Hi, Aron Griffis wrote: > I think that attempting to take Gentoo in the "enterprise" direction > is a mistake. I think that we are a hobbyist distribution. This > doesn't mean that we should not strive to meet some of the enterprise > goals. Those things can be important to hobbyists too. But I don't > think we should be aiming for corporate America.
I don't think we're a good base for enterprise distributions with our current tree either. > I don't even understand why that goal appeals to people. Let other > distros go there! I want Gentoo to run in people's homes, in student > dorm rooms, etc. Places where people want a fun distribution that > they can tailor and work on easily. As you stated before, many of the enterprise goals may also fit the "hobbyist"'s ones. I'm running Gentoo on my Pentium-MMX for server pourposes and I really would benefit from a slower moving tree, for example. > I like the idea of Gentoo on alternative arches and in embedded > environments. Not because I want Sony to start using Gentoo on > walkmans, but purely because the idea of running Linux on a PDA is > cool. I'd like Gentoo to be a place where neat things are developed. Ack. Additionally, I like the idea of running Gentoo on a server. ;) > Also I find it amusing when people say that Gentoo exists for the > users. I think that is wrong. Gentoo exists for the *developers*. Depends on which side you are. When I was a user, I always had the feeling that Gentoo exists for me, since it doesn't force me to something I don't want, I can decide what my system looks like. Now that I became a developer I see Gentoo as a great opportunity to expand my knowlege and experience and to meet nice people, so it's primarily for me. > It's our playground, and it's the reason we use a live tree rather > than switching to an actually sane approach. The users are cool > because they point out bugs, help solve problems on bugzilla, suggest > enhancements, provide patches, and notify us of package updates. > Sometimes they become developers. But the truth is that Gentoo sees > improvement and maintenance in the areas that appeal to the > developers. And that is why Gentoo exists for the developers first, > the users second. I agree with this, but there are also situations where that isn't really true. For example, I'm really interested in getting a true multilib environment for AMD64, not because I want to run 32bit apps -- the few ones I need already run smoothly -- but because it's an interesting and ambitious project. For those who want to decide whether they want 32bit or 64bit on a per-package-basis, multilib exists for them. To me, multilib exists for me. Although it's nearly everywhere the case, there doesn't have to be a conflict of interests per-se. Gentoo has managed to not run into these troubles, and that's why it's such a great distribution and community. Greetings, blubb -- Simon Stelling Gentoo/AMD64 Operational Co-Lead [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
