Maciej Mrozowski <reavertm@...> writes:
> And I fail to see *any* point in forcing users to learn Gentoo internals (sic! 
> like USE flags). What else? Ebuild syntax so that they're able to get to know 
> what particular global USE flag is responsible for, when someone forgot (or 
> decided not to) describe it in metadata.xml even when semantics is different?
> Maybe I sound too harsh here, but that's because I'm not ideologist - I'm 
> practical man.

If the point of the distribution is – like some other distros – to have
a high-functioning, high-polish, well-integrated system and desktop with
a minimal amount of end-user knowledge, then, yes, the goal should be
for end-users to not need to know about such things.

But profiles, make.conf, USE flags (especially!), elog, &c. … these
things are not "internals", but instead the interface the package
manager presents to its user.  They are the "language" the user is
expected to speak in to interact with her system.  The trade off for
doing this is more and finer-grained control over the system, and the
reason people choose Gentoo.  Even ebuilds themselves are (usually)
sufficiently non-magical that I think they could qualify in some
circumstances, though that quickly starts to get into eclasses, PM
behavior and real "internals".

-- 
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