[gentoo-user] Re: Custom ebuilds for CoreOS

[James <wireless@tampabay.rr.com>]

Rich Freeman <rich0 <at> gentoo.org> writes:


> > To me, it appears that some forward looking folks have forked 
> > (stolen the best parts?) gentoo, made some fundamental 
> > (long overdue changes) and are > > all about creating a 
> > source_to_cluster platform.  (hmmmm, vaguely sounds 
> > familiar...scratching head). It is a natural evilution for linux to 
> > take; or are we going to embrace some much needed change 
> > (new ideas) into gentoo?



> I have no idea if CoreOS is Gentoo-derived, but it is very much a
> special-purpose distro.  The whole concept is that you put all the
> value-add in the containers, and then you just want a really standard
> and lightweight distro to host your containers in.  Maybe you run
> CentOS in one container, and Gentoo in another container, and Debian
> in another container.

Your  first points are understood; and centos appear to be focused on the
commercial "cloud" mentality of don't buy hareware, rent containers
from us crowd.  That, to me, is a fool's path.

What I'm hoping for is that with the (gentoo) past of revolving devs,
Hasufell ideas for distributed development by reducing the gentoo core;
Flameyes takedown of tinderbox, my pursuit of clustering and many other
issues (pid1) all seem to inidcate that many distros are fundamentally
examining their path(s) forward. So, I think gentoo can have a minimize
version that achieves what CoreOS is doing, but it is gentoo-bare-metal
centric.  I think Gentoo can robustly support systemd and openrc, containers
and other key areas and new technologies, in a fundamentally 
unique way.


I do think a fundamental "update" to the entire gentoo environment is a
healthy ares for discussion. I do appreciate your insights on coreOS. I see
it as a minimized embedded effort to bring resources into a cluster that is
exclusively controlled by the owner. I have "zero" interest in the "cloud"
as beside being a very dumb idea for too many reasons to innumerate, it
removes folks from gaining knowledge of direct hardware experiences.

I do love the way the "cloud" vendors find and collect up the very best
ideas. I hate how the "cloud" vendors want to offer those best ideas,
as a transient benefit via time-rented binaries.

I strongly believe we are at a nexus (a vergence in the force) as many
new technologies are converging very rapidly. Call it what you like,
but, we are at the crossroads of some very unique opportunites, imho.
If we had a gentoo cluster right now, something like tinderbox would
have been running there all along. YMMV.


James