Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?

[Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk>]

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On Mon, 18 Dec 2006 10:54:06 -0800, Grant wrote:

> I'm thinking this over a bit more, and it seems like the best thing
> for Gentoo (or any distro) is a lot of users.  More users must mean
> more active developers, and more active developers must mean an
> increased rate of growth for the software.

"must mean"? Why? The only thing more users must mean is more users. If
you maintain the proportion of users-who-would-become-devs to
always-users your point may have some validity, but the ratio always
drops when a distro becomes popular. More users often means more work for
the same number of devs, it can be counter-productive.

> I believe the great benefit of Gentoo is its flexibility, and
> flexibility is like a meta-benefit because it makes possible any other
> benefit.  What do you think makes Ubuntu the distro of the moment?  Is
> it ease-of-use?  If Gentoo focused more on ease-of-use aspects of the
> Ubuntu variety, they would attract more users and thereby increase the
> rate of growth for the software.

Do we really need yet another easy to use distro? There are already more
than enough of those. Gentoo is for those who want maximum control over
their systems and are prepared to make the effort to achieve this. This
is for a different type of user. Turn Gentoo into yet another easy-to-use
distro and those people lose while those wanting ease of use gain very
little.

I really don't care if Gentoo is considered a minority distro, it is not,
and hopefully never will be, a mass market product.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

When you finally buy enough memory, you will not have enough disk space.
 -- Murphy's Computer Laws n°3

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