problem with this" and "a problem with that".
> > Some days ago, something even appeared to be "really fucked up". My
> > question: When do you expect Gentoo to become a final usable release?
> 
> It is very normal that you frequently see problems arise on the mailinglist
> but rarely successtories. This is because of human nature: we will swiftly
> ask/seek for help (and the Gentoo Mailinglists are a good place to ask for
> help) but rarely just mail to tell it works...

You are so right!
You ever listen to people talk on the bus?
allways complaining about something :P

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Re: [gentoo-dev] final release ?

[Denis Shcherbakov]

Actually, I love Gentoo.  I discovered it in August 2002, and I've been
a happier man ever since. :)

Sure there are a few things here or there, but it's not like there are
no problems with Redhat or other distro's!!  It may sound funny, but I
find administration of a Linux box MUCH easier with Gentoo than with other
distro's I tried so far.  Gentoo really rocks.

Let's give it up for the Gentoo development team :)


On Tue, 24 Dec 2002, Michael wrote:

On Sat, 21 Dec 2002 17:58:56 +0100
Sven Vermeulen <sven.vermeulen@rug.ac.be> wrote:

> On Sat, Dec 21, 2002 at 05:35:19PM +0100, M. Zuelsdorff wrote:
> > I am following the the discussion in the gentoo-dev group for more than a
> > year now. All I see is "a problem with this" and "a problem with that".
> > Some days ago, something even appeared to be "really fucked up". My
> > question: When do you expect Gentoo to become a final usable release?
>
> It is very normal that you frequently see problems arise on the mailinglist
> but rarely successtories. This is because of human nature: we will swiftly
> ask/seek for help (and the Gentoo Mailinglists are a good place to ask for
> help) but rarely just mail to tell it works...

You are so right!
You ever listen to people talk on the bus?
allways complaining about something :P

--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list



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Re: [gentoo-dev] final release ?

[daveman]

On Tue, Dec 24, 2002 at 12:06:46AM -0500, Denis Shcherbakov wrote:
> 
> Actually, I love Gentoo.  I discovered it in August 2002, and I've been
> a happier man ever since. :)
> 
> Sure there are a few things here or there, but it's not like there are
> no problems with Redhat or other distro's!!  It may sound funny, but I
> find administration of a Linux box MUCH easier with Gentoo than with other
> distro's I tried so far.  Gentoo really rocks.
> 
> Let's give it up for the Gentoo development team :)
> 
You make very good points. People can say what they want about Gentoo. I've yet to run into any "show stopper" problems that I simply didn't know how to fix that caused me to have to reinstall. That type of stuff seems only to happen with other distros. :-) When you take a thousand yard(or meter if you prefer) view of the project as a whole, it is pretty amazing where gentoo is today considering the age of this project. I only hope that I will some day be able to add contributions to this most excellent project. (Need a bit more skill yet before I am confident enough in my own programming abilities to contribute...)

Thanks to all for the great work. I'd still be using Slackware if it weren't for your work. ;-)
--David

> 
> On Tue, 24 Dec 2002, Michael wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 21 Dec 2002 17:58:56 +0100
> Sven Vermeulen <sven.vermeulen@rug.ac.be> wrote:
> 
> > On Sat, Dec 21, 2002 at 05:35:19PM +0100, M. Zuelsdorff wrote:
> > > I am following the the discussion in the gentoo-dev group for more than a
> > > year now. All I see is "a problem with this" and "a problem with that".
> > > Some days ago, something even appeared to be "really fucked up". My
> > > question: When do you expect Gentoo to become a final usable release?
> >
> > It is very normal that you frequently see problems arise on the mailinglist
> > but rarely successtories. This is because of human nature: we will swiftly
> > ask/seek for help (and the Gentoo Mailinglists are a good place to ask for
> > help) but rarely just mail to tell it works...
> 
> You are so right!
> You ever listen to people talk on the bus?
> allways complaining about something :P
> 
> --
> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
> 
> 
> 
> --
> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
> 

-- 
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Problem reporting (WAS: final release ?)

[Daniel Robbins]

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On Sat, 2002-12-21 at 23:01, Arthur Britto wrote:
> You've just highlighted one of the biggest problems with Gentoo: manual
> problem discovery and resolution.  When a package breaks, someone must
> (1) manually discover it, (2) search mailing lists for Gentoo and the
> application, (3) search the forums for Gentoo and the application, (4)
> attempt reasonable diagnostics to insure the problem is not just with
> their system, (5) if they are competent they might try to solve the
> problem, and (6) share their problem with the community.

We are taking significant steps to "fix" this, starting with better
handling of our bugs (and more accountability of how they are handled)
on bugs.gentoo.org. Several developers including myself are now fully
caught up on bugs -- unresolved bugs get checked daily for new comments,
etc.

One of the major things that has caused this "manual discovery" problem
is our extremely rapid growth, which resulted in many developers getting
overwhelmed with bugs. Once a developer has more than 50 bugs on his
plate, it becomes a bit overwhelming to keep tabs on all of them. If
they don't get addressed quickly, then they can linger for longer than
is acceptable. Our dev team is growing every week to address our rapidly
growing user-base. (See our Gentoo Weekly Newsletter, bottom, for devs
who were added in the last week.)

Just wanted to chime in and say "we're workin' on it!" :)

Best Regards,

-- 
Daniel Robbins
Chief Architect, Gentoo Linux
http://www.gentoo.org

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