Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
On 7/9/07, Galevsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: 2007/7/8, Mark Knecht <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > 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 -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
2007/7/8, Mark Knecht <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: 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' -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
On 7/8/07, Grant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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 "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" 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 -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
On 7/8/07, Grant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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 -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
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 -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
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 -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
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. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
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 pgpdduNqsyyHK.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
On 7/5/07, Paul Waring <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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 -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
On 7/5/07, Paul Waring <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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
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* 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED]"[(2*x)..(2*x+1)]}'
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
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 -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
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 :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
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. -- From the Desk of: Jerome D. McBride -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
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). -- ,, SUPPORT ___//___, Philip Webb : [EMAIL PROTECTED] ELECTRIC /] [] [] [] [] []| Centre for Urban & Community Studies TRANSIT`-O--O---' University of Toronto -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
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 -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] @ blog: http://blog.guillermoamaral.com/ @ site: http://www.guillermoamaral.com/ % gpg: http://downloads.guillermoamaral.com/public.asc signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
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. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
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 -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
On 7/4/07, Grant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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.
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
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--
Kent
ruby -e '[1, 2, 4, 7, 0, 9, 5, 8, 3, 10, 11, 6, 12, 13].each{|x|
print "enNOSPicAMreil [EMAIL PROTECTED]"[(2*x)..(2*x+1)]}'
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Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
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 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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 -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
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... -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
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 signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
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 -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
On Tue, 3 Jul 2007 09:07:24 -0700 Grant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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 -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
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. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
On Tue, 3 Jul 2007 19:41:34 +0200 Thierry de Coulon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
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 signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
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 -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
On 7/3/07, Grant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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 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 -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
> 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 -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo Healthy? (The Return)
On 7/3/07, Grant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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 -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On Saturday 23 December 2006 15:44, Neil Bothwick wrote: > On Sat, 23 Dec 2006 12:47:04 +0100, Bo Ørsted Andresen wrote: > > > Maybe, but they do provide an extremely useful fallback, especially > > > for those of us running ~arch systems. Being able to roll back to an > > > older, working version in seconds rather than minutes or hours is a > > > definite benefit. > > > > And in addition to that they only require a working tar and bash (which > > could be run from a livecd) to roll back. > > Oh yes, I've been there when a broken glibc update stopped the computer > booting. Untarring the old glibc package from a live CD was all I needed > to get working again. nice for you, but downgrading glibc broked my system extremly badly. 'no devices because of no udev' badly. 'You can't boot a livecd, because the kernels are too old for your sata' badly. No fun at all... -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On Saturday 23 December 2006 08:44, Neil Bothwick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote about 'Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?': > On Sat, 23 Dec 2006 12:47:04 +0100, Bo Ørsted Andresen wrote: > > > Maybe, but they do provide an extremely useful fallback, especially > > > for those of us running ~arch systems. Being able to roll back to an > > > older, working version in seconds rather than minutes or hours is a > > > definite benefit. > > And in addition to that they only require a working tar and bash > > (which could be run from a livecd) to roll back. > Oh yes, I've been there when a broken glibc update stopped the computer > booting. I've broken multiple packages including glibc (multiple times), but was able to recover via busybox (which has a shell and tar built-in). /me hugs his Gentoo. -- "If there's one thing we've established over the years, it's that the vast majority of our users don't have the slightest clue what's best for them in terms of package stability." -- Gentoo Developer Ciaran McCreesh pgp1k5fZ0fo0f.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On Sat, 23 Dec 2006 12:47:04 +0100, Bo Ørsted Andresen wrote: > > Maybe, but they do provide an extremely useful fallback, especially > > for those of us running ~arch systems. Being able to roll back to an > > older, working version in seconds rather than minutes or hours is a > > definite benefit. > > And in addition to that they only require a working tar and bash (which > could be run from a livecd) to roll back. Oh yes, I've been there when a broken glibc update stopped the computer booting. Untarring the old glibc package from a live CD was all I needed to get working again. -- Neil Bothwick Top Oxymorons Number 8: Tight slacks signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On Friday 22 December 2006 10:06, Neil Bothwick wrote: > > A bin package is equally cumbersome. You will very quickly consume huge > > amounts of disk space - at least equal to all the current packages on > > the system plus old ones that were updated. > > Maybe, but they do provide an extremely useful fallback, especially for > those of us running ~arch systems. Being able to roll back to an older, > working version in seconds rather than minutes or hours is a definite > benefit. And in addition to that they only require a working tar and bash (which could be run from a livecd) to roll back. Without them a working gcc and python/portage is required too... -- Bo Andresen pgpYvLRdaF5Le.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On Fri, 22 Dec 2006 16:45:40 +0100, Benno Schulenberg wrote: > > if binary packages were built and stored in some reasonable > > location then I could probably prune out things that I'm not > > worried about, They are stored wherever you tell portage to store them. > But then, one day, you'll see that you've pruned something you > shouldn't have, something that one of the things you did keep needs > as a dependency. Better keep everything. Disks are gigantic these > days, surely you can spare a gigabyte or two for binary packages. du /mnt/portage/packages/ 5.5G/mnt/portage/packages/ 5.5Gtotal That's for five machines, each having a separate package store. The last clean up was two weeks ago, but all the machines run ~arch, so there's already a lot of superceded packages in there. Your estimate of space requirements seems spot on for a single machine :) -- Neil Bothwick Intel: where Quality is job number 0.9998782345! signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
Alan McKinnon wrote: > Any custom changes you make to > the tree are wiped out with the next --sync anyway, Who is talking about making custom changes? Who would make such changes to the main /usr/portage tree anyway? We're talking about a simple user here, no extras, no frills, no adaptations. He just wants to be able to keep a system working also when he syncs just once a year and finds that a working ebuild has been replaced with one that doesn't. No huge buildup of binary packages: if the update was succesful, he can delete all the old versions of the packages for which he has duplicates. > Trust me, Hrm. Why should I? > Tell me, have you ever actually used overlays? # ls -l /usr/local/portage/ total 0 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 88 Dec 2 12:13 app-i18n drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 104 Dec 20 14:33 app-office drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 72 Nov 21 00:53 app-shells drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 48 Jun 10 2006 games-action drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 104 Oct 6 14:38 kde-base drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 80 Nov 15 23:07 net-irc drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 104 Dec 7 12:39 sys-apps drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 72 Nov 8 16:02 sys-libs drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 72 Dec 18 23:38 sys-process drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 80 Aug 18 12:24 www-client drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 72 Mar 18 2005 x11-base Benno -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
Mark Knecht wrote: > if binary packages were built and stored in some reasonable > location then I could probably prune out things that I'm not > worried about, But then, one day, you'll see that you've pruned something you shouldn't have, something that one of the things you did keep needs as a dependency. Better keep everything. Disks are gigantic these days, surely you can spare a gigabyte or two for binary packages. >I wonder if -b could be put in one of the > /etc/portage/package.XXX files Better go with the FEATURES=buildpkg that Bo pointed out, that is the mechanism that emerge provides for this situation. Myself, I don't use buildpkg nor default option -b, I simply keep a second partition around with a Gentoo system in a working state. If ever the primary gets messed up, I can reboot into the second one and use that until I have the first repaired. Benno -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On Friday 22 December 2006 12:36, Jeff Rollin wrote: > > It is a known problem, discussed in its own bug and on gentoo-dev. A lot > > of people (like me), don't get all the mails sent to > > gentoo-[user,dev,amd64...]. For some unknown reasons that mails are > > dropped and never delivered. And no, the spam filters are not part of the > > problem. > > > > -- > > OK, sorry. it is ok. Nobody really knows why that happens - and after the latest mail-server upgrade the amount of dropped mails was greatly reduced. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
