Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)

[Paul Gibbons <paul@pkami.e7even.com>]

On Tue, 3 Jul 2007 09:07:24 -0700
Grant <emailgrant@gmail.com> wrote:

> In December 2006 I started a thread titled "Is Gentoo Healthy?" in
> which I was roundly put down for raising the possibility that the
> decline in the number of Gentoo users could possibly affect the
> remaining Gentoo users in a negative way.
> 
> Is everyone still toeing that line?  The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter
> hasn't been published in almost two months.  Is Gentoo destined to be
> just another distro starved for contributors and struggling to stay up
> to date?  If so, I really misjudged it.  The meta approach of Gentoo
> is superior to any other in my mind, and I think it's growth and
> potential are being stunted by the "we don't need them" attitude which
> perpetuates Gentoo's lack of usability features for beginners.
> 
> Gentoo needs as many users as possible to reach its potential.  It's a
> short-sighted mistake to think that non-contributing users do Gentoo
> no good.  Non-contributing users become contributors as time passes.
> Car mechanics all start as car drivers.
> 
> - Grant

As an experience Windows programmer who was moving into Linux last
summer I started off with Ubuntu. The ease with which it installed
and updated itself was a big surprise and pleasure. But then
as my knowledge grew I decided to use a more demanding distro which in
my case would allow me to learn more about how a Linux system works;
and so I chose gentoo.

Sure there was a hurdle of a couple of days to get it installed but I
have not come up against any problems apart from my own lack of
experience. All in all the choice was a good one.

Gentoo appears to be very stable and the e-builds seem to be quite up
to date - although I have to use the ~amd64 keyword on most packages as
x64 support lags behind x86. 


One problem I have however is knowing how
to choose between all the different ways of doing things. I recently
tried to get the interface to my Kodak camera working and went down
several blind alleys before discovering that each actual alley was no
longer the best ways of doing things due to changes in the kernel or
new tools.

So sure on the surface things do not appear to be changing much in
gentoo but that does not mean it does not work - just that it is stable.


Paul

-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list