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Dralnu
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Joined: 24 May 2006
Posts: 1919
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 Posted: Sun Dec 31, 2006 1:11 am Post subject: |
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| Naib wrote: | | I suggest change of title to "what is wrong with users" |
Yet another commonly used cop-out used by people who apparently have no clue what is being discussed.
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BorgDrone2
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 24 Oct 2006
Posts: 107
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| Posted: Sun Dec 31, 2006 1:15 am Post subject: |
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Maybe we need multiple threads for the following:
Devs and ebuilds
Users for whom gentoo is a religion and anything said against that is blasphamy
Users for whom gentoo is the work of the devil and nothing can make it less evil
Users for whom gentoo has fallen from grace and who wish it would return to its glory and are willing to discuss the issue pragmatically
I count myself in the latter group. |
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Donman
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 05 Sep 2005
Posts: 117
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| Posted: Sun Dec 31, 2006 1:23 am Post subject: |
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BorgDrone2 wrote:
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I was once a Gentoo believer and convinced other people to use it. Now I recommend that anybody who wants a stable, trouble free system to stay far away. Sure, it's great for super-power users, controll freaks, and people who want to learn the guts of a Linux system. But as a usable distribution, it sucks.
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On the contrary, I find Gentoo to be a very usable distribution. I am not a super-power user, control freak or anything, I am just a person who wants a computer that just works, and just works the way I want it to. And Gentoo gives me what I am looking for. In the time I have been using Gentoo, the only major problems I have had with it were the ones I caused. It does very well as a usable distribution. Gentoo was the first experience I ever had with Linux, and on an old Pentium-MMX Laptop at that. Gentoo has worked very well for me, and has never caused me major headaches. I would definitely recommend Gentoo to anyone looking for a great working system that does just as they want it to. |
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erik258
Advocate
Joined: 12 Apr 2005
Posts: 2650
Location: Twin Cities, Minnesota, USA
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| Posted: Sun Dec 31, 2006 1:31 am Post subject: |
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| BorgDrone2 wrote: | Maybe we need multiple threads for the following:
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Users for whom gentoo has fallen from grace and who wish it would return to its glory and are willing to discuss the issue pragmatically
I count myself in the latter group. |
perhaps an automatic overlay system, or overlay manager?
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Gusar
Advocate
Joined: 09 Apr 2005
Posts: 2665
Location: Slovenia
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| Posted: Sun Dec 31, 2006 12:10 pm Post subject: |
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| BorgDrone2 wrote: | Maybe we need multiple threads for the following:
Devs and ebuilds
Users for whom gentoo is a religion and anything said against that is blasphamy
Users for whom gentoo is the work of the devil and nothing can make it less evil
Users for whom gentoo has fallen from grace and who wish it would return to its glory and are willing to discuss the issue pragmatically
I count myself in the latter group. |
There is another group:
Users who think that gentoo is ok the way it is now.
Yes, there are rough edges here and there - tell me a distro where there aren't. But on the whole, the good points of gentoo far outweigh the bad points. |
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Dralnu
Veteran
Joined: 24 May 2006
Posts: 1919
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| Posted: Sun Dec 31, 2006 4:52 pm Post subject: |
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| erik258 wrote: | | BorgDrone2 wrote: | Maybe we need multiple threads for the following:
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Users for whom gentoo has fallen from grace and who wish it would return to its glory and are willing to discuss the issue pragmatically
I count myself in the latter group. |
perhaps an automatic overlay system, or overlay manager? |
Um, doesn't Portage handle overlays automatically anyways?
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The day Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck, is the day they make a vacuum cleaner. |
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antarus
Retired Dev
Joined: 16 May 2005
Posts: 77
Location: Michigan
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| Posted: Sun Dec 31, 2006 5:10 pm Post subject: |
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| Dralnu wrote: |
Bad wording on my part then. How about "pretty much installing, configuring, and generally maintaining your own programs, down to hunting down and downloading the source from places you don't know, then having to keep up with the updates by, what is generally, reading each site every few days to keep up with security and bug-fixes"? Not all sites have mailing list, rss feeds, or an irc channel. |
Ok...you copy an ebuild from gentoo-x86 into an overlay and make a few minor changes, what do you gain?
A. Portage will find the deps for you, fetch, unpack, patch, configure, compile, and install it for you.
B. Portage will use sandbox to make sure it doesn't do weird stuff to your root heirarchy
C. Portage will use collision protect to make sure it doesn't clobber any existing files.
D. Portage will scan the binaries for text relocations, setuid bits, insecure runpaths, and a dozen other security checks run by scanelf that I don't understand (yet).