It is a known problem, discussed in its own bug and on gentoo-dev. A lot of people (like me), don't get all the mails sent to gentoo-[user,dev,amd64...]. For some unknown reasons that mails are dropped and never delivered. And no, the spam filters are not part of the problem. -- OK, sorry. Jeff -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On Friday 22 December 2006 11:40, Jeff Rollin wrote: > On 22/12/06, Neil Bothwick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Fri, 22 Dec 2006 02:10:58 +0100, Bo Ørsted Andresen wrote: > > > I'm starting to wonder if you missed this mail on the subject: > > > > > > http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.user/175964/focus=176095 > > > > Possibly, I'm still missing mails from Gentoo lists, although the problem > > seems less than previously. > > Sorry if this is too obvious, but have you checked what your spam > filter's doing lately? spam filters have nothing to do with that. It is a known problem, discussed in its own bug and on gentoo-dev. A lot of people (like me), don't get all the mails sent to gentoo-[user,dev,amd64...]. For some unknown reasons that mails are dropped and never delivered. And no, the spam filters are not part of the problem. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On Fri, 22 Dec 2006 11:35:58 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote: > > Except it's not 500MB, as you'll see by looking at the snapshots > > directory on any Gentoo mirror. Of course, the fact that portage > > trees for the last couple of weeks are nicely tarred up on all the > > Gentoo mirrors makes this process pointless anyway :) > > My /usr/portage (without distfiles) is 558,560 blocks of 1k each. I > have no idea what it will .tar.gz down to 33.1MB with bzip2, see http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/www.ibiblio.org/gentoo/snapshots/ There's not much point in making your own when this is available :) I have /usr/portage mounted on a sparse file, as per http://gentoo-wiki.com/TIP_Speeding_up_portage#MultiPurpose_Trick That page lists ease of backing up as a benefit, but I've never felt the need to do that. -- Neil Bothwick Windows95: n. 32 bit extensions and a graphical shell for a 16 bit patch to an 8 bit operating system originally coded for a 4 bit microprocessor, written by a 2 bit company, that can't stand 1 bit of competition. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On 22/12/06, Neil Bothwick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On Fri, 22 Dec 2006 02:10:58 +0100, Bo Ørsted Andresen wrote: > I'm starting to wonder if you missed this mail on the subject: > > http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.user/175964/focus=176095 Possibly, I'm still missing mails from Gentoo lists, although the problem seems less than previously. Sorry if this is too obvious, but have you checked what your spam filter's doing lately? Jeff. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On Friday 22 December 2006 11:06, Neil Bothwick wrote: > On Fri, 22 Dec 2006 09:16:10 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote: > > I can't believe you are advocating either of those solutions. It > > means you retain 500M worth of tgz'ed portage tree for just in case > > an ebuild leaves the tree. Any custom changes you make to the tree > > are wiped out with the next --sync anyway, so now the user has to > > remember which ones were updated and remember to put them all back. > > Except it's not 500MB, as you'll see by looking at the snapshots > directory on any Gentoo mirror. Of course, the fact that portage > trees for the last couple of weeks are nicely tarred up on all the > Gentoo mirrors makes this process pointless anyway :) My /usr/portage (without distfiles) is 558,560 blocks of 1k each. I have no idea what it will .tar.gz down to [snip] > > Trust me, the portage devs have already figured all this out and > > overlays are exactly the solution for this. The user already has to > > be online to have updated, so all he needs do is get the desired > > ebuild from cvs, copy it to /usr/local/portage, block updates to > > that package using package.mask and then GO AWAY AND FORGET ALL > > ABOUT IT. No more maintenance, no monthly tars, no vast amounts of > > disk space consumed. it all just works. > > Absolutely. Overlays are there specifically for people who need > something different from the standard portage tree. They are hardly > difficult to use, as long as you know how to use mkdir and cp. When a > user has a system that depends on specific versions of particular > packages, all he has to do is copy them from /usr/portage to the > overlay. You shouldn't even need to mess with CVS, as soon as you > mask all newer versions of a package, you should copy its ebuild > directory to your overlay to keep it safe. Old versions do not > disappear as soon as a newer version comes out, unless the previous > version had a serious security hole. > > mkdir -p /usr/local/portage/category > cp -a /usr/portage/category/package /usr/local/portage/category > > How hard is that? We agree on this. I use overlays extensively: [EMAIL PROTECTED] /usr/portage/virtual/perl-DB_File $ ll /usr/local/portage/ total 21 drwxrwsr-x 27 root portage 880 Dec 10 12:02 ./ drwxr-xr-x 11 root root 312 Sep 24 20:19 ../ drwxrwsr-x 3 root portage 72 Nov 11 18:08 app-admin/ drwxrwsr-x 3 root portage 72 Nov 11 18:09 app-editors/ drwxrwsr-x 3 root portage 72 Nov 11 18:09 app-laptop/ drwxrwsr-x 5 root portage 120 Dec 9 20:19 app-misc/ drwxrwsr-x 3 root portage 72 Dec 10 11:30 app-text/ drwxrwsr-x 3 root portage 72 Nov 11 18:10 dev-db/ drwxrwsr-x 6 root portage 144 Nov 11 18:11 dev-libs/ drwxrwsr-x 4 root portage 96 Nov 11 18:11 dev-util/ drwxrwsr-x 2 root portage 48 Nov 11 18:56 distfiles/ drwxrwsr-x 2 root portage 48 Nov 11 18:56 eclass/ -rw-rw-r-- 1 root portage 121 Jan 2 2006 header.txt drwxrwsr-x 3 root portage 72 Nov 11 18:11 mail-client/ drwxrwsr-x 9 root portage 224 Dec 3 10:48 media-gfx/ drwxrwsr-x 8 root portage 200 Dec 9 20:45 media-libs/ drwxrwsr-x 3 root portage 72 Dec 9 20:45 media-sound/ drwxrwsr-x 5 root portage 120 Nov 11 22:26 media-video/ drwxrwsr-x 3 root portage 72 Nov 11 18:15 net-im/ drwxrwsr-x 2 root portage 168 Dec 17 19:59 profiles/ drwxrwsr-x 3 root portage 72 Nov 11 18:16 sci-calculators/ -rw-rw-r-- 1 root portage 3666 Jan 2 2006 skel.ChangeLog -rw-rw-r-- 1 root root7189 Sep 22 17:05 skel.ebuild -rw-rw-r-- 1 root portage 789 Jun 8 2004 skel.metadata.xml drwxrwsr-x 3 root portage 72 Nov 11 18:17 sys-fs/ drwxrwsr-x 3 root portage 72 Nov 11 18:17 x11-apps/ drwxrwsr-x 8 root portage 192 Dec 9 20:37 x11-libs/ drwxrwsr-x 10 root portage 264 Dec 10 12:44 x11-misc/ drwxrwsr-x 25 root portage 712 Dec 9 23:17 x11-plugins/ drwxrwsr-x 4 root portage 104 Nov 11 18:19 x11-terms/ drwxrwsr-x 4 root portage 104 Dec 10 11:36 x11-wm/ alan -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On Fri, 22 Dec 2006 02:10:58 +0100, Bo Ørsted Andresen wrote: > I'm starting to wonder if you missed this mail on the subject: > > http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.user/175964/focus=176095 Possibly, I'm still missing mails from Gentoo lists, although the problem seems less than previously. > Also there seem to be some results from it at: > > http://stats.soc.gentoo.org/ Hmm, the most popular packages have been installed on 20 machines, either this is a very limited sample or the answer to $SUBJECT is NO :( -- Neil Bothwick WinErr 00C: Memory hog error - More Ram needed. More! More! More! signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On Fri, 22 Dec 2006 09:16:10 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote: > I can't believe you are advocating either of those solutions. It means > you retain 500M worth of tgz'ed portage tree for just in case an ebuild > leaves the tree. Any custom changes you make to the tree are wiped out > with the next --sync anyway, so now the user has to remember which ones > were updated and remember to put them all back. Except it's not 500MB, as you'll see by looking at the snapshots directory on any Gentoo mirror. Of course, the fact that portage trees for the last couple of weeks are nicely tarred up on all the Gentoo mirrors makes this process pointless anyway :) > A bin package is equally cumbersome. You will very quickly consume huge > amounts of disk space - at least equal to all the current packages on > the system plus old ones that were updated. Maybe, but they do provide an extremely useful fallback, especially for those of us running ~arch systems. Being able to roll back to an older, working version in seconds rather than minutes or hours is a definite benefit. > With an average notebook > 40G drive, that's 40% of your disk space gone right there. Which is why I have $PKGDIR on an NFS mounted drive. Desktop drives are big and cheap. > And the user > still has to remember which packages are the customized ones. > > Trust me, the portage devs have already figured all this out and > overlays are exactly the solution for this. The user already has to be > online to have updated, so all he needs do is get the desired ebuild > from cvs, copy it to /usr/local/portage, block updates to that package > using package.mask and then GO AWAY AND FORGET ALL ABOUT IT. No more > maintenance, no monthly tars, no vast amounts of disk space consumed. > it all just works. Absolutely. Overlays are there specifically for people who need something different from the standard portage tree. They are hardly difficult to use, as long as you know how to use mkdir and cp. When a user has a system that depends on specific versions of particular packages, all he has to do is copy them from /usr/portage to the overlay. You shouldn't even need to mess with CVS, as soon as you mask all newer versions of a package, you should copy its ebuild directory to your overlay to keep it safe. Old versions do not disappear as soon as a newer version comes out, unless the previous version had a serious security hole. mkdir -p /usr/local/portage/category cp -a /usr/portage/category/package /usr/local/portage/category How hard is that? -- Neil Bothwick If everything is coming your way then you're in the wrong lane. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On Thursday 21 December 2006 23:28, Benno Schulenberg wrote: > But he can't: the ebuild is gone. That is the case we're trying to > solve here: he has emerged a newer version of a package, finds it > doesn't work correctly, wants to go back to the previous version, > but seess that that version is gone. How to get it back? One way > is to get it from viewcvs on the net. Another way is to keep a copy > of all the ebuilds yourself. It's a big waste of space, but it is > simple, no searching on the web required. > > The best way, of course, is to use the binary package thing. Mark: > add EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="-b" to your /etc/make.conf. This will > tell emerge to also build a binary package for every package that > you emerge. Whenever you find that an upgrade of some package was > unfortunate, do an 'emerge -K =package-x.y.z' with the exact > version number you want to restore, and done. No manual tarring > and untarring required, emerge does it all. I can't believe you are advocating either of those solutions. It means you retain 500M worth of tgz'ed portage tree for just in case an ebuild leaves the tree. Any custom changes you make to the tree are wiped out with the next --sync anyway, so now the user has to remember which ones were updated and remember to put them all back. A bin package is equally cumbersome. You will very quickly consume huge amounts of disk space - at least equal to all the current packages on the system plus old ones that were updated. With an average notebook 40G drive, that's 40% of your disk space gone right there. And the user still has to remember which packages are the customized ones. Trust me, the portage devs have already figured all this out and overlays are exactly the solution for this. The user already has to be online to have updated, so all he needs do is get the desired ebuild from cvs, copy it to /usr/local/portage, block updates to that package using package.mask and then GO AWAY AND FORGET ALL ABOUT IT. No more maintenance, no monthly tars, no vast amounts of disk space consumed. it all just works. Tell me, have you ever actually used overlays? alan -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On Thursday 21 December 2006 09:54, Neil Bothwick wrote: > On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 12:18:23 -0700, Steve Dibb wrote: > > > Add sys-apps/gentoo-phonehome to all system profiles :) > > > > There's actually a gentoo-stats project in the works, for those that > > would like to (voluntarily) let us know what systems Gentoo is being > > used on. > > Wasn't there a similar project a few years ago? > > I'm happy to share such information; after all, I use cookies so I've got > no secrets ;-) I'm starting to wonder if you missed this mail on the subject: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.user/175964/focus=176095 Also there seem to be some results from it at: http://stats.soc.gentoo.org/ -- Bo Andresen pgpqGM7e2eo3x.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On Friday 22 December 2006 01:26, Mark Knecht wrote:
> I wonder if -b could be put in one of the /etc/portage/package.XXX
> files so that it could be done every time for ejust specific packages?
