From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from lists.gentoo.org ([140.105.134.102] helo=robin.gentoo.org) by nuthatch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1Gx57V-0002xG-Ef for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Wed, 20 Dec 2006 17:20:45 +0000 Received: from robin.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by robin.gentoo.org (8.13.8/8.13.8) with SMTP id kBKHIQvh010733; Wed, 20 Dec 2006 17:18:26 GMT Received: from ug-out-1314.google.com (ug-out-1314.google.com [66.249.92.173]) by robin.gentoo.org (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id kBKHGRt3014728 for ; Wed, 20 Dec 2006 17:16:28 GMT Received: by ug-out-1314.google.com with SMTP id z38so2168754ugc for ; Wed, 20 Dec 2006 09:16:27 -0800 (PST) DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=WN+Seu2Wm0an5Abnj2a2kr/6W4GBh9BHJnaKAa6RE4A/TLMG3bwcnu8bWB1nZluVANWuPtLxcNMFjJkWqD40FqBJaKcx66D429xyffm0qfSatzWHccbga3tWmIwUV93qtAqzW2PI7fmHKh/ri1Wdh/SyqEbXsU3vEMT1KplKBbs= Received: by 10.82.138.6 with SMTP id l6mr1765952bud.1166634978551; Wed, 20 Dec 2006 09:16:18 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.82.106.18 with HTTP; Wed, 20 Dec 2006 09:16:18 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <5bdc1c8b0612200916p118815d3t2c69e08b83d97a98@mail.gmail.com> Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2006 09:16:18 -0800 From: "Mark Knecht" To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy? In-Reply-To: <200612201813.01407.alan@linuxholdings.co.za> Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline References: <49bf44f10612180647g6ac243ebm9cfa8b79a5aeb3b5@mail.gmail.com> <20061218223404.0d3fcc86@krikkit.digimed.co.uk> <5bdc1c8b0612200656t79d410c0u3a8e3e97cf693ab0@mail.gmail.com> <200612201813.01407.alan@linuxholdings.co.za> X-Archives-Salt: c4534d3d-a355-45f9-b1fe-308b2dce4ec6 X-Archives-Hash: 6531ee5b792a144e7a183dda51c19f03 Hi Alan On 12/20/06, Alan McKinnon wrote: > On Wednesday 20 December 2006 16:56, Mark Knecht wrote: > > > I agree again. The ONLY problem I'm having with Gentoo is the devs > > removing older revs of things from portage. (ati-drivers, MythTV, > > etc.) > > In cases like that, you use portage overlays. Then the ebuild will > always be there until *you* delete it The problem with this view of overlays has been that I do an eix-sync and find that something I'm currently running been removed from portage - for whatever reason but mostly it's been security issues or the developer not wanting to maintain an old version. At that point it's gone. I cannot put into an overlay what I don't have. Probably most frustrating has been that I don't know it will be removed until it's been removed. At that point it's too late to be easy. (Nobody said Gentoo cannot be easy - right? If they told me that I wouldn't be able to run it!) ;-) I understand that every package is out there in some repository on the web. I think Neil has pointed me toward it once or twice at least. The problem is for a user type like me, and yes, I'm *purely* a user type, it's a bit beyond my skillset today to go get it and build the overlay myself. I've mentioned this in the past but the idea has never gained traction. If portage is thinking about removing an ebuild from my machine why not just move it to some location on my machine so I've always got a copy of what I was running? I could build my overlay from what's been moved there. No pain at all. Or I can do what you suggest and remove it. Anyway, that's my view from user land on this subject. It is only this area where Gentoo is a bit of a pain for me. To be honest I still use etc-update since I didn't get comfortable with dispatch-conf. I'd like to be a bit more confident with the tools when it comes to updating config files but it's not so bad to make it a problem. > > Just another example of The Gentoo Way where the user is completely in > control :-) I agree! Just looking for better data management, not a change in the system. > > [snip] > > > > I really don't care if Gentoo is considered a minority distro, it > > > is not, and hopefully never will be, a mass market product. > > > > I'd prefer it did not. I still love Gentoo. It's easily the most > > stable distro I've ever run. (RH & Suse here.) The support from the > > devs has been second to none. > > I can attest to that. I run ~x86 on this notebook, sync daily and on > *testing* *unstable* ebuilds I have to fix things only about once a > week on average. That's phenomenal. > > My day job is, amongst other things, delivering the Red Hat courses and > supporting RHEL where we installed it for customers. Now RHEL is pretty > good as an enterprise OS but it's also a binary distro and you are > stuck with what the RH engineers decided to give you. They are a decent > crowd and genuinely try their best but they can't satisfy everyone, so > they've sacrificed flexibility for a standard, unchanging platform. To > a gentoo user that just feels .... constrained > > alan I'm 51, retired from Silicon Valley and now trade stocks for a living. Unfortunately my trading platform is Windows but I'm writing you from my #1 daytime machine - my AMD64 Gentoo desktop running Gnome - mostly stable. For fun I write and record music using mostly Linux tools all on Gentoo. My wife and 14 year old son run Gentoo. My 78 year old father and 77 year old mother run Gentoo. Gentoo works, even for us user types. ;-) Cheers, Mark -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list