E. Portage will easily unmerge it for you via emerge -C
F. Portage will protect the config files for you.
Now if none of these are useful to you then switch. I mean as a user you really have like four options.
A. Take Gentoo as it is, deal with pieces you don't agree with. I think every distro has this problem.
B. Try and use Gentoo and complain to the developers in an attempt to get things changed.
C. Try and become a Gentoo Developer to fix said deficiencies.
D. Switch distros.
I did both A and C. Gentoo is not a perfect distro, no one claims it is. However I have worse (yet different) problems with others. Thats just my personal experience. THe problem I have is the complaints are always very nebulous.
"Stuff broke" or "dammit the upgrades always fail." Those aren't problems we can necessarily fix because they are inherently vague.
Things like "Whenever I go to install somethere there are always blockers present, especially for KDE, why are the slotted versions blocking each other?" or "Man the gcc-3 -> gcc-4 upgrade was really complicated and broke my system" or "The expat ABI changed broke nearly all my packages, Gentoo Sucks!"
Those I can understand. Those are annoying problems (damn you expat, damn you to hell!) but they are 'fixable' moreso than the first. |
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Dralnu
Veteran
Joined: 24 May 2006
Posts: 1919
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| Posted: Sun Dec 31, 2006 10:01 pm Post subject: |
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| antarus wrote: | | Dralnu wrote: |
Bad wording on my part then. How about "pretty much installing, configuring, and generally maintaining your own programs, down to hunting down and downloading the source from places you don't know, then having to keep up with the updates by, what is generally, reading each site every few days to keep up with security and bug-fixes"? Not all sites have mailing list, rss feeds, or an irc channel. |
Ok...you copy an ebuild from gentoo-x86 into an overlay and make a few minor changes, what do you gain?
A. Portage will find the deps for you, fetch, unpack, patch, configure, compile, and install it for you.
B. Portage will use sandbox to make sure it doesn't do weird stuff to your root heirarchy
C. Portage will use collision protect to make sure it doesn't clobber any existing files.
D. Portage will scan the binaries for text relocations, setuid bits, insecure runpaths, and a dozen other security checks run by scanelf that I don't understand (yet).
E. Portage will easily unmerge it for you via emerge -C
F. Portage will protect the config files for you.
Now if none of these are useful to you then switch. I mean as a user you really have like four options.
A. Take Gentoo as it is, deal with pieces you don't agree with. I think every distro has this problem.
B. Try and use Gentoo and complain to the developers in an attempt to get things changed.
C. Try and become a Gentoo Developer to fix said deficiencies.
D. Switch distros.
I did both A and C. Gentoo is not a perfect distro, no one claims it is. However I have worse (yet different) problems with others. Thats just my personal experience. THe problem I have is the complaints are always very nebulous.
"Stuff broke" or "dammit the upgrades always fail." Those aren't problems we can necessarily fix because they are inherently vague.
Things like "Whenever I go to install somethere there are always blockers present, especially for KDE, why are the slotted versions blocking each other?" or "Man the gcc-3 -> gcc-4 upgrade was really complicated and broke my system" or "The expat ABI changed broke nearly all my packages, Gentoo Sucks!"
Those I can understand. Those are annoying problems (damn you expat, damn you to hell!) but they are 'fixable' moreso than the first. |
Annoyances I can deal with. MY problem is having to set up everything in overlays as being the apparent fix-all. It isn't. Like someone else said before, if you stick everything in an overlay, you might as well put Portage on Sourceforge and just classify it as something like cat or tar - totally distro-free, and just a singular tool for a job.
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timeBandit
Bodhisattva
Joined: 31 Dec 2004
Posts: 2719
Location: here, there or in transit
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| Posted: Sun Dec 31, 2006 10:38 pm Post subject: |
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| antarus wrote: | Things like ... "The expat ABI changed broke nearly all my packages, Gentoo Sucks!"
Those I can understand. Those are annoying problems (damn you expat, damn you to hell!) but they are 'fixable' moreso than the first. |
FYI, expat has been a build pill on AIX and Solaris too, so I'll join you in defending Gentoo against that one. 
Back on topic: It's easy to forget that one's Gentoo experience depends heavily on one's arch and chosen mix of stable/testing packages. Further, various combinations have been better/worse at various times. I recall a spell where people running ~amd64 had fewer hassles than I did on x86. The "suck zone" is forever dancing around, so go ahead and complain loudly when it lands on you. Otherwise, no one knows there's work to be done.
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