That doesn't seem to work (because the FEATURES and EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS vars
are checked on the python side before sourcing bashrc). What you can do,
however, is use quickpkg to create a binary package after it has been
installed. That can be automated via the post_pkg_postinst() user hook:
# mkdir -p /etc/portage/env/$category && \
echo 'post_pkg_postinst() {
quickpkg ="${CATEGORY}/${PF}"
}' > /etc/portage/env/$category/$name
Personally I just use FEATURES="buildpkg fixpackages" (and more) for
everything though. :)
--
Bo Andresen
pgpU7c7v0oeaS.pgp
Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On 12/21/06, Benno Schulenberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Alan McKinnon wrote: > On Wednesday 20 December 2006 21:09, Benno Schulenberg wrote: > > Mark Knecht wrote: > > > At that point it's gone. I cannot put into an overlay > > > what I don't have. Probably most frustrating has been that I > > > don't know it will be removed until it's been removed. > > > > You could, as soon as you have a system in a working state, tar > > up the entire /usr/portage tree, [...] > > No, no, no that's wy too much work. On the contrary, it's very little work: just a simple tar command. But the tarball will eat loads of disk space when not excluding distfiles. > Archive a portage tree by all means. But if an ebuild is removed > that a user want to keep, the solution is so simple it's amazing. > Copy the ebuild to /usr/local/portage [...] But he can't: the ebuild is gone. That is the case we're trying to solve here: he has emerged a newer version of a package, finds it doesn't work correctly, wants to go back to the previous version, but seess that that version is gone. How to get it back? One way is to get it from viewcvs on the net. Another way is to keep a copy of all the ebuilds yourself. It's a big waste of space, but it is simple, no searching on the web required. The best way, of course, is to use the binary package thing. Mark: add EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="-b" to your /etc/make.conf. This will tell emerge to also build a binary package for every package that you emerge. Whenever you find that an upgrade of some package was unfortunate, do an 'emerge -K =package-x.y.z' with the exact version number you want to restore, and done. No manual tarring and untarring required, emerge does it all. Benno Benno, Now that is an interesting solution, especially for my Myth boxes which do not get touched for 6 months to 1 year. I've had problems with Gentoo devs getting rid of older ati-drivers, mythtv to some small extent ivtv a long time ago. Anyway, if binary packages were built and stored in some reasonable location then I could probably prune out things that I'm not worried about, like fluxbox, etc., but keep the critical stuff like Myth, video drivers. I'll check it out, as well as Bo's FEATURES=buildpkg comment. I wonder if -b could be put in one of the /etc/portage/package.XXX files so that it could be done every time for ejust specific packages? Thanks for the idea! Cheers, Mark -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On Thursday 21 December 2006 22:28, Benno Schulenberg wrote: > The best way, of course, is to use the binary package thing. Mark: > add EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="-b" to your /etc/make.conf. Heh, that's FEATURES=buildpkg. -- Bo Andresen pgpnYnJICjouK.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
Alan McKinnon wrote: > On Wednesday 20 December 2006 21:09, Benno Schulenberg wrote: > > Mark Knecht wrote: > > > At that point it's gone. I cannot put into an overlay > > > what I don't have. Probably most frustrating has been that I > > > don't know it will be removed until it's been removed. > > > > You could, as soon as you have a system in a working state, tar > > up the entire /usr/portage tree, [...] > > No, no, no that's wy too much work. On the contrary, it's very little work: just a simple tar command. But the tarball will eat loads of disk space when not excluding distfiles. > Archive a portage tree by all means. But if an ebuild is removed > that a user want to keep, the solution is so simple it's amazing. > Copy the ebuild to /usr/local/portage [...] But he can't: the ebuild is gone. That is the case we're trying to solve here: he has emerged a newer version of a package, finds it doesn't work correctly, wants to go back to the previous version, but seess that that version is gone. How to get it back? One way is to get it from viewcvs on the net. Another way is to keep a copy of all the ebuilds yourself. It's a big waste of space, but it is simple, no searching on the web required. The best way, of course, is to use the binary package thing. Mark: add EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="-b" to your /etc/make.conf. This will tell emerge to also build a binary package for every package that you emerge. Whenever you find that an upgrade of some package was unfortunate, do an 'emerge -K =package-x.y.z' with the exact version number you want to restore, and done. No manual tarring and untarring required, emerge does it all. Benno -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On Thu, Dec 21, 2006 at 12:00:28PM +0300, Andrey Gerasimenko wrote: > As for my definition of healthy, it is simple: a healthy organization is > not likely to quit its activities, mainly due to financial problems, in > the next 10 years. If the "likely" is to be defined, then a healthy > organization has less chances to quit in the next 10 years than 70% of all > the same domain organizations that exist today. Oh wow, 10 years is a really long time in the world of community driven open source projects. I don't think anybody will ever be able to answer that question. That said, Gentoo definitely isn't driven by finances - what drives Gentoo is a great community and a bunch of developers working their butts off on a distribution they love and care about. > > As for the next question, I am not sure that it is worth answering it, > possibly there is a better way to use your time, but you may still find it > interesting to know what a common user may be thinking about. > > Are there any plans to make a business from Gentoo, any time in the > future? Are there people who work on Gentoo full time? Does the profit > from the Gentoo Store cover some visible part of the Gentoo expenses? Gentoo have no plans of making a business from our work. We've sorta tried that in the past with Gentoo Games but the developers really wanted a non-profit organisation. As for what the money from the Gentoo store and donations etc. is used for, that is controlled by the Trustees. I believe there's work being done to establish "event kits" so we'd have everything needed for conferences readibly available. There's also money spend on infrastructure things (domain renewals, assorted hardware etc). And while on this topic I should really thank all our great sponsors providing bandwidth, mirrors, servers, development boxes and so on. As far as I know there's no developers that's paid to work on Gentoo as their primary job. I believe there's a few developers who have some paid time to work on open source projects (like Gentoo) though as part of their contracts. > > As you can see, the questions are provoked by the news I heard about > Ubuntu, Debian, and Mandriva. > Hope this answered most of your questions. Regards, Bryan Østergaard -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On 21/12/06, Nelson, David (ED, PAR&D) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > All things considered, Mandrake is easier to install than > windoze any > > day. You think about it, you set up the drives, select ALL > the software > > you can fit and hit the install button. How easy is that? You only > > have to reboot once too. I counted six reboots the last time I > > installed XP for somebody. It took longer too. Then you > get to install > > the software you had to buy, including anti-virus, adware > protection, > > trojan watchers and all that. > > > > Yea, I pick Linux. Credit where credit is due, Windows XP improves over Windows 98 in that it doesnt dump you at a plan desktop with no drivers installed. They are making progress, and soon Windows may actually be ready for the desktop ;) David Call me just-an-MS-hating-Grinch if you want to, but the thing I find most frustrating about MS Windows is that for every advance they make in one area, they take a step backwards in another! Yes, XP does come with drivers, and does include a fire-and-forget installation option for those that want it - but it also loses lots of drivers - i remember having to get on the net on another machine because xp didn't include a driver for a serially-attached external modem. Bah! Not to mention that instead of hiding an "advanced" installation option which lets you install on whichever drive you like, with whatever software options you like, behind some sort of "curtain" - maybe, umm, I dunno, a button marked "advanced installation"? - it instead /completely removes the possibility of doing an advanced installation at all! Poo! Jeff -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
RE: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
> -Original Message- > From: Jeff Rollin [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: 21 December 2006 16:12 > To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org > Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy? > > > On 21/12/06, Dale <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > All things considered, Mandrake is easier to install than > windoze any > > day. You think about it, you set up the drives, select ALL > the software > > you can fit and hit the install button. How easy is that? You only > > have to reboot once too. I counted six reboots the last time I > > installed XP for somebody. It took longer too. Then you > get to install > > the software you had to buy, including anti-virus, adware > protection, > > trojan watchers and all that. > > > > Yea, I pick Linux. > > > > Precisely. > > Jeff Credit where credit is due, Windows XP improves over Windows 98 in that it doesnt dump you at a plan desktop with no drivers installed. They are making progress, and soon Windows may actually be ready for the desktop ;) David Note: These views are my own, advice is provided with no guarantee of success. I do not represent anyone else in any emails I send to this list. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On 21/12/06, Dale <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: All things considered, Mandrake is easier to install than windoze any day. You think about it, you set up the drives, select ALL the software you can fit and hit the install button. How easy is that? You only have to reboot once too. I counted six reboots the last time I installed XP for somebody. It took longer too. Then you get to install the software you had to buy, including anti-virus, adware protection, trojan watchers and all that. Yea, I pick Linux. Precisely. Jeff http://latedeveloperbasketcase.blogspot.com -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
