Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo could become certified for IBM Server Hardware

[Chris Gianelloni <wolf31o2@gentoo.org>]

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On Wed, 2005-05-04 at 17:31 -0500, David Krider wrote:
> I like the customizations of Gentoo on my main machine, where I have the
> energy to hold the system's hand through all of the fine tuning. But on
> servers and utlity laptops, I don't care. My point is this: why isn't a
> "bigger GRP" a goal of the Gentoo project.

Well, for one, we're (Release Engineering) trying to move away from GRP.
We will still have a binary reference platform, but it won't be so
prevalent as it is today.

> If the idea of the GRP were expanded, we could get a lot more usuable
> system without having to compile anything. I think it would be awesome
> to take a snapshot of a standard-USE-flag, standard-optimization, i686
> system, and produce a "distro" in the normal sense. That way a person
> can tweak out the system he wants, and run vanilla stuff on ones he
> doesn't care about. It would be the best of both worlds, and keep a
> person from needing to split their administrative skills between
> distros.

Here's the deal.  Gentoo is a "metadistribution".  It is designed with
the idea of being able to fill many roles.  We simply couldn't manage to
do this, while still providing massive amounts of binaries.  If we did
produce a larger GRP, then the packages would be even more out of date
from the "current" stuff in the tree, simply because of the expanded QA
scope and the possibility of hitting even more problems.

Now, that being said, there is nothing stopping someone from producing a
binary distribution based off Gentoo for this express purpose, but don't
expect to see it become official any time soon.  We simply don't have
the resources for it.

> I don't have any figures on this, but someone does. I'll bet 90% of the
> use of Gentoo is on i686 machines. Why wouldn't making such a snapshot
> or distro be appropriate?

For one, I would bet 90% of those people also want to optimize their
machines, or at least have more control over what gets installed via USE
flags.  In fact, I would say that is the primary thing that keeps people
with Gentoo.

Second, we just don't have the resources.  We pushed back the 2005.0
release a full two months because of issues with getting things built,
and that was just with the current GRP.  Could you imagine if we started
adding even more packages?  We would end up with packages that are 6
months stale just so we can have time to iron out all the bugs.
Personally, I have much better things to do than spend 6 months building
a single release.  It already takes a hefty amount of time to build the
release.  I couldn't imagine expanding it further.

Honestly, if you think there's a place in the world for an expanded GRP
set, then I would say go ahead and build one.  We are talking about open
source here... ;]

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead/QA Manager
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux

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