Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Gary Whysong <gary.whysong@×××.net>
To: gentoo-dev@g.o
Subject: [gentoo-dev] Sorry, I Quit
Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 23:09:32
Message-Id: 3D40CB55.3090600@cox.net
1 I've been a Linux user since 1994 and looked forward to trying Gentoo
2 Linux 1.2 on my IBM laptop. I cut my teeth on Slackware (kernel 0.94)
3 and certainly have compiled my share of apps. from scratch. However, I
4 doubt anyone is a complete master of all aspects of Linux. I certainly
5 don't pretend to be.
6
7 Initially, I had minor problems getting a basic Gentoo system up.
8 Networking gave me a little trouble due to hardware problems, but those
9 were resolved fairly quickly.
10
11 My problem is with your portage system. Basically, almost 40% of the
12 software I've tried to install doesn't. Some of it dies with no error
13 messages, other's with the inability to simply create directories. Open
14 Office wouldn't compile because your glibc's are too old and I couldn't
15 find any newer one's on your site. Permission errors abound which is
16 rather interesting when one is running as root.
17
18 You're web site maintains that your portage system is better (in
19 design?) than Debian's apt-get and BSD's ports systems. Unfortunately,
20 you have yet to prove it to me. I've never tried Debian and won't,
21 since I don't care for the "Debian attitude". I have used Free BSD's
22 ports system and have yet to see it fail. Unfortunately, I can
23 personally attest to the fact that portage does fail, and often.
24
25 With that said, I would like to compliment you on a great concept for a
26 Linux distribution. I strongly believe you are on the right track.
27 Unfortunately, your package system needs significant improvement. I
28 wish you the best of luck and may try your distribution again sometime
29 in the future. However, at the present, I need a Linux system with
30 working applications more quickly than the week of spare time I've
31 already taken trying to build one with Gentoo. Thus, I have little
32 alternative but to give up on Gentoo and install Mandrake or SuSE.
33
34 I wish you the best of luck in improving your Linux distribution and
35 look forwared to trying it again in the future.
36
37 Sincerely,
38
39 Gary Whysong
40 Assoc. Professor
41 Environmental Resources
42 Arizona State Univ. East. (Gary.Whysong@×××.edu)

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-dev] Sorry, I Quit Brandon Low <lostlogic@g.o>
Re: [gentoo-dev] Sorry, I Quit Karl Trygve Kalleberg <karltk@×××××××.no>