Jeff Rollin wrote: > On 21/12/06, Alan McKinnon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> The risk that the user might nuke the partitions containing Windows is >> always there regardless of what distro you use. You still make the same >> decisions, fdisk, cfdisk and gparted are still there. Whether you click >> here, click OK then say "oops..." or type "fdisk /dev/sda" >> then say "oops" you're still gonna say "oops" >> > This is the part where I point out (for the benefit of readers *other* > than Alan, probably) that the user, if he is going to have to > (re)install Windows, is at risk of nuking the partitions already > containing Windows/Linux/SkyOS/$MYFAVOS anyway. "Whether you click > here, click ok then say 'oops' or type 'fdisk c:' then > say 'oops' you're still gonna say 'oops'". > > Last I heard, btw, Windows was still using a nasty > type-at-me-don't-click partitioner. > > My £0.02 > > Jeff. > All things considered, Mandrake is easier to install than windoze any day. You think about it, you set up the drives, select ALL the software you can fit and hit the install button. How easy is that? You only have to reboot once too. I counted six reboots the last time I installed XP for somebody. It took longer too. Then you get to install the software you had to buy, including anti-virus, adware protection, trojan watchers and all that. Yea, I pick Linux. Dale :-) :-) :-) -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On 21/12/06, Alan McKinnon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: The risk that the user might nuke the partitions containing Windows is always there regardless of what distro you use. You still make the same decisions, fdisk, cfdisk and gparted are still there. Whether you click here, click OK then say "oops..." or type "fdisk /dev/sda" then say "oops" you're still gonna say "oops" This is the part where I point out (for the benefit of readers *other* than Alan, probably) that the user, if he is going to have to (re)install Windows, is at risk of nuking the partitions already containing Windows/Linux/SkyOS/$MYFAVOS anyway. "Whether you click here, click ok then say 'oops' or type 'fdisk c:' then say 'oops' you're still gonna say 'oops'". Last I heard, btw, Windows was still using a nasty type-at-me-don't-click partitioner. My £0.02 Jeff. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On Thu, 21 Dec 2006 02:03:26 +0300, Bryan Østergaard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On Wed, Dec 20, 2006 at 12:16:04PM +0300, Andrey Gerasimenko wrote: Is the non-profit organization side of Gentoo healthy? My brief Google session does not reveal anything that suggests it is not, but if somebody can and may comment on this, please do so. What do you mean by healthy? There's a number of important issues the Trustees have to work out but we're getting lots (for some value of lots) of donations, improving conference attendance etc. The non-profit organisation haven't existed very long so there's obviously going to be a number of issues still to be worked out but all in all I think it's getting better. But if you'd be so kind as to define what you mean by healthy I'm sure I could help with more insights. Your post is actually the answer. If insiders feel it is healthy, then it most likely is healthy. As for my definition of healthy, it is simple: a healthy organization is not likely to quit its activities, mainly due to financial problems, in the next 10 years. If the "likely" is to be defined, then a healthy organization has less chances to quit in the next 10 years than 70% of all the same domain organizations that exist today. As for the next question, I am not sure that it is worth answering it, possibly there is a better way to use your time, but you may still find it interesting to know what a common user may be thinking about. Are there any plans to make a business from Gentoo, any time in the future? Are there people who work on Gentoo full time? Does the profit from the Gentoo Store cover some visible part of the Gentoo expenses? As you can see, the questions are provoked by the news I heard about Ubuntu, Debian, and Mandriva. -- Andrei Gerasimenko -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 12:18:23 -0700, Steve Dibb wrote: > > Add sys-apps/gentoo-phonehome to all system profiles :) > There's actually a gentoo-stats project in the works, for those that > would like to (voluntarily) let us know what systems Gentoo is being > used on. Wasn't there a similar project a few years ago? I'm happy to share such information; after all, I use cookies so I've got no secrets ;-) -- Neil Bothwick The careful application of terror is also a form of communication. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 11:39:23 -0800, Mark Knecht wrote: > > You could, as soon as you have a system in a working state, tar up > > the entire /usr/portage tree, > Yes, I think this is a simple answer. A bit difficult for 5-7 machines > if I do it separately for each, but not too bad. There's no need to do it separately, the portage tree is the same for all of them. Just make sure you exclude distfiles and packages or you're going to need an awful lot of disk space :) -- Neil Bothwick The present never ages. Each moment is like a snowflake, unique, unspoiled, unrepeatable, and can be appreciated in its surprisingness. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On Wednesday 20 December 2006 19:42, Mark Knecht wrote: > As for family members not a single one of them, except possibly my > son today could even have a chance of setting up a Linux box. Looks like you are assuming stuff up front and never actually getting round to checking it out for real > My > son's first computer was RH when he was 6 or 7. Today's he's 14, runs > Gentoo, rips CDs, uses Aqualung & xmms. He *might* get through a RH > install but not Gentoo. Can't he read or something? Gentoo's install is more heavily documented than any other distro out there > It's not that Gentoo is so hard. It's that > none of them know anything about 'vi' so how could they even edit a > config file and give the system an IP address or point it at a name > server? The basic installer does not provide vi for this exact reason. It provides nano, so this objection doesn't even rear it's head > (Maybe the graphical installer but I'd not let them try for > fear they'd wreck existing Windows installs trying to load it.) The risk that the user might nuke the partitions containing Windows is always there regardless of what distro you use. You still make the same decisions, fdisk, cfdisk and gparted are still there. Whether you click here, click OK then say "oops..." or type "fdisk /dev/sda" then say "oops" you're still gonna say "oops" alan -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On Wednesday 20 December 2006 21:09, Benno Schulenberg wrote: > Mark Knecht wrote: > > At that point it's gone. I cannot put into an overlay > > what I don't have. Probably most frustrating has been that I > > don't know it will be removed until it's been removed. > > You could, as soon as you have a system in a working state, tar up > the entire /usr/portage tree, and then, when you find an upgrade > has broken an essential package, untar the ball over your new tree, > and re-emerge the old version of the package. Once a month or so, > when you find that also the newest tree gives you a working system, > you would tar up that /usr/portage instead and remove the old one. > This is the dead simple, brute force way, no overlay required. :) No, no, no that's wy too much work. Archive a portage tree by all means. But if an ebuild is removed that a user want to keep, the solution is so simple it's amazing. Copy the ebuild to /usr/local/portage in the correct directory structure. I maintain my own enlightenment-17 ebuilds, so to start I did this: mkdir -p /usr/local/portage/x11-wm cp -ar /usr/portage/x11-wm/e /usr/local/portage/x11-wm Run emerge. Simple as that. You might need to add an entry to package.mask so that portage won't use later versions in the main tree but that's all part of normal gentoo usage anyway There's a howto on gentoo.org that explains this in great detail. Use it, it's the way portage let's you keep old stuff around. alan -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
> Is the non-profit organization side of Gentoo healthy? My brief Google > session does not reveal anything that suggests it is not, but if somebody > can and may comment on this, please do so. What do you mean by healthy? There's a number of important issues the Trustees have to work out but we're getting lots (for some value of lots) of donations, improving conference attendance etc. The non-profit organisation haven't existed very long so there's obviously going to be a number of issues still to be worked out but all in all I think it's getting better. But if you'd be so kind as to define what you mean by healthy I'm sure I could help with more insights. Well I'll give up on my number of users vs. active development study unless anyone else is interested. I seem to be the only one. Seems like the right thing to do. - Grant -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
Steve Dibb wrote: > Neil Bothwick wrote: >> On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 08:18:41 +0200, Uwe Thiem wrote: >> >> >>> I can't think of any method to get real numbers. >>> >> >> Add sys-apps/gentoo-phonehome to all system profiles :) > There's actually a gentoo-stats project in the works, for those that > would like to (voluntarily) let us know what systems Gentoo is being > used on. > > Steve I'd let them in on my use. Where is this page? OR are they doing it another way? Dale :-) :-) :-) -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On Wed, Dec 20, 2006 at 12:16:04PM +0300, Andrey Gerasimenko wrote: > Is the non-profit organization side of Gentoo healthy? My brief Google > session does not reveal anything that suggests it is not, but if somebody > can and may comment on this, please do so. What do you mean by healthy? There's a number of important issues the Trustees have to work out but we're getting lots (for some value of lots) of donations, improving conference attendance etc. The non-profit organisation haven't existed very long so there's obviously going to be a number of issues still to be worked out but all in all I think it's getting better. But if you'd be so kind as to define what you mean by healthy I'm sure I could help with more insights. Regards, Bryan Østergaard -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On Wednesday 20 December 2006 18:16, Mark Knecht wrote: > > In cases like that, you use portage overlays. Then the ebuild will > > always be there until *you* delete it > > The problem with this view of overlays has been that I do an eix-sync > and find that something I'm currently running been removed from > portage - for whatever reason but mostly it's been security issues or > the developer not wanting to maintain an old version. At that point > it's gone. I cannot put into an overlay what I don't have. no, it is still there. You do have it! If you have a package installed, its ebuild is safed in /var/db/pkg/category/packagename just copy it. Or you extract it from cvs. But it is not 'gone'. > I understand that every package is out there in some repository on the > web. I think Neil has pointed me toward it once or twice at least. The > problem is for a user type like me, and yes, I'm *purely* a user type, > it's a bit beyond my skillset today to go get it and build the overlay > myself. it is not 'somewhere'. It is on the gentoo hp. AND your harddisk. > > I've mentioned this in the past but the idea has never gained > traction. If portage is thinking about removing an ebuild from my > machine why not just move it to some location on my machine so I've > always got a copy of what I was running? I could build my overlay from > what's been moved there. No pain at all. Or I can do what you suggest > and remove it. because there is already a copy if you installed it. Also, do you really want to never remove an ebuild?`How many millions should be kept? And the diskspace? > > Anyway, that's my view from user land on this subject. It is only this > area where Gentoo is a bit of a pain for me. because you don't know how to use it and never informed yourself? -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On 20 December 2006 21:39, Mark Knecht wrote: > If I wanted to take the plunge I should probably learn to run my own > portage server where I suppose I could learn to keep things like this > even if the main server wants to get rid of things. You don't need to do that. I have one box with a portage tree. All my other computers simply NFS mount /usr/portage of that box as local /usr/portage. Bandwidth is expensive in this part of the world. So I really don't want to download the same stuff for each of my boxes. Your different boxes can still have different world files but share a single portage tree. Works perfectly here. No need for a private mirror. Uwe -- A fast and easy generator of fractals for KDE: http://www.SysEx.com.na/iwy-1.0.tar.bz2 -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On 12/20/06, Benno Schulenberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Mark Knecht wrote: > At that point it's gone. I cannot put into an overlay > what I don't have. Probably most frustrating has been that I > don't know it will be removed until it's been removed. You could, as soon as you have a system in a working state, tar up the entire /usr/portage tree, and then, when you find an upgrade has broken an essential package, untar the ball over your new tree, and re-emerge the old version of the package. Once a month or so, when you find that also the newest tree gives you a working system, you would tar up that /usr/portage instead and remove the old one. This is the dead simple, brute force way, no overlay required. :) Benno Yes, I think this is a simple answer. A bit difficult for 5-7 machines if I do it separately for each, but not too bad. If I wanted to take the plunge I should probably learn to run my own portage server where I suppose I could learn to keep things like this even if the main server wants to get rid of things. The thing is that I don't want to start ignoring valid reasons to get rid of packages, like security problems or broken code that's fixed in new revs. Anyway, I appreciate all the ideas and everyone's POV. I'm just speaking from what I've seen and experienced. Cheers and out for now, Mark -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
Neil Bothwick wrote: On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 08:18:41 +0200, Uwe Thiem wrote: I can't think of any method to get real numbers. Add sys-apps/gentoo-phonehome to all system profiles :) There's actually a gentoo-stats project in the works, for those that would like to (voluntarily) let us know what systems Gentoo is being used on. Steve -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
Mark Knecht wrote: > At that point it's gone. I cannot put into an overlay > what I don't have. Probably most frustrating has been that I > don't know it will be removed until it's been removed. You could, as soon as you have a system in a working state, tar up the entire /usr/portage tree, and then, when you find an upgrade has broken an essential package, untar the ball over your new tree, and re-emerge the old version of the package. Once a month or so, when you find that also the newest tree gives you a working system, you would tar up that /usr/portage instead and remove the old one. This is the dead simple, brute force way, no overlay required. :) Benno -- Cetere mi opinias ke ne ĉio tradukenda estas. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On Wednesday 20 December 2006 18:42, Mark Knecht wrote: > My personal problem was not finding it but moving it to my machine and > creating the overlay. I'm not sure of directory structure. I don't > know all the files that have to be there and where. I don't know about > running digests, etc., and being a user I'm not all that interested in > that stuff. The structure isn't any different from the tree. In fact most of what's required in the tree doesn't need to be in an overlay. If you have PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage", then the ebuild goes into /usr/local/portage/$CATEGORY/$NAME/$NAME-$PVR.ebuild. It's that simple. [SNIP] > It's not that Gentoo is so hard. It's that > none of them know anything about 'vi' so how could they even edit a > config file and give the system an IP address or point it at a name > server? Well, they could just follow the handbook and hence use nano... *hint* *hint* > (Maybe the graphical installer but I'd not let them try for > fear they'd wreck existing Windows installs trying to load it.) That's a serious risk. Not when loading the disk but when trying to use it to install Gentoo. -- Bo Andresen pgp1xbL5Xr5jK.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On 20/12/06, Mark Knecht <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On 12/20/06, Nelson, David (ED, PAR&D) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I understand that every package is out there in some repository on the > > web. I think Neil has pointed me toward it once or twice at least. The > > problem is for a user type like me, and yes, I'm *purely* a user type, > > it's a bit beyond my skillset today to go get it and build the overlay > > myself. > > Is there, or could there be, a method for giving say 7 days notice for when an ebuild is going to be removed? Or, what about keeping removed ebuilds somewhere on the gentoo website or someplace for say 28 days. So if you want it, you can grab it and put it in an overlay or wherever. > I'm sure this exists already. I don't know where it is but high level users like Neil and others have pointed me at it before. My personal problem was not finding it but moving it to my machine and creating the overlay. I'm not sure of directory structure. I don't know all the files that have to be there and where. I don't know about running digests, etc., and being a user I'm not all that interested in that stuff. My thought was that if I had a directory that looked like portage but held the old ebuilds then nothing gets removed - it just gets moved. I could then moved that directory in this local repository to an overlay and eix/portage would see it again. Anyway, thanks for the interest and the ideas. As for family members not a single one of them, except possibly my son today could even have a chance of setting up a Linux box. My son's first computer was RH when he was 6 or 7. Today's he's 14, runs Gentoo, rips CDs, uses Aqualung & xmms. He *might* get through a RH install but not Gentoo. It's not like Gentoo is the only distro out there. It's only worth starting from if you have (and are willing to take) the time to read the docs. It's not that Gentoo is so hard. It's that none of them know anything about 'vi' so how could they even edit a config file and give the system an IP address or point it at a name server? (Maybe the graphical installer but I'd not let them try for fear they'd wreck existing Windows installs trying to load it.) Well last time I installed Gentoo the default editor was nano...with all those lovely instructions on how to use it cluttering up the screen. Again, if you are going to take the time to READ the instructions, it's not hard. Sometimes it's the things experienced people take most for granted that can be the most difficult for new people. Granted, but most people are capable of reading and typing (even two fingered typists). There are a lot more "consumer" gadgets that need manuals (at least for "higher-order functions") than just computers. Jeff -- Now, did you hear the news today? They say the danger's gone away But I can hear the marching feet Moving into the street Adapted from Genesis, "Land of Confusion" http://latedeveloperbasketcase.blogspot.com -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On Wednesday 20 December 2006 18:28, Nelson, David (ED, PAR&D) wrote: > Is there, or could there be, a method for giving say 7 days notice for when > an ebuild is going to be removed? When we are talking about old ebuilds being removed in favour of newer available ebuilds this just isn't feasible imo. It would be a lot of added work for no good reason. If on the other hand we speak of entire packages being removed from portage then policy dictates that it is masked for removal for 30 days before it is actually removed. Furthermore it is now mentioned in GWN. > Or, what about keeping removed ebuilds > somewhere on the gentoo website or someplace for say 28 days. So if you > want it, you can grab it and put it in an overlay or wherever. It will stay in cvs forever. Not just 28 days. Just click the "Show ? dead files" link in any folder to see files that have been removed from the tree. http://sources.gentoo.org/viewcvs.py/gentoo-x86/ > As far as I am aware the GWN lists ebuilds to be removed but are these only > for dead programs rather than specific ebuilds/versions? Yes. -- Bo Andresen pgplL4SXDaRYT.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On 12/20/06, Nelson, David (ED, PAR&D) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I understand that every package is out there in some repository on the > web. I think Neil has pointed me toward it once or twice at least. The > problem is for a user type like me, and yes, I'm *purely* a user type, > it's a bit beyond my skillset today to go get it and build the overlay > myself. Is there, or could there be, a method for giving say 7 days notice for when an ebuild is going to be removed? Or, what about keeping removed ebuilds somewhere on the gentoo website or someplace for say 28 days. So if you want it, you can grab it and put it in an overlay or wherever. I'm sure this exists already. I don't know where it is but high level users like Neil and others have pointed me at it before. My personal problem was not finding it but moving it to my machine and creating the overlay. I'm not sure of directory structure. I don't know all the files that have to be there and where. I don't know about running digests, etc., and being a user I'm not all that interested in that stuff. My thought was that if I had a directory that looked like portage but held the old ebuilds then nothing gets removed - it just gets moved. I could then moved that directory in this local repository to an overlay and eix/portage would see it again. Anyway, thanks for the interest and the ideas. As for family members not a single one of them, except possibly my son today could even have a chance of setting up a Linux box. My son's first computer was RH when he was 6 or 7. Today's he's 14, runs Gentoo, rips CDs, uses Aqualung & xmms. He *might* get through a RH install but not Gentoo. It's not that Gentoo is so hard. It's that none of them know anything about 'vi' so how could they even edit a config file and give the system an IP address or point it at a name server? (Maybe the graphical installer but I'd not let them try for fear they'd wreck existing Windows installs trying to load it.) Sometimes it's the things experienced people take most for granted that can be the most difficult for new people. Cheers, Mark -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On Wednesday 20 December 2006 18:16, Mark Knecht wrote: [SNIP] > I understand that every package is out there in some repository on the > web. I think Neil has pointed me toward it once or twice at least. The > problem is for a user type like me, and yes, I'm *purely* a user type, > it's a bit beyond my skillset today to go get it and build the overlay > myself. Yes, http://sources.gentoo.org/viewcvs.py/gentoo-x86/ . And it contains every ebuild (and patch) that has ever been in the tree. It really isn't that hard. > I've mentioned this in the past but the idea has never gained > traction. If portage is thinking about removing an ebuild from my > machine why not just move it to some location on my machine so I've > always got a copy of what I was running? I could build my overlay from > what's been moved there. No pain at all. Or I can do what you suggest > and remove it. Portage already copies the ebuild into the vdb (/var/db/pkg/$category/$name) when you install a package. You can copy the ebuild from there. The problem is when it requires patches in $FILESDIR which isn't copied to the vdb. -- Bo Andresen pgplaSVwBWMqx.pgp Description: PGP signature
RE: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
Hi folks > -Original Message- > From: Mark Knecht [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: 20 December 2006 17:16 > To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org > Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy? - snip snip - > > The problem with this view of overlays has been that I do an eix-sync > and find that something I'm currently running been removed from > portage - for whatever reason but mostly it's been security issues or > the developer not wanting to maintain an old version. At that point > it's gone. I cannot put into an overlay what I don't have. Probably > most frustrating has been that I don't know it will be removed until > it's been removed. At that point it's too late to be easy. (Nobody > said Gentoo cannot be easy - right? If they told me that I wouldn't be > able to run it!) ;-) > > I understand that every package is out there in some repository on the > web. I think Neil has pointed me toward it once or twice at least. The > problem is for a user type like me, and yes, I'm *purely* a user type, > it's a bit beyond my skillset today to go get it and build the overlay > myself. Is there, or could there be, a method for giving say 7 days notice for when an ebuild is going to be removed? Or, what about keeping removed ebuilds somewhere on the gentoo website or someplace for say 28 days. So if you want it, you can grab it and put it in an overlay or wherever. As far as I am aware the GWN lists ebuilds to be removed but are these only for dead programs rather than specific ebuilds/versions? > > I'm 51, retired from Silicon Valley and now trade stocks for a living. > Unfortunately my trading platform is Windows but I'm writing you from > my #1 daytime machine - my AMD64 Gentoo desktop running Gnome - mostly > stable. For fun I write and record music using mostly Linux tools all > on Gentoo. My wife and 14 year old son run Gentoo. My 78 year old > father and 77 year old mother run Gentoo. Gentoo works, even for us > user types. ;-) To continue the trend (or jump on the bandwagon)- I'm 20, Chemistry Student, doing an internship as an analytical/formulation/solid state Chemist for a pharmaceutical company. Unfortunately my 9-5 Mon-Fri box is Windows 2000/Office 2000 based (the response to my request for a *nix box was laughter)but my home server runs CentOS (set and forget for the most part) and my laptop (my main machine) runs Gentoo. Attempts to convert friends and family to Gentoo haven't worked so well although a few have tinkered with Ubuntu liveCDs. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
Hi Alan On 12/20/06, Alan McKinnon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On Wednesday 20 December 2006 16:56, Mark Knecht wrote: > I agree again. The ONLY problem I'm having with Gentoo is the devs > removing older revs of things from portage. (ati-drivers, MythTV, > etc.) In cases like that, you use portage overlays. Then the ebuild will always be there until *you* delete it The problem with this view of overlays has been that I do an eix-sync and find that something I'm currently running been removed from portage - for whatever reason but mostly it's been security issues or the developer not wanting to maintain an old version. At that point it's gone. I cannot put into an overlay what I don't have. Probably most frustrating has been that I don't know it will be removed until it's been removed. At that point it's too late to be easy. (Nobody said Gentoo cannot be easy - right? If they told me that I wouldn't be able to run it!) ;-) I understand that every package is out there in some repository on the web. I think Neil has pointed me toward it once or twice at least. The problem is for a user type like me, and yes, I'm *purely* a user type, it's a bit beyond my skillset today to go get it and build the overlay myself. I've mentioned this in the past but the idea has never gained traction. If portage is thinking about removing an ebuild from my machine why not just move it to some location on my machine so I've always got a copy of what I was running? I could build my overlay from what's been moved there. No pain at all. Or I can do what you suggest and remove it. Anyway, that's my view from user land on this subject. It is only this area where Gentoo is a bit of a pain for me. To be honest I still use etc-update since I didn't get comfortable with dispatch-conf. I'd like to be a bit more confident with the tools when it comes to updating config files but it's not so bad to make it a problem. Just another example of The Gentoo Way where the user is completely in control :-) I agree! Just looking for better data management, not a change in the system. [snip] > > I really don't care if Gentoo is considered a minority distro, it > > is not, and hopefully never will be, a mass market product. > > I'd prefer it did not. I still love Gentoo. It's easily the most > stable distro I've ever run. (RH & Suse here.) The support from the > devs has been second to none. I can attest to that. I run ~x86 on this notebook, sync daily and on *testing* *unstable* ebuilds I have to fix things only about once a week on average. That's phenomenal. My day job is, amongst other things, delivering the Red Hat courses and supporting RHEL where we installed it for customers. Now RHEL is pretty good as an enterprise OS but it's also a binary distro and you are stuck with what the RH engineers decided to give you. They are a decent crowd and genuinely try their best but they can't satisfy everyone, so they've sacrificed flexibility for a standard, unchanging platform. To a gentoo user that just feels constrained alan I'm 51, retired from Silicon Valley and now trade stocks for a living. Unfortunately my trading platform is Windows but I'm writing you from my #1 daytime machine - my AMD64 Gentoo desktop running Gnome - mostly stable. For fun I write and record music using mostly Linux tools all on Gentoo. My wife and 14 year old son run Gentoo. My 78 year old father and 77 year old mother run Gentoo. Gentoo works, even for us user types. ;-) Cheers, Mark -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
Gentoo - being different as it is - a metadistro, is by far the most easy to mantain and support installs I've ever used. Most, if not all, problems usually exist because some companies still relay in a single distro specific behavior (companies that do not see the "big picture"), the rest is pure beta testing result of your environment. Gentoo is tied to upstream, the devs discuss, patch and help upstream, with a user test base of thousands of users that daily read this ML and go to the forums. This distro, along with all the benefits, still contributes to upstream availability and stability, because we COMPILE the source on so many different hardware/software combinations. I would say Gentoo's bugzilla is where users (yes, those who do not write C code) can expect their problems to be solved by experts, even upstream developers, if someone think they should know about it, while contributing for that specific package stability. We are the "high level" (in programming sense) code test people! I feel proud of that. Besides, with all the enhancements of the last few years, Gentoo has become easy to install, overcoming problems like the "whole day install process" and the "hours of compile time to get a browser" problems that people who do not like Gentoo always use over the net stating that "their distro is better". Add to all that the FREEDOM, some people already stated that in this thread. That is, by far (for me) the most incredible feature of Gentoo. You can build a server, a desktop or a damn small kiosk with little or no knowledge, because since the very begin you DECIDE what you want, and that freedom keeps going till your system dies of age or you decide to "kill" it! ;-) And still, with all this benefits, the devs still provide a easy to use package management system with so many features I haven't used most yet over this 3 years of being a Gentoo user. Gentoo is not dying, it is pretty healthy, I don't even know how someone that frequently reads this ML can think something like that. If the devs stop, or the distro is not healthy, problems occur, this problems sum up till its dead, like the old "conectiva" distro I used four years ago, but that is a long, painful agonizing process, not something that comes in a day... I don't feel any symptoms. -- Daniel da Veiga Computer Operator - RS - Brazil -BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK- Version: 3.1 GCM/IT/P/O d-? s:- a? C++$ UBLA++ P+ L++ E--- W+++$ N o+ K- w O M- V- PS PE Y PGP- t+ 5 X+++ R+* tv b+ DI+++ D+ G+ e h+ r+ y++ --END GEEK CODE BLOCK-- -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On Wednesday 20 December 2006 16:56, Mark Knecht wrote: > I agree again. The ONLY problem I'm having with Gentoo is the devs > removing older revs of things from portage. (ati-drivers, MythTV, > etc.) In cases like that, you use portage overlays. Then the ebuild will always be there until *you* delete it Just another example of The Gentoo Way where the user is completely in control :-) [snip] > > I really don't care if Gentoo is considered a minority distro, it > > is not, and hopefully never will be, a mass market product. > > I'd prefer it did not. I still love Gentoo. It's easily the most > stable distro I've ever run. (RH & Suse here.) The support from the > devs has been second to none. I can attest to that. I run ~x86 on this notebook, sync daily and on *testing* *unstable* ebuilds I have to fix things only about once a week on average. That's phenomenal. My day job is, amongst other things, delivering the Red Hat courses and supporting RHEL where we installed it for customers. Now RHEL is pretty good as an enterprise OS but it's also a binary distro and you are stuck with what the RH engineers decided to give you. They are a decent crowd and genuinely try their best but they can't satisfy everyone, so they've sacrificed flexibility for a standard, unchanging platform. To a gentoo user that just feels constrained alan -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
