On 12.03.2013 14:44, Neil Bothwick wrote:
On Tue, 12 Mar 2013 12:30:57 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:
not "has to be easy", but definitely, with such purpose.
Do you disagree? Perhaps you reckon that the whole purpose of
computing is to make life harder? :)
You know, this general topic rears it's head about every six months. The
answer never changes:
Gentoo is what it is, it works a certain way for a reason. Maybe you
like it, maybe you don't. Either way that is not going to change anytime
soon. What you could do is pitch in and do all the same heavy lifting
that our long-term devs have done, and be the change you want to see in
the world.
That might involve dealing with the protestations of the existing devs
though and they will likely quote the "Gentoo is what it is" line.
On the other hand, if you file bug report with a patch to the ebuild
that checks the running kernel version and outputs an elog message of
"you might want to try the in-kernel drivers". They may simply say "thank
you".
The starting point has to be someone identifying the problem.
When you come e.g. to a car service and say, 'my engine is not working
properly e.g. ignition fails or sort of', do you expect the mechanic to
answer, 'hell why are you coming to me? you know the problem, c'mon fix
it yourself'? Or even more of it, 'your car is what it is, you wanna
drive -- buy a limousine for a couple hundred grands'?
Yes, you can expect that a gentoo user is more familiar with the things
but you can't expect everyone capable of everything.
And clearly, there are people who'd do it better than an average gentoo
user.
This is not a unique situation, there are other out of tree drivers that
give such a message, and plenty more that don't. All it needs is for
someone to take the time to fix it - rather than demanding that someone
else fixes it for them.
Yes, that's it -- if you can't do it yourself, just inform someone who
has the time and ability to fix it. And no profound discussions about
what gentoo is and what it is not. Because (it's my humble opinion of
course) he who discusses the most does the least.
--
Best wishes,
Yuri K. Shatroff