Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

I'm not a developer, but I'm a Gentoo bigot and I'd like to join the
discussion :).

Aron Griffis wrote:

>
>In my humble opinion, Gentoo is missing too many points to be an
>enterprise Linux.  We commit to a live tree.  We don't have true QA,
>testing or tinderbox.  We don't have paid staff, alpha/beta/rc cycles.
>We don't really have product lifecycles, since we don't generally
>backport fixes to older versions, requiring instead for people to
>update to a more recent release.  We don't have, and probably will
>never be able to offer, support contracts.  We support as wide a range
>of hardware as the upstream kernel, plus hardware that requires
>external drivers; we don't have access to a great deal of the hardware
>for which we provide drivers.  We understand when real life gets in
>the way of bug-fixing, because all our developers are volunteers.
>
>
Another thing worthy of mention here is that Gentoo is a non-profit
organization, with some rather tight restrictions imposed by US tax laws.

>I think that attempting to take Gentoo in the "enterprise" direction
>is a mistake.  I think that we are a hobbyist distribution.  This
>doesn't mean that we should not strive to meet some of the enterprise
>goals.  Those things can be important to hobbyists too.  But I don't
>think we should be aiming for corporate America.
>
>
You aren't -- trust me. You're not on corporate America's radar screen.
I'm not sure SuSE or Novell is either. Corporate America lives, breathes
and eats Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

>I don't even understand why that goal appeals to people.  Let other
>distros go there!  I want Gentoo to run in people's homes, in student
>dorm rooms, etc.  Places where people want a fun distribution that
>they can tailor and work on easily.
>
>
Gentoo is running in my home. And it's running in a *lot* of laboratories.

>I like the idea of Gentoo on alternative arches and in embedded
>environments.  Not because I want Sony to start using Gentoo on
>walkmans, but purely because the idea of running Linux on a PDA is
>cool.  I'd like Gentoo to be a place where neat things are developed.
>If RH or SuSE (or another for-profit Linux vendor) wants to take some
>of those developments and use them to make a profit, that's fine with
>me.  We're over here having fun.
>
>
>
It's also fine with the GPL :). I'm not sure I care about alternative
arches, given Apple's announcement today. In case you didn't hear,
they're migrating to Intel processors for Macs, starting as soon as next
year on the Mini-Mac. I've got a Zaurus; it's running some kind of Linux
and I'll probably put Gentoo on it when I get some spare cycles,
provided Gentoo runs on the 6000. But I'm sure as hell not gonna try to
run R or TeXmacs or Maxima on it!

>Also I find it amusing when people say that Gentoo exists for the
>users.  I think that is wrong.  Gentoo exists for the *developers*.
>It's our playground, and it's the reason we use a live tree rather
>than switching to an actually sane approach.  The users are cool
>because they point out bugs, help solve problems on bugzilla, suggest
>enhancements, provide patches, and notify us of package updates.
>Sometimes they become developers.  But the truth is that Gentoo sees
>improvement and maintenance in the areas that appeal to the
>developers.  And that is why Gentoo exists for the developers first,
>the users second.
>
>
Well ... OK ... I'll never become a developer; I just have too many
hobbies to pin myself down that tightly with what little free time I
have. I think you're right, though ... Gentoo *is* for the developers.
Ultimately, though, so is GNU/Linux. It's an enviroment of the
programmers, by the programmers, and for the programmers, to paraphrase
Abe Lincoln.

I'm certainly not in this to try and take money away from Bill Gates, or
to torture intellectual property attorneys. I'm in this because I like
the tools, I use the tools, I've been using similar tools for 20 years,
and I'm fortunate enough to have a day job where I spend at least a good
chunk of the time working with Linux.

So ... since nobody has asked ... why Gentoo? Well, I started out in
Linux with Red Hat 6.2, stayed with them through Red Hat 9. When they
created Fedora, I went to Debian. If Debian had the level of support for
Java that Gentoo has, I'd probably still be there. But it doesn't, so I
switched. The rest of Gentoo's joys just grew on me. :)

The best thing for me about Gentoo is that it's almost trivial to
package software. If you can download it, follow directions, and install
it, you're 90 percent of the way to packaging it! I was in a discussion
on the R developers mailing list the other day about package management.
They, like Perl, have their own source repository, dependency tree, etc.
It struck me that it would probably take less than a week to create
"/usr/portage/app-sci-CRAN" -- CRAN is the Comprehensive R Archive
Network -- and populate it with 500-odd R packages, complete with R
package dependencies *and* dependencies on underlying Linux packages,
something they don't seem to have now.
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