Re: [gentoo-dev] [Fwd: [gentoo-core] What Gentoo is all about]

[Philippe Lafoucrière]

Really weel said Daniel. Thank you for being so open-minded. Just as an
exemple, I'm a junior consultant and install some servers for company.
I'm paid (a lot) day by day for this job. I can install a running server
in 1 day because it takes some hours to compile an entire system.
Managers won't understand that. BUT : I can install a binary gentoo
(thanx to GRP for exemple), and provide some "tunning" stuff to the
company later. that's make more sense, isn't it ?


On Tue, 2003-09-16 at 08:44, Daniel Robbins wrote:
> I should have posted this to gentoo-dev in the first place (was posted to
> -core,) so here goes...
>
> On Mon, 2003-09-15 at 12:12, Sven Vermeulen wrote:
> > Don't take this personally, but - just to make my mind clear - can't we
> > (well, Gentoo that is) make a statement on what we want to achieve?
>
> I'll try to spell it out for you with a bit of Gentoo history.
>
> I created Gentoo because I couldn't find a Linux distribution that I
> liked. The one predominant thing that I experienced with Linux
> distributions is that the "distro tools" that managed the entire system
> -- the tools that were supposed to make everything *easier* to use --
> really seemed to want a lot of attention and really got in the way of
> what I wanted to do. I wanted to tell *them* what I wanted to do, but
> they seemed more interested in telling *me* what *they* wanted me to do.
>
> So, I created Gentoo Linux, and designed Portage to be a more perfect
> tool than what had existed before it. To do this, I made it very
> flexible in allowing me to do what I wanted to do, and also tried to
> make it flexible to allow others to do what I thought they might want to
> do.
>
> If others wanted to see how a package got built, they could look at a
> relatively easy-to-understand ebuild file and learn from it. If they
> wanted to tweak how it got built, they took advantage of USE variables.
> If they wanted to add a package, they created a new ebuild for the tree.
> If they wanted to use a package, they simply emerged it and dependencies
> were automatically resolved.
>
> People liked the Portage concept, and Gentoo Linux grew rapidly. We have
> become known as a "from source" distribution, but the heart of the
> Gentoo concept is not "from source." "From source" is an important and
> key aspect of Gentoo, and something that was and will continue to be
> necessary for Gentoo, but it is not the only issue or most fundamental
> issue. The most fundamental issue is designing a technology that allows
> us and others to do what they want to do, without restriction.
>
> To summarize the heart of Gentoo, imagine a user sitting in front of a
> Linux system. What does he or she want do to? The Gentoo philosophy is
> to allow this user to do what he or she wants to do, without getting in
> the way.
>
> At around the time Gentoo was born, the thing that got in the way was
> the lack of an easy way to build packages from source, to a user's
> specifications. Currently, we've done that very well, but what we
> haven't done very well is support pre-built packages, even though
> Portage has supported building binary packages almost since its
> inception. So we are doing that now. It's important that our tools
> support binary packages, because binary packages are widely used and
> widely in demand in the Linux community. If our tools don't support
> binary packages, then we can't claim that our tools are designed to
> allow a user to do anything he or she might want to do. If we purposely
> choose to exclude binary support, then we are attempting to interfere
> with how users might choose to approach particular problems, by instead
> imposing our own will or view of how they should approach a problem. And
> if we do not build binary packages, then we are not taking any steps to
> ensure that our tools actually work well with binary packages, nor are
> we taking steps to ensure that others can build binary packages, nor are
> we able to *demonstrate* that our tools work well with binary packages.
> Besides these philisophical reasons, there are many practical reasons to
> create binary packages.
>
> The Gentoo philosophy, in a paragraph, is this. Every user has work they
> need to do. The goal of Gentoo is to design tools and systems that allow
> a user to do their work pleasantly and efficiently as possible, as
> *they* see fit. Our tools should be a joy to use, and should help the
> user to appreciate the richness of the Linux and free software
> community, and the flexibility of free software. This is only possible
> when the tool is designed to reflect and transmit the will of the user,
> and leave the possibilities open as to the final form of the raw
> materials (the source code.) If the tool forces the user to do things a
> particular way, then the tool is working against, rather than for, the
> user. We have all experienced situations where tools seem to be imposing
> their respective wills on us. This is backwards, and contrary to the
> Gentoo philosophy.
>
> Put another way, the Gentoo philosophy is to create better tools. When a
> tool is doing its job perfectly, you might not even be very aware of its
> presence, because it does not interfere and make its presence known, nor
> does it force you to interact with it when you don't want it to. The
> tool serves the user rather than the user serving the tool.
>
> The future goal of Gentoo is to continue to strive to create near-ideal
> tools. Tools that can accomodate the needs of many different users (all
> with divergent goals) with ease are extremely powerful. Don't you love
> it when you find a tool that does exactly what you want to do? Doesn't
> it feel great? Our mission is to give that sensation to as many people
> as possible.
>
> It's fun to do this by creating a distribution from existing
> freely-available code, like we are, because you can often give people
> great satisfaction just by unlocking some of the coolness that has
> already been created by someone else, just by making it more accessible.
> Hope that helps,
>
> Daniel


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