[gentoo-dev] Re: Re: Re: Re: A heretical thought? Blessing project sunrise as an almost-fork.

[Peter]

On Thu, 15 Jun 2006 04:29:44 -0400, Mike Frysinger wrote:

> On Tuesday 13 June 2006 16:17, Peter wrote:
>> On Tue, 13 Jun 2006 20:17:10 +0100, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
>> > | Care to elaborate?  The wise, all-knowing Zen argument isn't |
>> >
>> > particularly helpful....
>> >
>> > It's perfect proof that there are users that are utterly clueless
>> > about what is best for their system, and utterly clueless about how
>> > using third party software can cause problems for other software.
>>
>> It's no such proof. Anyone who rolls a kernel, takes the time to learn
>> what it entails, understands what he/she is intending to do, knows the
>> ramifications of those actions. Gentoo users, in particular, by virtue
>> of the fact that this is a source-based distro, have to be accorded a
>> slightly higher level of respect and regard.
>
> you clearly have never heard of love/nitro sources and all the fun we
> went through back when they were being "actively maintained"
>
Actually, I have. I never wanted to use them because, as with the -mm
sources, they were using stuff not based on the current kernel, but future
enhancements which may or may not make it to the kernel. As for gentoo's
experience with those versions, I am not familiar. Before my time here.
But -mm lives in the tree and so does -ck (and I know dsd is _thrilled_
having them there :)).

> being able to download patchsets from the internet, touchup a few lines
> so they apply without rejects, and releasing the result to the rest of
> the world deserves no respect/regard ... you've proven you have skills
> at:
>  - wget
>  - patch
>  - an editor
>  - tar
>
> the respect/regard comes when the compiled kernel *actually performs*
> -mike

I respect your opinion. But, does that mean e17 should be removed, because
it really has a lot of problems (like its file manager), or all it's
libraries? How about wine? Just because a project may entail risk, should
not eliminate it from being considered for inclusion in the tree OR in an
overlay.

Anyone can write an ebuild which is different from being able to code an
application. That's obvious. Providing ebuilds is not at all the same in
terms of scope, difficulty or even talent level. I am sure there are many
sucky applications in the tree. But, the purpose of providing ebuilds is
to provide more choice. If you like e17, even though it really is half
functional, and I like e16, which also has some, but not as many issues,
is Gentoo wrong to provide e17 as a choice along with e16?

If a user downloads a hardened kernel and installs it, and wonders why
some things which used to work fine no longer do, is that the fault of the
ebuild provider? The fault of the people who did the patches? The fault
of Gentoo? No. Same with sellinux. People can get just as messed up with
those, as they could with -mm or -ck or -beyond. If someone wants to try
reiser4 and wonder why their hard disk resembles a Picasso painting, is
that the fault of the ebuild's providers?

And, yes, I showed my "limited" skills in downloading and applying
patches for the beyond sources. But, I also applied most of the
gentoo-base and extra patches to beyond as well (if you reviewed the
ebuild). And, you know what? It benchmarks better than all but -ck. I have
not had a crash due to the kernel in two weeks and, it even runs VMWare
which the author (iphitus) wasn't even sure it would do! This was reported
upstream.

JM2C

-- 
Peter


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