Potential User's Thoughts

mountless · n00b Joined: 11 Nov 2007 Posts: 1

I'm looking for a new Linux distribution, a friend told me how awesome Gentoo is and that Gentoo's package management is *the* best. After years of fighting "failed dependencies" Gentoo sounded like the perfect thing. I also see that Gentoo is a fairly major distribution and moderately mature, so it seemed like a sure fit.

There's a few packages that I've grown fond of over the years, and so I went to check out the Gentoo software map. I see that Gentoo doesn't have a software map (or whatever its called).

http://packages.gentoo.org/

Uh, wtf...? I've told my friend there's no way I'm going to switch to Gentoo. He asked why, and I gave him 3 reasons:

1) I don't know what packages are available for Gentoo. This is sort of important to me.

2) That page reminds me too much of software projects I've seen over the years that just came to a halt because the developer lost interest.

3) If I run up against a bug that's a genuine show stopper, why should I expect it to get fixed when they can't even maintain a lousy software map?!

Okay...I see that this reads like a troll - maybe that was my intent - but regardless, its the truth.

Adieu.

poly_poly-man · Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2007 8:21 pm Post subject:

packages.gentoo.org died quite a while ago - php arbitrary code excecution flaw. Try gentoo-portage.com. Or, just use eix (on an installed system)

Gentoo is still WAYYY actively developed - you can't go by one bad site to judge a distro. Bugs get fixed (check out bugs.gentoo.org), if they develop.

Portage IS still happenin' - we're 12087 packages (and counting) strong - and that doesn't count what you may find in an overlay.

There's still lots of interest. And there's still an online (not to mention eix) portage searcher at gentoo-portage.com .

Give it a try, at least

poly-p man
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imanel · n00b Joined: 28 Oct 2007 Posts: 44

Heh... Like someone said "if You don't like Gentoo then we don't care"...

But anyway:
1) That was some major bug and developers have a lot of work now - but there's a lot of similar sites and they can do it later... So use for example "gentoo-portage.com"...
2) Like I said developers have a lot of work and do it (in my opinion) very fast - and nothing let me think that they can ever stop;)
3)Look point 1

AllenJB · Veteran Joined: 02 Sep 2005 Posts: 1285

pilla · Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2007 2:25 pm Post subject: Re: Potential User's Thoughts