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

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

[Grant]

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
-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

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

[Mark Knecht]

On 7/3/07, 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

Hi Grant,
   I think Gentoo is 'healthy', in the sense that it continues to
thrive. On the other hand I have, over the last 6-9 months started to
think of Gentoo as 'mature'. The distro has apparently become what it
is going to be. While that may not be all I hoped for it is clearly
worth while and a contributing member of the group of Linux distros so
that's great.

   As a non-developer, general work-a-day Linux user I do feel that
Gentoo has lost some of its energy. Maybe that's all part of becoming
a mature distro. When I first started with Gentoo in (I think 2000)
this was a very lively place and it was clear that there was a real
push on to grow the tools, grow the distro, grow the user base. While
I think that today those metrics would still be considered valuable,
it is not my view that there is a lot of energy being put into taking
things to the next level. (Whatever the heck that might be!)

   Anyway, I value Gentoo greatly. It's been a really great distro to
me. Folks have treated a non-IT Linux dummy like me with great respect
and for the most part a pretty gentle hand. I've learned a lot when I
wanted to. The documentation, in my mind, is second to none which
makes my life easier. (Sometimes....)

   What's in Gentoo's future? I haven't a clue. I have wondered a few
times in the last year if I'd have to look for another distro one of
these days.....but I never have. Two to three years ago that thought
never entered my mind.

Cheers,
Mark
-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

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

[Grant]

> > 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
>
> Hi Grant,
>    I think Gentoo is 'healthy', in the sense that it continues to
> thrive. On the other hand I have, over the last 6-9 months started to
> think of Gentoo as 'mature'. The distro has apparently become what it
> is going to be. While that may not be all I hoped for it is clearly
> worth while and a contributing member of the group of Linux distros so
> that's great.
>
>    As a non-developer, general work-a-day Linux user I do feel that
> Gentoo has lost some of its energy. Maybe that's all part of becoming
> a mature distro. When I first started with Gentoo in (I think 2000)
> this was a very lively place and it was clear that there was a real
> push on to grow the tools, grow the distro, grow the user base. While
> I think that today those metrics would still be considered valuable,
> it is not my view that there is a lot of energy being put into taking
> things to the next level. (Whatever the heck that might be!)
>
>    Anyway, I value Gentoo greatly. It's been a really great distro to
> me. Folks have treated a non-IT Linux dummy like me with great respect
> and for the most part a pretty gentle hand. I've learned a lot when I
> wanted to. The documentation, in my mind, is second to none which
> makes my life easier. (Sometimes....)
>
>    What's in Gentoo's future? I haven't a clue. I have wondered a few
> times in the last year if I'd have to look for another distro one of
> these days.....but I never have. Two to three years ago that thought
> never entered my mind.

Hey Mark,

Thanks for the insight.  I hope it never happens, but if the day comes
when Gentoo suffers a lack of contributors to such an extent that I
have to find a new distro, where will I go?  Is Debian the only other
meta-distro out there?  It's not exactly thriving is it?  Is the
meta-distro concept perhaps flawed?  The thought of installing the
latest Ubuntu release, wading through a bunch of software I'll never
use, and waiting for the next big release before anything is updated
makes me wanna throw up.

- Grant
-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

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

[Mark Knecht]

On 7/3/07, Grant <emailgrant@gmail.com> wrote:
<SNIP>
>
> Hey Mark,
>
> Thanks for the insight.  I hope it never happens, but if the day comes
> when Gentoo suffers a lack of contributors to such an extent that I
> have to find a new distro, where will I go?  Is Debian the only other
> meta-distro out there?  It's not exactly thriving is it?  Is the
> meta-distro concept perhaps flawed?  The thought of installing the
> latest Ubuntu release, wading through a bunch of software I'll never
> use, and waiting for the next big release before anything is updated
> makes me wanna throw up.
>
> - Grant

Being sort of pragmatic, if it happens it happens and I'll worry about
it then. While I may have my frustrations with Gentoo they are
certainly no where near large enough to cause me to even think of
switching 8 machines in 2 households to something else. Heck, it's the
devil you know for the devil you don't know when you go that way and I
still see Gentoo as an angel and not a devil!!!

:-)

Cheers,
Mark
-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

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

[Thierry de Coulon]

On Tuesday 03 July 2007 19:14, Grant wrote:
> Hey Mark,
>
> Thanks for the insight.  I hope it never happens, but if the day comes
> when Gentoo suffers a lack of contributors to such an extent that I
> have to find a new distro, where will I go?  Is Debian the only other
> meta-distro out there?  It's not exactly thriving is it?  Is the
> meta-distro concept perhaps flawed?  The thought of installing the
> latest Ubuntu release, wading through a bunch of software I'll never
> use, and waiting for the next big release before anything is updated
> makes me wanna throw up.
>
> - Grant

I hope I'm not too of-topic. I've never been able to bring friends to try out 
Gentoo. Tell them they'll be working for days to get a cli distro working... 
if they get there, setting up X is sure to be the end of the experiment.

What I mean is: Gentoo is for experimented users, and those who'd like to 
become experimented. I consider myself not to be a noob anymore, after 8 
years of using Linux, but my last gentoo install still waits to get finished. 
I tried to get sound, and that crashed the nvidia module, and now I don't 
have time to cure that.

Now, on the next partition, I have installed Sabayon. It's bloated OK, it's 
not compiled for my machine OK, but I had it up and running in an hour. I 
still have to test the idea of installing Sabayon, modifying make.conf and 
emerging world to see what happens.

I think the future of Gentoo could be that: an "easy install" for the mass, 
and he opportunity for the geeks to tweak that install or directly go for the 
total customisation.

I'm surprised I haven't heard more about Sabayon on this list, just as if 
the "real" Gentoo users feel it's a treason.

Thierry

-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

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

[Jesús Guerrero]

On Tue, 3 Jul 2007 19:41:34 +0200
Thierry de Coulon <tcoulon@decoulon.ch> wrote:


> I'm surprised I haven't heard more about Sabayon on this list, just as if 
> the "real" Gentoo users feel it's a treason.
> 
> Thierry

It is nothing of that kind. These, simply, is not the Sabayon list, but the Gentoo one. No matter if Sabayon forked from Gentoo, it is a different distro, like Mandrake or Debian, so, it is not usually a topic for these lists. The Sabayon list is this:

http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/sabayon-list

Sabayon has many differences with Gentoo, starting with the kernel and the toolchain. Two core pieces, overall, in a source based meta distro.