Just getting around to reading this 59 post. Thread. Interesting. Thanks! On 12/18/06, Neil Bothwick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On Mon, 18 Dec 2006 10:54:06 -0800, Grant wrote: > I'm thinking this over a bit more, and it seems like the best thing > for Gentoo (or any distro) is a lot of users. More users must mean > more active developers, and more active developers must mean an > increased rate of growth for the software. "must mean"? Why? The only thing more users must mean is more users. If you maintain the proportion of users-who-would-become-devs to always-users your point may have some validity, but the ratio always drops when a distro becomes popular. More users often means more work for the same number of devs, it can be counter-productive. This is very true. > I believe the great benefit of Gentoo is its flexibility, and > flexibility is like a meta-benefit because it makes possible any other > benefit. What do you think makes Ubuntu the distro of the moment? Is > it ease-of-use? If Gentoo focused more on ease-of-use aspects of the > Ubuntu variety, they would attract more users and thereby increase the > rate of growth for the software. Do we really need yet another easy to use distro? There are already more than enough of those. Gentoo is for those who want maximum control over their systems and are prepared to make the effort to achieve this. This is for a different type of user. Turn Gentoo into yet another easy-to-use distro and those people lose while those wanting ease of use gain very little. I agree again. The ONLY problem I'm having with Gentoo is the devs removing older revs of things from portage. (ati-drivers, MythTV, etc.) My older, somewhat specialized MYthTV frontends are boxes that require specific kernel+ati-drivers combos to get SVideo to work. I've found that when I need to upgrade these I find that the version of ati-drivers that I'm currently using is no longer in portage. I lost SVideo output on both my boxes for this reason and had to switch to composite vidio. Bummer. On those machines I'm seemingly forced to use ati-drivers because the xorg ATI drivers only support VGA output on my ATI9200/Pundit-R machines. I really don't care if Gentoo is considered a minority distro, it is not, and hopefully never will be, a mass market product. I'd prefer it did not. I still love Gentoo. It's easily the most stable distro I've ever run. (RH & Suse here.) The support from the devs has been second to none. - Mark -- Neil Bothwick When you finally buy enough memory, you will not have enough disk space. -- Murphy's Computer Laws n°3 -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On 19/12/06, Neil Bothwick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On Mon, 18 Dec 2006 23:18:19 +, Jeff Rollin wrote: > On 18/12/06, John J. Foster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > It may, but you are confusing cause and effect. A distro with more > > > developers should be a better distro, and should have more users. > > > > > Well, Microsoft has proven that theory wrong ;-> Windows is not a distro. The development model is completely different. On the other hand, Windows has more developers and users than any Linux distro, so by the original argument, it must be much better... > Indeed. In fact Fred Brooks, (In "The Mythical Man Month", > specifically cited MS-DOS as one of the computing projects that > "people don't get excited about" - for the very reason you and he > cites, that throwing more developers at a project will not only fail > to improve it, and improve it faster, but will slow it down and make > it buggier. Eric Raymond explained why this doesn't apply to open source development in "The Cathedral and the Bazaar". I haven't read it, BUT, in my understanding you still have to have "the right people". Yes, people can download (e.g.) the linux kernel and alter it willy nilly, but unless linus and the rest of the core kernel team (no capital letters) think it's a good idea, they will not integrate it. Jeff. http://latedeveloperbasketcase.blogspot.com -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
Hi, On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 06:07:50 -0800 Grant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Number of users is largely irrelevant, it's not as if Gentoo needs a > > number of "customers" to survive, it is a non-profit organisation > > producing free products. > > That's exactly the argument here, and the point of creating the 3-way > comparison I suggested. I'm trying to determine if Gentoo does "need > a number of customers to survive", to thrive, or not at all. If you > are all correct, an increased user base would not benefit Gentoo, but > there is a possibility that it would and has. That's what I'm trying > to determine. But that's not possible to determine, given the accessible data. I really start getting annoyed by this thread. It surely *is* an interesting question what impact different user/developer/bugreporter/ML-helper have on the distro. But it is important that especially the questions *you* are asking are of merely sociological nature. I doubt you can prove anything reliably except maybe that Gentoo is very likely to cease to exists if there are *no* (read: zero) users left. All the graphs you can make up with those ratios will always still miss important points. - Given that gentoo is more of a meta-distribution, it is highly dependent on upstream. - The aforementioned (by others) grey user base (local user groups not using central Gentoo infrastructure) is high. - You won't be able to do clear allocations on who's a dev and who's a user and who's a bugreporter without intersections. - You'll never be able to determine users' reasons for joining/leaving gentoo, coincidence with developer-ratios or bug statistics are likely to be flawed. For the questions you're posing here, you really need to take a sociological approach and do carefully crafted interviews with a certain number of users, devs, bug reporters and so on. Purely quantitative relations are doomed to be just marketing-blabla, and even politics in worser cases. -hwh (happy Gentoo user & bugreporter w/ privately used mirrors and a Linux developer) -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On 20/12/06, Andrey Gerasimenko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 05:23:25 +0300, Colleen Beamer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I, for one, would be devastated without Gentoo! > I looked deep into myself and found that possibly it is fear that drives this thread. Am I not the only one with the impresion that for the last 10 years or so good things in computing are routinely fading out or being eaten by mediocre, if not plain stupid, "alternatives"? Your timing is off. 20-10 years ago the Redmond juggernaut was ascending to omnipotence. During the last ten years "good things in computing" have been steadily encroaching on the Redmond/Windows/Office "stupid" monopoly. Jeff. -- Now, did you hear the news today? They say the danger's gone away But I can hear the marching feet Moving into the street Adapted from Genesis, "Land of Confusion" http://latedeveloperbasketcase.blogspot.com -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
> Can we agree that active developers are good for Gentoo, Yes > and the more the better? If they are co-operating or working on separate projects, not if they are competing and flaming. > I think other posters to this thread may be trying to compile a > similar set of statistics, but I'll just come out and say it. Can we > compare historical data on the number of Gentoo users and the rate of > Gentoo maintenance and growth? Number of users is largely irrelevant, it's not as if Gentoo needs a number of "customers" to survive, it is a non-profit organisation producing free products. That's exactly the argument here, and the point of creating the 3-way comparison I suggested. I'm trying to determine if Gentoo does "need a number of customers to survive", to thrive, or not at all. If you are all correct, an increased user base would not benefit Gentoo, but there is a possibility that it would and has. That's what I'm trying to determine. The latter number is more interesting, and should be available from places like Gentoo's CVS repositories and the site Bo mentioned earlier in this thread. For a rough idea of the rate of development, look at the portage snapshots on the install CDs over the years and count the packages. Of course, mere number cannot quantify things like the improvements in the quality of the software. It's clear that no one source of data will serve to represent any of the three desired plot-lines: users, rate of maintenance, and rate of growth. In that case, some type of composite score for each is in order. Can anyone suggest sources of data for each composite score? In addition to or in lieu of the composite scores, the individual data points could be compared to each other for a more fine-grained set of statistics. Users - bouncer.gentoo.org activity - mailing list activity - forum activity - general website activity - Gentoo Store data Rate of Maintenance - ratio of opened bugs to closed bugs - other bugs.gentoo.org info Rate of Growth - CVS repository data - info from http://cia.navi.cx/ - number of packages in old portage snapshots Please post additions or modifications to the above list, especially pertaining to the rate of growth. A real developer should be able to better determine the specific data to use in that estimation. - Grant -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 05:11:13 -0600, Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote: > > Add sys-apps/gentoo-phonehome to all system profiles :) > > Damn you. I actually searched for that package. :P LOL! > As long as it is voluntary, I generally install programs that allows me > to report my hardware and software configuration so my distributor > knows how to focus its resources. Is Gentoo interested in this > information? Is there a relevant package? There used to be such a package, but I think it was dropped some time ago. > > Or do what Ubuntu did and default all installs to use their time > > server, they can get a good estimate of the number of users from the > > time server logs. > > I'm fairly sure the popularity-contest package is part of a standard > (K)Ubuntu install. (It regularly reports the packages you have > installed; It's not required.) That's probably more accurate that time > server logs, since I believe the Canonical time server are also part of > the pool rotation. AFAIK the Ubuntu installation defaults (or at least it did) to using only their time servers. Every time someone booted up a Ubuntu machine in the morning, they knew about it. It means they were counting machines using Ubuntu as opposed to those with it installed, so they'd also have an idea of how many people installed it and then stopped using it. Of course, that would only work with a distro like Ubuntu that is aimed at people wanting something that "just works" and don't fiddle with default system settings. -- Neil Bothwick What do you get if you cross an agnostic, an insomniac and adyslexic? Someone who lies awake at night wondering if there really is a dog. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On Wednesday 20 December 2006 12:11, Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote: > > > I can't think of any method to get real numbers. > > > > Add sys-apps/gentoo-phonehome to all system profiles :) > > Damn you. I actually searched for that package. :P > > As long as it is voluntary, I generally install programs that allows me to > report my hardware and software configuration so my distributor knows how > to focus its resources. Is Gentoo interested in this information? Is > there a relevant package? There is sys-apps/list. Also I think genone is still occasionally working on the otherwise hibernating gentoo stats project... ;) http://planet.gentoo.org/developers/genone/2006/07/15/gentoo_stats_status http://planet.gentoo.org/developers/genone/2006/07/22/gentoo_stats_test_request_1 http://overlays.gentoo.org/proj/portage/browser/app-portage/gentoo-stats -- Bo Andresen pgpQtIhZ3Lejh.