Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: The Age of the Universe

[Simon Stelling <blubb@gentoo.org>]

Wiktor Wandachowicz wrote:
>> If the users are too lazy to read the documentation, why should we care
>> about them?
> 
> Because we risk that Gentoo may receive the "user-UN-friendly" label and
> become irrelevant in the long run? I know it ain't gonna happen, but still.

Well, that might be the case, but then, do we really care? I'm more than
glad if people who are too lazy to read the docs don't bugger me with
their issues which they could easily avoid if they'd have read the docs.

> You OTOH bring to the table a fact that developers shouldn't be that much
> concerned with the stabilization/testing of packages before new release of
> installation media. But new releases *ARE* targeted specifically at new users
> and it's them who suffer the most. Next to it is the reputation of Gentoo and
> its developers. Edgar's call was targeted mostly at releng and QA teams, who
> should poke developers to decrease number of similar problems.

I never said that, and I don't mean it either. We are concerned about
testing, but we can only do as much as human can do. Gentoo gives you
much flexibility. We can workaround the issue by masking the
accessibility flag for example, but that wouldn't be all that great,
because it only hides the problem, and it doesn't help those disabled
people either.

> I maintain a bunch of Debian/sparc, Debian/i386, Gentoo/amd64, Gentoo/x86,
> Solaris/sparc, Ubuntu/i686 boxes and mind you, out-of-box experience at
> install time means A LOT.

I know that. The first Gentoo CD I threw away just after booting it
because I couldn't figure out how to launch the setup app. "Wow, what a
crappy shit." I thought. Seriously, I don't want such people to use the
distro. It's not the right one for them.

(On a sidenote, should be quite obvious that in a second try I did
figure out how to install Gentoo and kind of changed my mind ;))

> More respect to the users => more respect to Gentoo.

I'm not sure how to parse that, but in case you mean that Gentoo gets
more popular when we make the out-of-the-box-experience better, then I
agree. I do not agree that this is something I want, though, because to
achieve that you either need a) much more resources or b) drop some of
the flexibility we offer. a) is hard to get and b) sucks. I'd rather
have other people think Gentoo is a bad distro but be happy with it
myself. Yes, I am a selfish pig.

-- 
Kind Regards,

Simon Stelling
Gentoo/AMD64 developer
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