-- 
Jesús Guerrero <i92guboj@terra.es>
--
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

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

[Thufir]

On Tue, 03 Jul 2007 19:41:34 +0200, Thierry de Coulon wrote:

> I think the future of Gentoo could be that: an "easy install" for the
> mass, and he opportunity for the geeks to tweak that install or directly
> go for the total customisation.


Then the install process wouldn't screen out users.


-Thufir

-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

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

[Bo Ørsted Andresen]

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On Tuesday 03 July 2007 19:41:34 Thierry de Coulon wrote:
> I'm surprised I haven't heard more about Sabayon on this list, just as if
> the "real" Gentoo users feel it's a treason.

Not treason. Just inferior, leechers and off-topic...

-- 
Bo Andresen

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

[Hemmann, Volker Armin]

On Dienstag, 3. Juli 2007, Thierry de Coulon wrote:
> On Tuesday 03 July 2007 19:14, Grant wrote:
> > Hey Mark,
> >
> > Thanks for the insight.  I hope it never happens, but if the day comes
> > when Gentoo suffers a lack of contributors to such an extent that I
> > have to find a new distro, where will I go?  Is Debian the only other
> > meta-distro out there?  It's not exactly thriving is it?  Is the
> > meta-distro concept perhaps flawed?  The thought of installing the
> > latest Ubuntu release, wading through a bunch of software I'll never
> > use, and waiting for the next big release before anything is updated
> > makes me wanna throw up.
> >
> > - Grant
>
> I hope I'm not too of-topic. I've never been able to bring friends to try
> out Gentoo. Tell them they'll be working for days to get a cli distro
> working... if they get there, setting up X is sure to be the end of the
> experiment.
>
> What I mean is: Gentoo is for experimented users, and those who'd like to
> become experimented. I consider myself not to be a noob anymore, after 8
> years of using Linux, but my last gentoo install still waits to get
> finished. I tried to get sound, and that crashed the nvidia module, and now
> I don't have time to cure that.
>
> Now, on the next partition, I have installed Sabayon. It's bloated OK, it's
> not compiled for my machine OK, but I had it up and running in an hour. I
> still have to test the idea of installing Sabayon, modifying make.conf and
> emerging world to see what happens.
>
> I think the future of Gentoo could be that: an "easy install" for the mass,
> and he opportunity for the geeks to tweak that install or directly go for
> the total customisation.
>
> I'm surprised I haven't heard more about Sabayon on this list, just as if
> the "real" Gentoo users feel it's a treason.

no, not treason. Leeches. For using gentoo's rsync-mirrors.

But you said it yourself, it is bloated. I do not want bloat.

And for your friends - the last two releases have a gnome (argh!) livecd with 
a (buggy) graphical installer...
-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

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

[Alexander Skwar]

· Grant <emailgrant@gmail.com>:

>> > 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
>>
>> Hi Grant,
>>    I think Gentoo is 'healthy', in the sense that it continues to
>> thrive. On the other hand I have, over the last 6-9 months started to
>> think of Gentoo as 'mature'. The distro has apparently become what it
>> is going to be. While that may not be all I hoped for it is clearly
>> worth while and a contributing member of the group of Linux distros so
>> that's great.
>>
>>    As a non-developer, general work-a-day Linux user I do feel that
>> Gentoo has lost some of its energy. Maybe that's all part of becoming
>> a mature distro. When I first started with Gentoo in (I think 2000)
>> this was a very lively place and it was clear that there was a real
>> push on to grow the tools, grow the distro, grow the user base. While
>> I think that today those metrics would still be considered valuable,
>> it is not my view that there is a lot of energy being put into taking
>> things to the next level. (Whatever the heck that might be!)
>>
>>    Anyway, I value Gentoo greatly. It's been a really great distro to
>> me. Folks have treated a non-IT Linux dummy like me with great respect
>> and for the most part a pretty gentle hand. I've learned a lot when I
>> wanted to. The documentation, in my mind, is second to none which
>> makes my life easier. (Sometimes....)
>>
>>    What's in Gentoo's future? I haven't a clue. I have wondered a few
>> times in the last year if I'd have to look for another distro one of
>> these days.....but I never have. Two to three years ago that thought
>> never entered my mind.
> 
> Hey Mark,
> 
> Thanks for the insight.  I hope it never happens, but if the day comes
> when Gentoo suffers a lack of contributors to such an extent that I
> have to find a new distro, where will I go?  Is Debian the only other
> meta-distro out there?

No, Debian is no "meta-distro". It's a distribution just like 
Fedora Core or Mandriva. The only thing that sets Debian apart
is, that it's a truely non-commercial distribution and that it
is quite big. Another "Debian specialty" is, that it has a "mission",
so to speak.

> It's not exactly thriving is it?  Is the 
> meta-distro concept perhaps flawed?  

No, I don't think so. It's just not something which is completely
"main stream compatible". And I don't think that this is bad ;)

> The thought of installing the 
> latest Ubuntu release, wading through a bunch of software I'll never
> use, and waiting for the next big release before anything is updated
> makes me wanna throw up.

Yep.

Alexander Skwar
-- 
Your step will soil many countries.


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

[Neil Bothwick]

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Hello Grant,

> 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.

What decline in the number of users? Where are there figures
demonstrating this? There also seem to be a lot more new developer
announcements than resignations, so it would appear that the number of
devs is increasing.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Top Oxymorons Number 38: Government organization

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

[Hemmann, Volker Armin]

On Dienstag, 3. Juli 2007, Grant 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.

no.

gentoo was for a while the exciting new kid. And everybody flocked to it. 
Especially 'ricers'. The 'decline' you observed is more of a pruning - the 
type of users who always use the latest 'distri of the month' are gone, also 
the users who really do not fit in but used gentoo because it was cool for a 
while.

Every distro has that moment - ubuntu will suffer from that too.

>
> Is everyone still toeing that line?  The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter
> hasn't been published in almost two months. 

that is a completly different problem ;)

> Is Gentoo destined to be 
> just another distro starved for contributors and struggling to stay up
> to date?

hm, couple of new devs in the last two weeks. What was your question?

