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On Wed, 2002-04-17 at 20:12, Daniel Robbins wrote: |
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> I'd recommend that people who don't want to have the latest and greatest |
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> versions of everything (and everything that goes with it), don't use |
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> --update with emerge. That should help you avoid most problems. We are |
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> still devising a good distributed QA system, but that hasn't been added |
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> to Portage yet :) |
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|
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IMHO very little change is needed in Portage --- the libpng conflict was |
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not a show stopper as it might be in a binary-based Linux distrib. |
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Thinking about my experience with the somewhat time-consuming but |
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relatively straight-forward re-compilation from sources that was |
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required to update my Gentoo system after encountering a conflict over a |
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basic library, and my experiences with horrible messes on Redhat and |
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Debian systems that simply left some applications (KDE!) unuseable for a |
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while (waiting for developers to create on their computers new sets of |
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binaries that ANY user can create for himself on a Gentoo system) I've |
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concluded that a source-based distribution like Gentoo is inherently |
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stable. Sure, we stress it, but THAT is the goal --- to make a |
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distribution that acknowledges and takes advantage of the wonderful |
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chaos of Linux's multiple, independently developed streams of software. |
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|
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Actually I'd be a heck of a lot more interested in SHRINKING and |
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SIMPLIFYING Portage and merging it with a boot loader such that the boot |
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loader could recover a functional operating system onto an empty hard |
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drive entirely off the net, entirely from sources. Then shrink the boot |
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loader onto a BIOS chip, and then convert unsaved computers to Linux by |
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popping a new EEPROM onto each motherboard, ..... |