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Hi! |
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Although I am not a Gentoo developer, I saw the wiki post and thought I would |
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donate my 2-cents. :) FYI, my background is science/engineering not software |
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development so this might give you a little different perspective. |
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>Questions to answer: |
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>Why do you love Gentoo Linux? |
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Over the years I have migrated from slackware --> redhat --> debian --> |
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Linux from Scratch (LFS) --> gentoo (yea!). My debian period was motivated by |
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(IMHO) the superior package management. However, my need for easy optimization, |
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greater control and the most current software versions (esp. |
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science/engineering apps)lead me to LFS. LFS provided the optimization, |
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control and up-to-dateness (a good learning experience too), but the |
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accumulation of cruft from lack of package management was annoying. For me, |
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gentoo provides all of the above. In particlular, gentoo advantages for |
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science/engineering apps are: |
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1. optimization: even a modest 3-10% performance improvement can make a |
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significant impact on runtime for number crunching apps, i.e a 72 hour |
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molecular dynamics simulation. |
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2. control: easy to play with configuration for tweaking the build (see 1 above) |
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3. current versions: a lot of science/engineering apps are under constant |
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development to take advantage of the latest compilers, libraries, algorithms to |
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tweak performance (see 1 above). |
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4. did I mention optimization? :) |
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>What should our business strategy be? (achim and I have our own ideas, but how |
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>would *you* like things to evolve?) |
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You might have guessed, but I believe gentoo would be appealing to people |
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wanting a science/engineering workstation. This might be an additional market |
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segment for you. (I believe HP, IBM and others market Linux sci/eng |
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workstations.) |
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>What is Gentoo Linux going to be like in 18 months? |
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Here are some features I would like to see in increasing order of pie-In-the- |
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sky speculation. |
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1. kernel ebuilds check for /etc/kernel.config for default kernel config for |
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system. |
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2. a separate (build) config command in portage, |
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i.e ebuild foo.1.0.ebuild config |
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to allow manual ./configure tweaking between automatic unpack, make, install, |
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qmerge for cases where you want a rather esoteric build config that isn't of |
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suffieciently general interest to put in the ebuild script |
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3. app-security packages, i.e. portsentry, tripwire, etc. |
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I might try to contribute some security related packages in the future |
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(yes, I had a box rooted by a bot recently. That's what I get for not updating |
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bind, on a dial-up connection no less.) |
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4. System build configuration management via esr's CML2 kinda like what their |
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doing with CML2+OS at the embedded debian project. Hey, why not? Python is |
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already part of the gentoo system. :) Would allow fine-grained configuration |
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of USE setting. For example USE bar in the build of foo1 but not in the build |
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of foo2 when both foo1 and foo2 of the option of using bar. |
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That's my two-cents. |
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I think Gentoo is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Keep up the good work! |
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Tod M. |
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Neidt |
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--------------------------------------------- |
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Sent using Fidelity Networks, Inc. Mailman. |
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http://www.fidnet.com/ |
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