> 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.

why should a beginner WANT to use gentoo? To get his hands dirty without being 
forced to, he can start with a much more 'beginner friendly' distro.

There is no reason nor need to dumb down gentoo to fit everybody.

>
> Gentoo needs as many users as possible to reach its potential.  

no. It really does not. The opposite is true. Gentoo does not need to become 
another dumb 'userfriendly' distro - there are hundreds of them already. It 
does not need the 'I don't want to learn anything' or 'I don't read 
documentation' type of user. It does not need the standard-ubuntu-dau that 
askeds the same stupid (stupid because it is explained in a sticky topic on 
top of the forum) question again and again and again, because he is too lazy 
to read an existing thread or use the search feature (look into the nvnews 
forum for an example).

Gentoo needs users who want to use gentoo for its technical merits, not 
because it is is 'cool'. We lost the 'cool distro of the month' users and it 
was a good thing.


> 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.

There are users and users. There are users who try to help in mailing lists 
and forums and file bugs. There are users who help fellow gentoo users among 
their friends.

And there are the ones who do nothing at all -except complaining if something 
does not work (even if it is their own fault).

Gentoo needs the first kind of users - and I would go so far to say, that it 
got them. Gentoo does NOT need the second kind - and we lost a lot of them.

I call that win-win.

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

[kashani]

Grant 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

	The startup I work for was bought last Oct. I spent four months 
migrating to Redhat ES 4.0 as well as dealing with some odd internal 
software decisions at the new company. Six months later the whole system 
still doesn't run as well or give me the flexibility I had with Gentoo.
	On top of that I get to deal with a poorly implemented, thought out, 
and extremely frustrating home grown package management tool that wishes 
it was one tenth as powerful as portage. Hell most days I'd rather have 
straight up RPM over the internal tools. And for anyone that thinks 
Fortune 1000 companies back port fixes of their PHP 5.1 package because 
their chosen distro doesn't include it (or ninety other packages we use) 
or test better than unknown thousands of Gentoo users running ~x86, let 
me disabuse you of that notion right now.

The grass always looks greener on the other side and in regards to 
Gentoo, it ain't.

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

[Paul Gibbons]

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

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

[Edgar Contreras]

I think gentoo is stuck with the release of new tools, new ideas..
I've been worried about the Weekly Newsletter too, but you only have
to read planet.gentoo.org to see that the wheel stills moving on, and
stills healthy. I think there's a lot more gentoo for the years to
come.

On 7/3/07, 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
> --
> gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)

[Kent Fredric]

On 7/4/07, 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.

<blatant bias>
I see people leaving gentoo as some sort of self voluntary step in the
natural progression of a distro.  People moving from Gentoo to
$OTHERDISTRO raises the average intelligence of both distros ;)

> 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.

The problem is if you focus on usability for newbies, you'll focus
less on features and customization, or you'll have to find a way to
hide this customizability because customization confuses newbies, and
spending time dancing around the lesser populace is time wasted on
doing practical stuff ( While I'll admit theres got to be a half-way,
or gentoo will never get any fresh blood, but I'd prefer to entice
fresh blood from people who have some potential to improve the distro
)

And if your introducing a newbie to Linux, maybe gentoos not the right
thing to teach them. Thats why we have distros out there like linspire
( .... ) .

IMO, gentoo is already user-friendly enough, if you take it from the
perspective Gentoo is LFS + Userfriendlyness.

> 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

And theres no point in targeting a distro at an audience who still
don't know what a power button is, and are confused about downloading
attachments from hotmail. Some usuability is good, but you need some
boundaries of sanity, and I think gentoo is currently hitting the
perfect target audience for people who want control and customization,
and are willing to experiment with things to get things done.

( and if you really want to introduce a total noob to gentoo and don't
mind wasting some time... your best option is to set up for them, and
show them it just works, and then show them information on a strictly
'need-to-know' basis when they come asking )

> no good.  Non-contributing users become contributors as time passes.
> Car mechanics all start as car drivers.
>
> - Grant
> --
> gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>


-- 
Kent
ruby -e '[1, 2, 4, 7, 0, 9, 5, 8, 3, 10, 11, 6, 12, 13].each{|x|
print "enNOSPicAMreil kdrtf@gma.com"[(2*x)..(2*x+1)]}'
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)

[Grant]

> The problem is if you focus on usability for newbies, you'll focus
> less on features and customization, or you'll have to find a way to
> hide this customizability because customization confuses newbies, and
> spending time dancing around the lesser populace is time wasted on
> doing practical stuff ( While I'll admit theres got to be a half-way,
> or gentoo will never get any fresh blood, but I'd prefer to entice
> fresh blood from people who have some potential to improve the distro

Great post Kent.  I'd love to see more features to attract unskilled
users, but I'd hate to have that slow down the development of features
that I would actually use.

The main camps we seem to be divided into are:

1. we don't want unskilled users

and:

2. we do want unskilled users

and most align with #1.  It will be interesting to see how it turns
out.  I still think there is a huge long-term benefit to a large user
base, even if many of those users start out unskilled.

- Grant
-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

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

[Mark Knecht]

On 7/8/07, Grant <emailgrant@gmail.com> wrote:
> > The problem is if you focus on usability for newbies, you'll focus
> > less on features and customization, or you'll have to find a way to
> > hide this customizability because customization confuses newbies, and
> > spending time dancing around the lesser populace is time wasted on
> > doing practical stuff ( While I'll admit theres got to be a half-way,
> > or gentoo will never get any fresh blood, but I'd prefer to entice
> > fresh blood from people who have some potential to improve the distro
>
> Great post Kent.  I'd love to see more features to attract unskilled
> users, but I'd hate to have that slow down the development of features
> that I would actually use.
>
> The main camps we seem to be divided into are:
>
> 1. we don't want unskilled users
>
> and:
>
> 2. we do want unskilled users
>
> and most align with #1.  It will be interesting to see how it turns
> out.  I still think there is a huge long-term benefit to a large user
> base, even if many of those users start out unskilled.
>
> - Grant

Personally I don't think it's about Gentoo not wanting 'unskilled'
users, but that said I know I am an unskilled user in many eyes so I
suppose that's my survival instinct kicking in. ;-)

I think a more accurate message is 'Gentoo welcomes all, but as a
potential Gentoo user you must be willing to learn. Gentoo does not
attempt make *anything* 'easy or pretty' in preference to providing
complete control.' Add what you will. that's just a start.

