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Jesús Guerrero posted on Sun, 13 Sep 2009 11:11:42 +0200 as excerpted: |
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|
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> On Sat, 12 Sep 2009 01:02:44 +0200, Sebastian Pipping |
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> <webmaster@××××××××.org> wrote: |
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>> |
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>> Among other information the Gentoo page at DistroWatch [1] displays a |
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>> table on about 200 selected packages [2] and how up to date Gentoo is |
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>> per package. I assume that DistroWatch is still one of the first |
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>> places people go to get a feeling for a Distro they heard about, |
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>> besides Wikpedia and ${distro}.org. |
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> |
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> Seriously, I doubt that the average Gentoo user comes from Distrowatch. |
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> Gentoo is born from a necessity which is very different from the usual |
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> binary distro. Gentoo has never been about fame or marketing. |
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|
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++ |
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|
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[package listing of not in Gentoo tree or way outdated] |
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>> Miro |
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>> .. Not in official tree (yet?), available through an Overlay |
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>> |
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>> xmms |
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>> .. Removed for security reasons, available through an Overlay |
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>> |
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>> Maybe we should move Miro to the main tree? |
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> |
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> Most Gentoo users will have no problem to use overlays as they need |
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> them. |
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|
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Agreed. Yes, overlays are perhaps a bit more trouble to setup than |
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simply maintaining normal tree updates once setup. But let's get some |
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context here. layman's no difficulty at all, really, when compared to |
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the ordinary stuff we expect Gentoo users to do all the time. Gentoo has |
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never been about spoon-feeding and this is no exception. Layman is a |
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great and powerful tool, certainly, and like any powerful tool, it takes |
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a bit of learning to use, before even the user should trust himself with |
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it. =:^) But that's more true of Gentoo itself than it is of layman, and |
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anyone who can manage Gentoo can certainly manage layman with little |
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trouble. |
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|
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> If we had more developers we could as maintain more packages, as |
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> simple as that. |
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|
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Indeed. |
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|
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> Besides that, if you want some new version, you are free to use |
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> bugs.gentoo.org to submit a bug, version bump, or whatever. |
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|
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I'm not so sure about this. Sure, one can submit a bug, but would that |
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have done any good on, say, kde4, one popular overlay people use, |
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particularly during the period that portage didn't work with it? What |
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about the kde sets? Would they be allowed in the tree just based on a |
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bug? The obvious answer is no, and there's good reasons for it. |
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|
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I can see the argument both ways for putting stuff like that in the main |
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tree -- masked, of course, and possibly in an obscure location that the |
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PMs could ignore unless configured otherwise. Personally, I'd like to |
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see more of it in the main tree, hard-masked when necessary, instead of |
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in the overlays. But I have a strong suspicion I'd feel otherwise if I |
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were one of the devs tasked with getting packages like that, particularly |
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huge interrelated conglomerations of packages like that, actually into |
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some sort of usable working (for ordinary Gentoo users. altho as I said |
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above, they're already a cut above ordinary users) shape. |
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|
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-- |
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Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. |
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"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- |
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and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman |