[gentoo-dev] Stage3 tarball not complete?

[Evan Read]

Hey all,

Just a thought to put to you all.

The stage 3 tarball is a good idea.  Allows one to get a system up quickly but 
it seems odd that one would still have to emerge a logger and a cron daemon.

At the very least, wouldn't it make sense to provide the distfiles (to allow 
for compilation) so that network access wouldn't be required to have a 
working base system?  At least provide a default one (like you guys provide 
the gentoo linux sources to save the download), I would think syslogd for 
compatibility, and leave the others as emergible options?

I think the point of the stage 3 tarball is primarily to save time, but might 
also be good to not require network access.

Perhaps I am thinking of a future stage 4 tarball that includes X (but not 
desktop managers) and everything one would need to impliment routers, 
gatways, mailserver (with a default MTA) etc without a net connection.

Perhaps this isn't the point of Gentoo, but if the admin loves it on the 
desktop, he will eventually wish it on the server.  I have been told that no 
one recommends it though.  Maybe in the future.

Evan.