My issues, as a low-end, non-power Gentoo user, is that there are some
applications that I'd absolutely love to run, such as mythfrontend via
a web browser, that continue to be beyond my skill set. I've worked
hours upon hours and failed. I know if I chose a different distro I
could run it out of the box. That done I'd lose portage and lots of
other things I really value far more so I forgo fun stuff to have a
really stable system. It's disappointing I don't have the skills to
make it work but I figure over time I can possibly gain them. It's
something to work toward, right?

- Mark
-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

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

[Galevsky]

2007/7/8, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com>:
> I think a more accurate message is 'Gentoo welcomes all, but as a
> potential Gentoo user you must be willing to learn. Gentoo does not
> attempt make *anything* 'easy or pretty' in preference to providing
> complete control.' Add what you will. that's just a start.

+1. Opening the door to unskilled does not mean to set live-cd &
auto-install projects to high priority, but providing docs and support
to people willing to learn.

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

[Thufir]

On 7/9/07, Galevsky <galevsky@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2007/7/8, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com>:
> > I think a more accurate message is 'Gentoo welcomes all, but as a
> > potential Gentoo user you must be willing to learn. Gentoo does not
> > attempt make *anything* 'easy or pretty' in preference to providing
> > complete control.' Add what you will. that's just a start.
>
> +1. Opening the door to unskilled does not mean to set live-cd &
> auto-install projects to high priority, but providing docs and support
> to people willing to learn.
>
> Gal'
[...]

On that note, the live cd failed to install -- but only if it emerges
stuff.  If a network-less option is selected, it worked fine :)

I would humbly suggest that, as the consensus is that the live cd
fails, to simplify it.  Emerging packages fails?  don't offer that
option.  Seemed to work fine when everything was installed directly
off the CD.

Now all this n00b has to do is tweak portage, and, probably, recompile
everything including the kernel.  However, that's much easier from a
working system, and at my pace.  In the meantime, it works fine.

I'm not sure exactly what's entailed, but some sort of removing the
tree, syncing, dependancy cleaning, prune, deep, ...., then emerge
world.  Anyhow, that's next week for me.

Seriously, why offer a buggy installer?  Either remove it entirely or
grossly simplify it by only offering the off-line install which seems
to work.


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

[Thufir]

On 7/8/07, Grant <emailgrant@gmail.com> wrote:
[...]
> The main camps we seem to be divided into are:
>
> 1. we don't want unskilled users
>
> and:
>
> 2. we do want unskilled users
[...]

Yes, that's the situation.

I've used gentoo before, and went back to fedora, and am considering
coming back.  I've never used ubuntu, so can't really say what that's
like.

A few things I really like about gentoo:

1.) this list has "nicer" people here than in the fedora list.  Dunno
why.  The replies are generally more helpful, with people really
willing to put alot of effort in.  The RTFM responses are minimal.  I
have no idea why this is the case, but this is my experience.

2.)  This list in mirrored in usenet.  I can post via pan and gmane,
then use google groups to search stuff up.  A minor improvement would
be scrap this e-mail list and use "gentoo@googlegroups.com" so that I
could post from google groups.  Of course, there are cons to that, but
that's a tangent.

I'm not interested in delving into the system, I have other interests.
 I just want it to work.  In that sense, isn't that what portage is
all about?


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

[Paul Waring]

On Tue, Jul 03, 2007 at 09:07:24AM -0700, Grant 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.

My personal feeling is that Gentoo has dropped off the radar a bit, and
is no longer being talked about that much beyond its own community,
which probably means that it won't see much growth. Ubuntu is the
distribution everyone is talking about at the moment, and no doubt that
will suffer the same fate in a year or so.

> Is everyone still toeing that line?  The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter
> hasn't been published in almost two months.

The problem with that, as far as I am aware, is a lack of volunteers,
although I don't remember GWNs being absent for this long before.
Apparently it is coming back in July, so hopefully its absense isn't
permanent.

> 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.

I don't think Gentoo is starved for contributors, at least not judging
by the number of developers listed on the website (I've no idea how many
of those are active though). In terms of usability features, if you want
a nice easy distro that does more or less everything for you, you go for
Ubuntu (or perhaps Fedora 7), not Gentoo. They're not really aimed at
the same type of user - even though I run both, it's for different
purposes (Gentoo for development and breaking things, Ubuntu because
sometimes I just want multimedia to work without having to mess around
with USE flags and trying to track down which packages I should emerge
to get the right codecs for a particular format).


> 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.

To be fair, I think Gentoo has one of the better programmes for getting
active users to become developers. There's plenty of documentation on
the website, plus the developer manual, although I'd personally like to
see a bit more emphasis on non-coding developers (e.g. website updates,
press work etc.) for those people who want to get involved but don't
like fiddling with bash scripts.

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

[Danyelle Gragsone]

If gentoo became an *easy* distro like sickbayon or ubuntu.. I would
stop using it. Seriously..  user friendly distros is not what I am
looking for.. I am looking for a distro to have one fun and learn.
-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

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

[Colleen Beamer]

Danyelle Gragsone wrote:
> If gentoo became an *easy* distro like sickbayon or ubuntu.. I would
> stop using it. Seriously..  user friendly distros is not what I am
> looking for.. I am looking for a distro to have one fun and learn.