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On Wednesday 20 December 2006 04:46, Uwe Thiem <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote about 'Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?': > On 20 December 2006 11:43, Neil Bothwick wrote: > > Or do what Ubuntu did and default all installs to use their time > > server, they can get a good estimate of the number of users from the > > time server logs. > > Well, wouldn't work at least here. All my installs at customers point to > a nearby timeserver. ;-) Same here; I configure my ntp clients to know the servers on the LAN, and all the ones along the traceroute to ntp..net and ntp..net as well as one from the US pool. -- "If there's one thing we've established over the years, it's that the vast majority of our users don't have the slightest clue what's best for them in terms of package stability." -- Gentoo Developer Ciaran McCreesh pgpFZ2tGq3w5e.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On Wednesday 20 December 2006 03:43, Neil Bothwick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote about 'Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?': > On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 08:18:41 +0200, Uwe Thiem wrote: > > I can't think of any method to get real numbers. > > Add sys-apps/gentoo-phonehome to all system profiles :) Damn you. I actually searched for that package. :P As long as it is voluntary, I generally install programs that allows me to report my hardware and software configuration so my distributor knows how to focus its resources. Is Gentoo interested in this information? Is there a relevant package? > Or do what Ubuntu did and default all installs to use their time server, > they can get a good estimate of the number of users from the time server > logs. I'm fairly sure the popularity-contest package is part of a standard (K)Ubuntu install. (It regularly reports the packages you have installed; It's not required.) That's probably more accurate that time server logs, since I believe the Canonical time server are also part of the pool rotation. -- "If there's one thing we've established over the years, it's that the vast majority of our users don't have the slightest clue what's best for them in terms of package stability." -- Gentoo Developer Ciaran McCreesh pgp4MZ0aDPY10.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On 20 December 2006 11:43, Neil Bothwick wrote: > On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 08:18:41 +0200, Uwe Thiem wrote: > > I can't think of any method to get real numbers. > > Add sys-apps/gentoo-phonehome to all system profiles :) ;-) > > Or do what Ubuntu did and default all installs to use their time server, > they can get a good estimate of the number of users from the time server > logs. Well, wouldn't work at least here. All my installs at customers point to a nearby timeserver. ;-) Uwe -- A fast and easy generator of fractals for KDE: http://www.SysEx.com.na/iwy-1.0.tar.bz2 -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On Tue, 19 Dec 2006 17:58:50 -0800, Grant wrote: > Can we agree that active developers are good for Gentoo, Yes > and the more the better? If they are co-operating or working on separate projects, not if they are competing and flaming. > I think other posters to this thread may be trying to compile a > similar set of statistics, but I'll just come out and say it. Can we > compare historical data on the number of Gentoo users and the rate of > Gentoo maintenance and growth? Number of users is largely irrelevant, it's not as if Gentoo needs a number of "customers" to survive, it is a non-profit organisation producing free products. The latter number is more interesting, and should be available from places like Gentoo's CVS repositories and the site Bo mentioned earlier in this thread. For a rough idea of the rate of development, look at the portage snapshots on the install CDs over the years and count the packages. Of course, mere number cannot quantify things like the improvements in the quality of the software. -- Neil Bothwick Back Up My Hard Drive? I Can't Find The Reverse Switch! signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 08:18:41 +0200, Uwe Thiem wrote: > I can't think of any method to get real numbers. Add sys-apps/gentoo-phonehome to all system profiles :) Or do what Ubuntu did and default all installs to use their time server, they can get a good estimate of the number of users from the time server logs. -- Neil Bothwick Just when my ship comes in, it's the Kobyashi Maru. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 05:23:25 +0300, Colleen Beamer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: I, for one, would be devastated without Gentoo! I looked deep into myself and found that possibly it is fear that drives this thread. Am I not the only one with the impresion that for the last 10 years or so good things in computing are routinely fading out or being eaten by mediocre, if not plain stupid, "alternatives"? This makes me think about another side of the problem. As stated by the official site, <<"Gentoo" is many things. It is a community-based distribution of Linux. It is a package management philosophy. It is also a non-profit organization.>> Is the non-profit organization side of Gentoo healthy? My brief Google session does not reveal anything that suggests it is not, but if somebody can and may comment on this, please do so. -- Andrei Gerasimenko -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On 20 December 2006 03:58, Grant wrote: > I think other posters to this thread may be trying to compile a > similar set of statistics, but I'll just come out and say it. Can we > compare historical data on the number of Gentoo users and the rate of > Gentoo maintenance and growth? Conceptually, I would think a 2-axis > chart along with three plot-lines would be appropriate. Which data > points should be plotted? We need something to represent users, > maintenance, and growth. As others have said, it is next to impossible to determine the number of users to any degree of accuracy. Commercial distros can at least tell how many sets of CDs/DVDs they sell, although that doesn't give them the exact number of users either. It is even more difficult for distros like Gentoo where everyone can download the stuff. The Polytechnic of Namibia maintains an unofficial Gentoo mirror. So everyone around here that can access their network uses their mirror. Those downloads are invisible for Gentoo. I maintain one portage tree and install all my customers' boxes from it. These installations are even less visible to Gentoo. I can't think of any method to get real numbers. Uwe -- A fast and easy generator of fractals for KDE: http://www.SysEx.com.na/iwy-1.0.tar.bz2 -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
Colleen Beamer wrote: > Grant wrote: > I personally still love Gentoo. > Well, I don't know anything ... I'm just a lowly user, not a tech > I'd never compiled a kernel before using Gentoo or wrote a configuration > file. > > However, I have to say that, for me, Gentoo is hands down the easiest > distro to maintain. It has the best documentation, this list is the > most helpful of any that I've been on. So, my hat goes off to the > developers, documentation writers and the people that support Gentoo > may they live long, happy and health lives. I, for one, would be > devastated without Gentoo! > > Seasons Greetings, to all! > > Colleen Beamer > > Here here, ditto and all that stuff. You my twin maybe? Dale :-) :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
Grant wrote: >> > I >> > personally still love Gentoo. >> Well, I don't know anything ... I'm just a lowly user, not a tech I'd never compiled a kernel before using Gentoo or wrote a configuration file. However, I have to say that, for me, Gentoo is hands down the easiest distro to maintain. It has the best documentation, this list is the most helpful of any that I've been on. So, my hat goes off to the developers, documentation writers and the people that support Gentoo may they live long, happy and health lives. I, for one, would be devastated without Gentoo! Seasons Greetings, to all! Colleen Beamer -- Registered Linux User #411143 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
> I > personally still love Gentoo. What's the problem then? :) Can we agree that active developers are good for Gentoo, and the more the better? I think other posters to this thread may be trying to compile a similar set of statistics, but I'll just come out and say it. Can we compare historical data on the number of Gentoo users and the rate of Gentoo maintenance and growth? Conceptually, I would think a 2-axis chart along with three plot-lines would be appropriate. Which data points should be plotted? We need something to represent users, maintenance, and growth. - Grant -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On Tue, 2006-12-19 at 11:27 +0300, Andrey Gerasimenko wrote: > On Mon, 18 Dec 2006 20:27:20 +0300, Hemmann, Volker Armin > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > (there is a report somewhere in the thread that the number of > developers increased from 60 to 300 in 3 days, but a finer time scale is > of interest)? 3 years actually. 60 to 300 in 3 days would be... interesting! On Mon, 2006-12-18 at 23:23 +0100, Bryan Østergaard wrote: > In the last 3 years that I've been a Gentoo > developer we've grown from ~80 developers to 330+ developers. That's a > yearly growth of 60% or more. cya, -- Iain Buchanan A motion to adjourn is always in order. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On Tue, Dec 19, 2006 at 11:27:04AM +0300, Andrey Gerasimenko wrote: > Where can I get data on the number of Gentoo users and how it changes with > time? Are the sync servers reporting the number of portage trees? Are the > numbers of subscribers to Gentoo mailing lists available? Can the number > of Gentoo developers and the number of developers per package be made > known (there is a report somewhere in the thread that the number of > developers increased from 60 to 300 in 3 days, but a finer time scale is > of interest)? > Getting rsync statistics is tricky (if not impossible) as Gentoo only controls a few rsync mirrors themselves. Also, many people, universities and companies are likely running private rsync mirrors further skewing statistics. You can get the number of subscribers to all our mailing lists at http://lists.gentoo.org/ml_stats.txt and some statistics on our forums is available at https://forums.gentoo.org/statistics.php. Don't take those statistics as any more than saying "we have lots of users" - the statistics aren't meant to answer how many users we have and they're probably completely wrong for answering that question. Regards, Bryan Østergaard -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?
On Tue, 19 Dec 2006 03:22:24 +0100, Bo Ørsted Andresen wrote: > > emerge gentoo-bugger > > bugger --keyword mod_perl > > bugger --show 157239 > > I prefer www-client/pybugz. > > # emerge pybugz > # bugz search mod_perl > # bugz get 157239 Nice :) -- Neil Bothwick Unix is user-friendly. It's just very selective with who it's friends are. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
