Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Packages up for grabs

[Kent Fredric <kentnl@gentoo.org>]

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On Sun, 7 Aug 2016 08:24:51 -0500
james <garftd@verizon.net> wrote:

> 
> As a team, we could have a simple default program for a simple default
> disk format, and a variety of 'stage-4' images, maybe updated every 3 
> months, to get a gentoo system up, quickly. Not an anything you want
> it to be, but a few, common choices. Perhaps a security apparatus,
> commonly needed, built on the hardened project? (like a bridge or a
> firewall)?

I for one miss the days where Stage-1 was the defacto install, and
Stage-3 was "For lazy people who just wanted to use something".

When we transitioned to making Stage 3 the default, it was like, heresy.

Stage 4? :)

I highly encourage people to randomly hurt themselves by attempting an
unsupported Stage 1 install, just to find what breaks.

> Let them use java* codes, as that is what all the universities are
> teaching and promoting. I agree
> with gentoo proper on severely restricting java*,  on gentoo-proper,
> but that sort of thing is killing gentoo and just appears to the open
> world as a filter mechanism to keep out and go elsewhere, snoot.
> There are just too many exciting and useful codes out there running
> java.

"All" ? Some. And the dominance and focus on Java is itself telling of
the quality and type of the education provider.

Some education providers may not touch Java at all, and focus
predominantly on C.

You can't satisfy everyone out of the box.


The rest of your response kinda rotates around a central axiom that
makes other Linux distributions effective, and "Easy":

The lack of choice, a tailored work flow, a target audience, and a
narrow focus on what the vendor delivers.

Gentoo is fundamentally unlike these things, because the Gentoo way has
always been first and foremost about *user choice* and *maximising user
choice*

The reality is a giant hunk of the world are *not interested in choice*

They want something that works and get out of their way.

That's why proprietary systems with deep, vertical architecture and
product lock-in are still incredibly popular.

They understand their market, and they focus on making things work for
that market by tailoring it to a very narrow set of features that
satisfies 95% of its target.

Gentoo's target audience is decidedly that other 5%, the group of
people who don't mind getting their hands dirty, the group who wade up
to their elbows dealing with horrible problems because that's the
consequence of the power of choice.

You can promote pre-boxed Gentoo products if you want, I just think
you're barking up the wrong tree if you think doing that will help
anybody.

As with most open source, it requires volunteer effort to make this
happen, and its a hard sell to try to convince existing staff to spend
more time on producing a thing that exists only to *reduce* user choice
for the sake of convenience.

And I just think most of our devs have more interesting problems to
solve than that, and you'd be simply weakening the core Gentoo
development team by trying to steal existing Gentoo staff to engineer
this carefully designed and polished "Just Works For Noobs" platform.

And even then, I think if you did OK, it would be striving for the
wrong thing.

If you're going to come to a competition that has existing major
players ( such as the "noob friendly" linux desktop market ), you have
to not be simply a "me too!" in order to hope for success.

You have to have something unique that blows all the competition out of
the water in at least one way, that capitalises on an un-tapped need.

Anything else will just be some pathetic copy-cat attempt.

And for Gentoo, our "Unique Edge" *is* our configurability, our
incredibly effective and convenient flexibility.

Sacrificing our primary benefit to chase after some other market
half-assedly ... I can't see that panning out well myself.

Personally, I think we need to double down on what we're good at,
flexibility, and configurability.

Find ways of building systems at the users behest that do exactly what
they want easily, and not assume we know what is best for our users.

Anything else and Gentoo will go in the direction of the sad sorry
state of the Linux Desktop, where neither GTK/Gnome or QT/KDE are very
useable anymore, and they've become encumbered with horribly lethargic
and bloated design, because they were all trying too hard to chase what
they thought people wanted, the standard established by Windows and OSX
for "Easy".




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