I second this sentiment.  Since starting to use Gentoo in 2004, all
other distros pale in comparison.  Yes, there have been a couple of
hurdles, but it was all learning.  I view these, not as annoyances, but
challenges.  I love what I have learned about my system with Gentoo and
there is *no* other distro that has a package management system that is
better than portage, IMHO.  So, thanks from me to all the devs!  :-)

Regards,

Colleen


-- 

Registered Linux User #411143 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org
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Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)

[Dale]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1329 bytes --]

Jerry McBride wrote:
> On Wednesday 04 July 2007 08:13:59 pm Philip Webb wrote:
>   
>> 070704 Colleen Beamer wrote:
>>     
>>> Danyelle Gragsone wrote:
>>>       
>>>> If gentoo became an *easy* distro like sickbayon or ubuntu.. I would
>>>> stop using it. Seriously..  user friendly distros is not what I am
>>>> looking for.. I am looking for a distro to have one fun and learn.
>>>>         
>>> I second this sentiment.  Since starting to use Gentoo in 2004, all
>>> other distros pale in comparison.  Yes, there have been a couple of
>>> hurdles, but it was all learning.  I view these, not as annoyances, but
>>> challenges.  I love what I have learned about my system with Gentoo and
>>> there is *no* other distro that has a package management system that is
>>> better than portage, IMHO.  So, thanks from me to all the devs!  :-)
>>>       
>> Thirded (smile).
>>
>>     
>
> Fourth one here...
>
> Gentoo has been one of the most rewarding linux experiences that I've had in 
> years. The only thing that even comes close is LFS... but then upgrading it 
> is a nightmare.
>
>
>   

I was preparing to install LFS but was told that Gentoo is LFS with a
neat little package handler on steroids.  They were right too.  :-)  I
moved here from Mandrake 9.1. 

I couldn't imagine surfing without Gentoo. 

Dale

:-)  :-)

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

[kashani]

Jerry McBride wrote:
> On Wednesday 04 July 2007 08:13:59 pm Philip Webb wrote:
>> 070704 Colleen Beamer wrote:
>>> Danyelle Gragsone wrote:
>>>> If gentoo became an *easy* distro like sickbayon or ubuntu.. I would
>>>> stop using it. Seriously..  user friendly distros is not what I am
>>>> looking for.. I am looking for a distro to have one fun and learn.
>>> I second this sentiment.  Since starting to use Gentoo in 2004, all
>>> other distros pale in comparison.  Yes, there have been a couple of
>>> hurdles, but it was all learning.  I view these, not as annoyances, but
>>> challenges.  I love what I have learned about my system with Gentoo and
>>> there is *no* other distro that has a package management system that is
>>> better than portage, IMHO.  So, thanks from me to all the devs!  :-)
>> Thirded (smile).
>>
> 
> Fourth one here...
> 
> Gentoo has been one of the most rewarding linux experiences that I've had in 
> years. The only thing that even comes close is LFS... but then upgrading it 
> is a nightmare.
> 

	I'd like to tell the previous four people to move on to meaningful 
challenges like reverse proxying HTTP to split media and application 
serving or db replication or ldap backended mail systems or hell 
anything other than installing a base system. :-) Come on, installing an 
OS shouldn't be complicated in this century.

	Given a choice I prefer my tools extremely powerful AND easy, but I'm a 
professional sys admin with a large pragmatic streak and a low tolerance 
for technology that makes me jump through hoops. This is coincidentally 
why Mysql continues to be used in a hundred time more places than 
Postgres. I find Gentoo to be both easy and powerful most of the time so 
I have few complaints. However his idea that installing an OS has to be 
some sort of trial by fire to prove your worth is wacky.

	I say bring on the easiness. Make a big fat button after the liveCD 
loads that says "Just install it for me in a nice default kinda way so I 
can start playing with this whole USE flag thing I've heard so much 
about" and be done with it. Yes, yes you can still choose to set things 
up yourself and frankly I still find command line fdisk to be much 
simpler to use than any other tool. After that we can start working on a 
big fat button that says "I handle all the USE flag stuff rather than 
having to figure out if equery, ufed, emerge, eix, qpkg, and whatnot 
tells you what you want to know". Wouldn't that be nice?

	Gentoo got lucky (or maybe I did) when it was the only distro I could 
get to install on a office server some idiot has spec'ed with a bleeding 
edge gaming motherboard that refused to boot any other Linux distro. I 
ran through the lengthy install because I was out of options and then 
found I liked the system. I like to think I've been an asset over the 
years for Gentoo (1500 helpful posts on the forum and counting), but how 
many busy professionals have taken a look at the install and decided 
"fsck that, I've got ninety other things I could be doing" and walked away?"

kashani, Gentoo user for five years and remembers when they added the *, 
the bright green for new USE flags, and then sorted the active USE flags 
first in the emerge output and still thinks the person(s) who came up 
with those UI tweaks was a genius.
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[gentoo-user] Re: Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)

[Thufir]

On Fri, 06 Jul 2007 10:47:24 -0700, kashani wrote:

> 	I say bring on the easiness. Make a big fat button after the 
liveCD
> loads that says "Just install it for me in a nice default kinda way so I
> can start playing with this whole USE flag thing I've heard so much
> about" and be done with it.

The irony here is that gentoo has had the live cd for a long time which 
makes installing so much easier, but just won't go that extra step 
because...it's supposed to be hard?  If it's "supposed" to be hard, why 
have the live cd?  seems contrary.


-Thufir

-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

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

[Hemmann, Volker Armin]

On Samstag, 7. Juli 2007, Thufir wrote:
> On Fri, 06 Jul 2007 10:47:24 -0700, kashani wrote:
> > 	I say bring on the easiness. Make a big fat button after the
>
> liveCD
>
> > loads that says "Just install it for me in a nice default kinda way so I
> > can start playing with this whole USE flag thing I've heard so much
> > about" and be done with it.
>
> The irony here is that gentoo has had the live cd for a long time which
> makes installing so much easier, but just won't go that extra step
> because...it's supposed to be hard?  If it's "supposed" to be hard, why
> have the live cd?  seems contrary.
>

well, hard filters out the 'I am stupid and I don't read documentation' crowd, 
which is a good thing. I would not call the installation via graphical 
installer 'hard', I would call it 'buggy beyond usefullness'.

Apart from that, IMHO a livecd is completly braindead. When compiling you need 
as much free ram as you can get. Every mb counts. And a livecd takes away A 
LOT of ram. Even more stupid - a livecd with gnome (which is the DE with the 
biggest ram usage).

So we have a livecd, which is stupid in itself, for installing and a buggy 
installer - only because to prevent some idiots from reading the 
documentation.

