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On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 10:43 PM, Donnie Berkholz <dberkholz@g.o> wrote: |
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> Wanted to share my thoughts on where I think Gentoo should go, in terms |
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> of direction. Would love to hear your thoughts. |
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|
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So, I think that remaining viable doesn't necessarily require focusing |
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on some goals to the exclusion of all others. |
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I certainly agree that Gentoo is a great choice for users who need |
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extreme flexibility. However, isn't that just "blathering" about |
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Gentoo being about choice? The very thing that makes Gentoo so |
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suitable for people who want to depart from the beaten path is that we |
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DON'T try to focus on any one thing. |
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I may or may not be a "typical" Gentoo user, but I think the thing |
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that really keeps me around here is that I'm a tinkerer, and Gentoo |
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seems to be full of tinkerers. This fits into your "people who want |
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to learn how Linux works" and "people who need extreme flexibility" |
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categories, but I think it goes well beyond that. If I wanted to run |
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a specific configuration in a production setting there is almost |
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certainly some other distro more tailored to it than Gentoo. However, |
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if I want to dabble in this for a few months, and that for a few |
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months, and generally dabble in those things before it is popular to |
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do so, then there is a pretty good chance that somebody is already |
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doing it with Gentoo, and if not chances are that if I am the first |
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others will be interested in using my contributions. |
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|
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Sure, having a working toolchain is very helpful when you're blazing |
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ground, but if all I wanted to do is build abc I could easily set up a |
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container/VM/whatever following the guidelines of the folks who work |
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on abc (whether that is a project/language/platform/whatever). Linux |
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makes it pretty easy to run things in specialized environments when |
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you need to, and without worrying about dumping garbage in /usr when |
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every language wants to bundle its own package manager. |
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I guess I just have trouble envisioning what a "more focused Gentoo" |
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looks like other than what it looks like right now. I guess we can |
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start saying no to stuff that is outside our area of focus, but is |
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that what we really want to be? This isn't really a zero-sum game - |
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we don't have to exclude contributions for the sake of being focused. |
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I'd certainly value the perspective of those who have been |
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contributing longer. For most of my early years I didn't really |
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follow -dev all that closely, so I don't really have a sense for how |
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Gentoo's focus at that time made it more successful. I couldn't |
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really tell you what Gentoo's focus was back when I first started |
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using it. I just was interested in trying out a source-based distro. |
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I would love to see more bleeding-edge work in Gentoo, but to be fair |
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we do actually get a fair bit of that. We had systemd available very |
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early on, we are probably the only distro that ever supported X32, our |
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prefix capabilities are fairly unparalleled (other than on OSX, and |
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I'm not sure how well the alternatives there actually compare), and |
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even though my sense is that Gentoo hardened isn't quite as active I |
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think we provide a lot of unique capabilities there as well. It is |
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pretty rare that somebody who wants to do something new is unable to |
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do it. Sure, there can be resistance, but I think we manage it when |
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it happens as long as there is perseverance. |
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From my observation the only thing Gentoo really needs to make a |
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certain use case work is continued advocacy. Typically a few devs |
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form a project to support some use case, and they advocate for it, do |
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work to get packages to support it, educate other maintainers as to |
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how to best help them out, and so on. Not every Gentoo dev is going |
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to join up on it, but most will at the very least stay out of their |
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way, and most are going to do what they can to facilitate things. |
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I apologize for this being a bit disorganized/random. I just want to |
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get my thoughts out there. This isn't an area I feel particularly |
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strongly about. However, I do want to make sure that we don't declare |
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some kinds of innovation as unwelcome. |
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|
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-- |
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Rich |