Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo dead?

[John Covici <covici@ccs.covici.com>]

On Wed, 22 Apr 2020 04:15:18 -0400,
Dale wrote:
> 
> [1  <text/plain; UTF-8 (8bit)>]
> John Covici wrote:
> >
> > I am seeing a lot more unmaintained packages -- at least in the ones I
> > have -- than there used to be and bugs going unanswered probably
> > because of that.  Not sure what to do about it, I don't have time to
> > get into doing this much, just keeping up with world updates is quite
> > time consuming all by itself.
> >
> 
> 
> That may be but the packages that are most used are likely maintained
> and well maintained at that.  There are some old packages that haven't
> been updated in years, upstream is dead or no one uses them much anymore
> that are slowly being removed.  If one can't install them, no real point
> in them being in the tree.  I might add, the switch from the much older
> pythons are really forcing a house cleaning.  But, some packages are
> just out of date and something new has taken their place.  Nothing new
> there.  I'm sure this happens with every distro out there, even the paid
> ones.
> 
> I follow -dev and have recently had to uninstall a package and install
> something else that is newer and more up to date.  I saw a message about
> that old package that seemed to stop working for me a good while ago. 
> What I had still lurking about would sometimes crash and I didn't trust
> it.  I used to use that as a GUI to manage LVM.  I use LVM a lot here. 
> In that message was them removing the old package and recommending a
> replacement I never heard of.  I installed it and it may actually be
> better than the old software I used to use.  While the old package may
> be gone, the new one seems to be more up to date, stable and appears to
> have a better design.  Different for sure, I'll have to learn how the
> GUI does its thing but could be better in the end. Since LVM has been
> updated a good bit in the past year or so, that old software either
> needed a lot of work or just use the newer software.
> 
> There are a lot of packages that are just not used by enough people to
> maintain them anymore.  Some are being replaced with more up to date
> packages.  There are lots of reasons for that.  If a package you use is
> being removed, search -dev and look to see if there is a replacement
> mentioned in the last rites message.  If it was removed, they almost
> always include a replacement if there is one.  Sometimes another package
> absorbs what the old package used to do. While at times -dev can get
> quite busy, I'd be lost without it.  Things are mentioned there about
> upcoming changes that I don't see mentioned anywhere else.  That
> includes this list as well.  It's a great way to keep somewhat up to
> date on what's going on.  One doesn't have to read every post either. 
> After a while, you can tell by the subject line if that thread will be
> anything you would be interested in.  Last rites, things about upgrades
> and such get my attention.  I generally know when something big is going
> to happen weeks or even months before it hits the tree.
> 
> If you want to share what packages you are missing out on, I'd be glad
> to search my -dev archives and see if I can find something that may help. 

Well, teamviewer is the worst -- teamviewer 15 won't emerge because it
will overwrite files belonging to the previous version (!da).  Someone
even slotted the thing, but still no joy.  I filed a bug, but no
response.  Also, although I don't think there is a new version, but
sendmail seens to be unmaintained.
Also, ant-core --  there is a bug against that, but no fix as yet.

-- 
Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
How do
you spend it?

         John Covici wb2una
         covici@ccs.covici.com