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

[Dan Farrell]

On Sat, 7 Jul 2007 12:56:51 +0200
"Hemmann, Volker Armin" <volker.armin.hemmann@tu-clausthal.de> wrote:

> On Samstag, 7. Juli 2007, Thufir wrote:
> > On Fri, 06 Jul 2007 10:47:24 -0700, kashani wrote:
> > > 	I say bring on the easiness. Make a big fat button after
> > > the
> >
> > liveCD
> >
> > > loads that says "Just install it for me in a nice default kinda
> > > way so I can start playing with this whole USE flag thing I've
> > > heard so much about" and be done with it.
> >
> > The irony here is that gentoo has had the live cd for a long time
> > which makes installing so much easier, but just won't go that extra
> > step because...it's supposed to be hard?  If it's "supposed" to be
> > hard, why have the live cd?  seems contrary.
> >
> 
> well, hard filters out the 'I am stupid and I don't read
> documentation' crowd, which is a good thing. I would not call the
> installation via graphical installer 'hard', I would call it 'buggy
> beyond usefullness'.
> 
> Apart from that, IMHO a livecd is completly braindead. When compiling
> you need as much free ram as you can get. Every mb counts. And a
> livecd takes away A LOT of ram. Even more stupid - a livecd with
> gnome (which is the DE with the biggest ram usage).
> 
> So we have a livecd, which is stupid in itself, for installing and a
> buggy installer - only because to prevent some idiots from reading
> the documentation.
> 
> Is that really smart?
If your goal is, 

"We produce Gentoo Linux, a special flavor of Linux that can be
automatically optimized and customized for just about any application
or need. Extreme performance, configurability and a top-notch user and
developer community are all hallmarks of the Gentoo experience. "

I think it's very smart to produce both a livecd and a minimal.  

Oh and by the way, I agree with all your points wholeheartedly.  But I
think getting rid of the livecd (or not putting substantial efforts
into its betterment) would be a move in the wrong direction.  
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)

[david]

I was told to print out the entire handbook and follow it page by page
for my first install as it would help me learn linux. They were right.

-- 
Powered by Gentoo/Linux

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

[Kent Fredric]

On 7/7/07, Hemmann, Volker Armin <volker.armin.hemmann@tu-clausthal.de> wrote:
> On Samstag, 7. Juli 2007, Thufir wrote:
> > On Fri, 06 Jul 2007 10:47:24 -0700, kashani wrote:
> > >     I say bring on the easiness. Make a big fat button after the
> >
> > liveCD
> >
> > > loads that says "Just install it for me in a nice default kinda way so I
> > > can start playing with this whole USE flag thing I've heard so much
> > > about" and be done with it.
> >
> > The irony here is that gentoo has had the live cd for a long time which
> > makes installing so much easier, but just won't go that extra step
> > because...it's supposed to be hard?  If it's "supposed" to be hard, why
> > have the live cd?  seems contrary.
> >
>
> well, hard filters out the 'I am stupid and I don't read documentation' crowd,
> which is a good thing. I would not call the installation via graphical
> installer 'hard', I would call it 'buggy beyond usefullness'.
>
> Apart from that, IMHO a livecd is completly braindead. When compiling you need
> as much free ram as you can get. Every mb counts. And a livecd takes away A
> LOT of ram. Even more stupid - a livecd with gnome (which is the DE with the
> biggest ram usage).
>
> So we have a livecd, which is stupid in itself, for installing and a buggy
> installer - only because to prevent some idiots from reading the
> documentation.
>
> Is that really smart?
> --
> gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>

Minor positive note: if you have no desktop installed and want do do
something /practical/ while those hours of initial compile happen,
such as check your mail, surf the net, etc, its at least good for
that. No other OS really lets you use the system like that while you
wait for install, and listening to music while installing gives
brownie points from friends :)
-- 
Kent
ruby -e '[1, 2, 4, 7, 0, 9, 5, 8, 3, 10, 11, 6, 12, 13].each{|x|
print "enNOSPicAMreil kdrtf@gma.com"[(2*x)..(2*x+1)]}'
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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)

[Martin S]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1466 bytes --]

2007/7/7, Thufir <hawat.thufir@gmail.com>:
>
> On Fri, 06 Jul 2007 10:47:24 -0700, kashani wrote:
>
> >       I say bring on the easiness. Make a big fat button after the
> liveCD
> > loads that says "Just install it for me in a nice default kinda way so I
> > can start playing with this whole USE flag thing I've heard so much
> > about" and be done with it.
>
> The irony here is that gentoo has had the live cd for a long time which
> makes installing so much easier, but just won't go that extra step
> because...it's supposed to be hard?  If it's "supposed" to be hard, why
> have the live cd?  seems contrary.


Well, actually the Live CD/DVD is complete crap when it comes to "easy
installing" bringing grief to lots of potential users. Which is pretty
weird, considering "the other Gentoo"* has a Live CD that actually works as
intended to bring in newbie type users. On the other hand I don't see why a
distribution like Gentoo should target newbie users. What was actually wrong
with a slightly elitist approach in stage 1-2 cli installations? The semi
newbie could use a stage 3 cli installation routine.
Actually I started to think that the Live CD, ditching the stage 1-2 from
the main documentation is not understanding what many feel Gentoo is. It's
*not* the Mandrivalike-works-straight-of-the-box distribution. It shouldn't
be shoe horned into something it isn't.


-Thufir
>
> --
> gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>


-- 
Regards,

Martin S

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

[Martin S]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1667 bytes --]

2007/7/7, Martin S <shieldfire@gmail.com>:
>
>
>
> 2007/7/7, Thufir <hawat.thufir@gmail.com>:
> >
> > On Fri, 06 Jul 2007 10:47:24 -0700, kashani wrote:
> >
> > >       I say bring on the easiness. Make a big fat button after the
> > liveCD
> > > loads that says "Just install it for me in a nice default kinda way so
> > I
> > > can start playing with this whole USE flag thing I've heard so much
> > > about" and be done with it.
> >
> > The irony here is that gentoo has had the live cd for a long time which
> > makes installing so much easier, but just won't go that extra step
> > because...it's supposed to be hard?  If it's "supposed" to be hard, why
> > have the live cd?  seems contrary.
>
>
> Well, actually the Live CD/DVD is complete crap when it comes to "easy
> installing" bringing grief to lots of potential users. Which is pretty
> weird, considering "the other Gentoo"* has a Live CD that actually works as
> intended to bring in newbie type users. On the other hand I don't see why a
> distribution like Gentoo should target newbie users. What was actually wrong
> with a slightly elitist approach in stage 1-2 cli installations? The semi
> newbie could use a stage 3 cli installation routine.
> Actually I started to think that the Live CD, ditching the stage 1-2 from
> the main documentation is not understanding what many feel Gentoo is. It's
> *not* the Mandrivalike-works-straight-of-the-box distribution. It shouldn't
> be shoe horned into something it isn't.
>

What was missed, was - if the Live CD is so important, why not just nick it
from Sabayon where it actually "works".
* The other Gentoo is Sabayon of course.

Regards,

Martin S

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

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sat, 7 Jul 2007 16:16:26 +0200, Martin S wrote:

> What was missed, was - if the Live CD is so important, why not just
> nick it from Sabayon where it actually "works".

As does the 2007.0 live CD, at least it did for me, which the previous
efforts failed to do.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

DOS Tip #17: Add DEVICE=FNGRCROS.SYS to CONFIG.SYS

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

[Martin S]

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2007/7/7, Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk>:
>
> On Sat, 7 Jul 2007 16:16:26 +0200, Martin S wrote:
>
> > What was missed, was - if the Live CD is so important, why not just
> > nick it from Sabayon where it actually "works".
>
> As does the 2007.0 live CD, at least it did for me, which the previous
> efforts failed to do.


Of course YMMV but many people have had great problems with the Live CD
2007.0, including me. There are enough evidence (IMHO) to suggeset that it's
broken and possibly should be withdrawn until the Live CD devs have gotten
it right.

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

[Grant]

> >>>> If gentoo became an *easy* distro like sickbayon or ubuntu.. I would
> >>>> stop using it. Seriously..  user friendly distros is not what I am
> >>>> looking for.. I am looking for a distro to have one fun and learn.
> >>> I second this sentiment.  Since starting to use Gentoo in 2004, all
> >>> other distros pale in comparison.  Yes, there have been a couple of
> >>> hurdles, but it was all learning.  I view these, not as annoyances, but
> >>> challenges.  I love what I have learned about my system with Gentoo and
> >>> there is *no* other distro that has a package management system that is
> >>> better than portage, IMHO.  So, thanks from me to all the devs!  :-)
> >> Thirded (smile).
> >>
> >
> > Fourth one here...
> >
> > Gentoo has been one of the most rewarding linux experiences that I've had in
> > years. The only thing that even comes close is LFS... but then upgrading it
> > is a nightmare.
> >
>
>         I'd like to tell the previous four people to move on to meaningful
> challenges like reverse proxying HTTP to split media and application
> serving or db replication or ldap backended mail systems or hell
> anything other than installing a base system. :-) Come on, installing an
> OS shouldn't be complicated in this century.
>
>         Given a choice I prefer my tools extremely powerful AND easy, but I'm a
> professional sys admin with a large pragmatic streak and a low tolerance
> for technology that makes me jump through hoops. This is coincidentally
> why Mysql continues to be used in a hundred time more places than
> Postgres. I find Gentoo to be both easy and powerful most of the time so
> I have few complaints. However his idea that installing an OS has to be
> some sort of trial by fire to prove your worth is wacky.
>
>         I say bring on the easiness. Make a big fat button after the liveCD
> loads that says "Just install it for me in a nice default kinda way so I
> can start playing with this whole USE flag thing I've heard so much
> about" and be done with it. Yes, yes you can still choose to set things
> up yourself and frankly I still find command line fdisk to be much
> simpler to use than any other tool. After that we can start working on a
> big fat button that says "I handle all the USE flag stuff rather than
> having to figure out if equery, ufed, emerge, eix, qpkg, and whatnot
> tells you what you want to know". Wouldn't that be nice?
>
>         Gentoo got lucky (or maybe I did) when it was the only distro I could
> get to install on a office server some idiot has spec'ed with a bleeding
> edge gaming motherboard that refused to boot any other Linux distro. I
> ran through the lengthy install because I was out of options and then
> found I liked the system. I like to think I've been an asset over the
> years for Gentoo (1500 helpful posts on the forum and counting), but how
> many busy professionals have taken a look at the install and decided
> "fsck that, I've got ninety other things I could be doing" and walked away?"

Great post, I couldn't agree more.

- Grant
-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

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

[Paul Waring]

On Wed, Jul 04, 2007 at 09:40:10PM -0400, Walter Dnes wrote:
>   emerge is along the same lines.  "make menuconfig" is the limits of my
> expertise.  I remember "RPM hell" with Redhat linux, trying to find an
> RPM package for a program I wanted, where the developer hadn't linked it
> against a bunch of stuff I didn't have.  I can take a text-only basic
> system, "emerge gimp", and emerge will pull in and build, in the right
> order, all the necessary X libraries, GTK, etc, etc.  I end up with a
> functional TWM "desktop".  "emerge bbkeys" emerges blackbox
> key-controls... after first emerging blackbox.  Try doing that with
> RPMs.

What makes you think that you can't do that with RPMs now? Seven years
ago they were a nightmare but things have moved on since then. The same
goes for deb files (can't think of any other major ones off the top of
my head).

Paul
-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

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

[Kent Fredric]

On 7/5/07, Paul Waring <paul@xk7.net> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 04, 2007 at 09:40:10PM -0400, Walter Dnes wrote:
> >   emerge is along the same lines.  "make menuconfig" is the limits of my
> > expertise.  I remember "RPM hell" with Redhat linux, trying to find an
> > RPM package for a program I wanted, where the developer hadn't linked it
> > against a bunch of stuff I didn't have.  I can take a text-only basic
> > system, "emerge gimp", and emerge will pull in and build, in the right
> > order, all the necessary X libraries, GTK, etc, etc.  I end up with a
> > functional TWM "desktop".  "emerge bbkeys" emerges blackbox
> > key-controls... after first emerging blackbox.  Try doing that with
> > RPMs.
>
> What makes you think that you can't do that with RPMs now? Seven years
> ago they were a nightmare but things have moved on since then. The same
> goes for deb files (can't think of any other major ones off the top of
> my head).
>
> Paul
> --
> gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>

* Binary Dependency
* No USE
* Binary Dependency Breaks = No solution other than choose which of
the 2 programs you want to lose.
* Forceful ignorance of binary dependencies triggers stupid stuff like
spontaneous removal of all of libc.

( i think thats the sort of headaches he was referring to with rpm-hell )

Conclusion on binary based distros:
    wait for upstream to fix.
Conclusion on source based distros:
    you can fix it yourself, and today.

I'd rather be able to have breakages I can work around  ;)

So not only is gentoo healthy, imo, its a very healthy test-bed for
the whole world of OSS.

-- 
Kent
ruby -e '[1, 2, 4, 7, 0, 9, 5, 8, 3, 10, 11, 6, 12, 13].each{|x|
print "enNOSPicAMreil kdrtf@gma.com"[(2*x)..(2*x+1)]}'
-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

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

[Mark Knecht]

On 7/5/07, Paul Waring <paul@xk7.net> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 04, 2007 at 09:40:10PM -0400, Walter Dnes wrote:
> >   emerge is along the same lines.  "make menuconfig" is the limits of my
> > expertise.  I remember "RPM hell" with Redhat linux, trying to find an
> > RPM package for a program I wanted, where the developer hadn't linked it
> > against a bunch of stuff I didn't have.  I can take a text-only basic
> > system, "emerge gimp", and emerge will pull in and build, in the right
> > order, all the necessary X libraries, GTK, etc, etc.  I end up with a
> > functional TWM "desktop".  "emerge bbkeys" emerges blackbox
> > key-controls... after first emerging blackbox.  Try doing that with
> > RPMs.
>
> What makes you think that you can't do that with RPMs now? Seven years
> ago they were a nightmare but things have moved on since then. The same
> goes for deb files (can't think of any other major ones off the top of
> my head).
>
> Paul

Well, in the world of audio RPMs anyway the problem always was that
different audio apps used different versions of libraries. Last time I
used Fedora (maybe 3-4 years ago now) none of the RPM managers would
automatically go find all the right libraries for some odd audio app I
wanted to try out, and then even if they did if I decided to take the
app off my system there wasn't a good way to clean up after the fact.

Beyond that I never had a major Fedora upgrade go cleanly. My Gentoo
machines are now multi-years old and they just update each week or two
as new revisions come out.

I'm sure things are much better today but I still hear folks complain
about this sort of this on the pro-audio lists once in awhile. I
couldn't have written a better description of my use of Gentoo than
Walter did. I'm pretty much exactly the same sort of user. Gentoo
works great for me.

Cheers,
Mark
-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

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

[Thufir]

On Wed, 04 Jul 2007 21:40:10 -0400, Walter Dnes wrote:

> Try doing that with
> RPMs.

Generally, works fine with YUM.  I expect that yum and portage are about 
the same, and end result differences on dependencies are more due redhat/
fedora using multiple "repo's" for liability/policy reasons, not due to 
the superiority of portage over yum.  My two cents.


-Thufir

-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

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

[David Relson]

On Thu, 5 Jul 2007 08:37:14 +0000 (UTC)
Thufir wrote:

> On Wed, 04 Jul 2007 21:40:10 -0400, Walter Dnes wrote:
> 
> > Try doing that with
> > RPMs.
> 
> Generally, works fine with YUM.  I expect that yum and portage are
> about the same, and end result differences on dependencies are more
> due redhat/ fedora using multiple "repo's" for liability/policy
> reasons, not due to the superiority of portage over yum.  My two
> cents.
> 
> 
> -Thufir

Mandrake/Mandriva has urpmi which handles RPM dependencies.  Several
times I've updated from one Mandriva release to the next by downloading
the new release's package list then running "urpmi --auto-select".
Once the many packages are downloaded, the upgrade goes very well.

I used YUM for a while and it worked fine, though its dependency
resolving was much slower than urpmi.

Gentoo with portage makes it easier to stay up-to-date with the latest
and greatest.  The existence of /etc/portage/package.* provides lots of
power to customize but adds a significant level of complexity.  urpmi
and YUM are easier to use as both lack the customizability and the
associated complexity.

Just my $0.02.

David
-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

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

[Mick]

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On Thursday 05 July 2007 02:40, Walter Dnes wrote:

>   I use Gentoo precisely because it's easy.  I am not a programmer, and
> cannot do a manual project.  I rely on others' makefiles.  My
> "programming expertise" consists of...
[snip . . .]

I echo Walter's comments on my use of Gentoo.  However, I am not sure as 
others have argued that Gentoo keeps newbies away.  Well not all newbies 
anyway.  When I started using Gentoo back in 2003/04 my total experience in 
Linux was absolutely minimal.  I had only booted Knoppix a few times.  If it 
wasn't for the handbook, docs and of course the forums, I would have probably 
walked away defeated.  Thankfully, Gentoo was a relatively painless and 
rewarding experience (despite that back then I was installing from a stage 1, 
and it was failing for a number of reasons).  Having had a chance of 
experimenting with Fedora, SUSE and Ubuntu I found SUSE the easiest to 
update/upgrade, but nothing compared with the ease of portage and its 
configuration options.

I would probably disagree that Gentoo is a dying distro - would think of it 
more of a maturing distro like it was mentioned earlier.  The natural 
evolution of Gentoo may be that portage hands over to paludis soon 
as a superior package management system, but who knows?
-- 
Regards,
Mick

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

[Guillermo Antonio Amaral Bastidas]

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On Tuesday 03 July 2007 09:07:24 Grant 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

  Personally I love Gentoo, IMHO the compile aspect of it ( the part that I 
love most of all ) is what keeps beginners and novice GNU/Linux users away, 
the target audience will always be those who don't mind taking the time to 
build a fully customized system even if it takes a day or two.

  Gentoo does indeed need more users to become contributors, I have been 
a "Non-contributing" user for some time now, just promoting it when ever 
possible, I even got my company to switch many Windows workstations to Gentoo 
development stations, a few months ago my company offered to pay me to work 
full time on any free and open source project that might benifit them in the 
end, I jumped at the chance and applied to work in different areas of Gentoo 
(mostly C/CPP and Perl development areas), after many unanswered e-mails and 
one telling me to "be patient" I gave up and applied to work in the KDE 
project ( in two days I had my own SVN and started porting code to KDE4 ), I 
personally think Gentoo makes it hard to contribute in many areas, this might 
be why few Non-contributing users become contributing users.

-- 
Guillermo Antonio Amaral Bastidas
# Free & Open Source Software Advocate
$ irc: guillermoamaral@freenode
@ blog: http://blog.guillermoamaral.com/
@ site: http://www.guillermoamaral.com/
% gpg: http://downloads.guillermoamaral.com/public.asc

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