Re: [gentoo-dev] preference concerns over "gentoo-ization" of packages

[foser]

On Sun, 2003-09-28 at 20:32, Paul de Vrieze wrote:
> I think that many of the gentoo users and developers are like me in comming to
> gentoo from running Linux From Scratch. Gentoo is started out as a tinckerers
> distro. It is not gentoo's main point of view to be a distro for linux
> newbees.

Well, that's what you do by holding hands for every possible extra and
what not. As if power users themselves cannot adapt it to their needs.

>  And indeed, I'm more a kde kind of person than a gnome one. I really
> really dislike the fact that in gnome it is very hard to make it do what YOU
> want, not what the developers wanted.

GNOME as it is is not meant to be tinkered with, it's meant to be worked
with and people seem to enjoy it's simplicity. Yes it's a choice, but i
think it's a good one. Sensible defaults all the way.

>  I also really dislike the ok, cancel
> button reversal in gnome.

And i don't like .. uh oh, yeah well let's get into such a thread. 'It
has always been done this way' is not the way improvements happen.

> I don't think tinkerers need their hands held. However before LFS I ran
> redhat. Do you know how difficult they make it to do any tinkering. Mandrake
> etc. are even worse. I think tinkering should never be inhibited by patches
> from gentoo.

Yeah, so let's ditch the patches and extras. The tinkerers know how to
apply them.

>  I want to be able to read a howto from the LDP and know that as
> long as they don't talk about redhat or any other specific distro, it works
> for me in that way, and that when it doesn't, and I want it to work in that
> way, I can easilly make it work in that way without actually needing to edit
> any ebuild. Editing ebuilds creates a maintenance hell. You either need to
> never update, or edit the new one everytime there is an update.

Currently maybe, although if our needs be so we could probably add
portage support for local changes (beyond a local tree). Attack the
problem at it's root, not at it's leaves. We're getting into details
here, where the discussion goes from an ideological level (this is how i
see the distro) to implementation details (well i don't like it because
currently it works this way). 

Moving away from vanilla for some users (USE dependant or not) will have
a group of users have the described problems. 'You should have used the
vanilla USE flag.' is not a proper response then, how should they know 
is the default Gentoo not good enough ?

> Further wenn I were to review an application or, say, gnome. I would install
> it, but I would certainly not want any gentoo customizations (I'm reviewing
> gnome, not gentoo). I think there are enough cases for having a vanilla
> useflag. I do agree with you that we don't want dozens of them. For that we
> will get sticky use variables.

Well, Gentoo customizations in GNOME do not go much further than the GDM
theme I'm afraid and that could be discussed if you really disagree
there (but i know you don't ;)).

In one way you try to promote tinkering, only the distro has to make it
easy for the tinkerers. On the other hand you want Gentoo to stay
vanilla as well. I see this as a conflict. Tinkerers are not the ones
who need it to be available the easy way, the ones who do not want to 
tinker are not interested in having it available in an easy way.

For me it's not about Gentoo being vanilla all the way, but for Gentoo
to be as vanilla as possible with only the really needed extras added.
Not the not-so-needed extras added behind some USE flag and some other
cool gadgets behind another USE flag.

- foser



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