Re: [gentoo-project] Some focus for Gentoo

[Jeroen Roovers]

On Tue, 13 Jan 2015 21:43:23 -0600
Donnie Berkholz <dberkholz@g.o> wrote:

> http://dberkholz.com/2015/01/13/gentoo-needs-focus-to-stay-relevant/

I generally agree.


[ = People developing software = ]

It reads like we should better *advertise* Gentoo as a good distro to
choose for the purpose of building a development environment, custom
distro or educational environment. Aren't we doing that properly now?
Aren't we heading in that direction already?

If we want to attract developers, we might need to point out how they
can (easily) write ebuilds to make deployment easier of things we don't
already offer ebuilds for. This would have to chime with their ideas of
what a deployment should look like.


[ = People who need extreme flexibility (embedded, etc.) = ]

Development environments for embedded systems generally focus on a
"stable" OS where they can plant down flashy (sorry) IDEs so that users
can focus on the applications they want to write for those targets. How
do you convince them to instead build an embedded system from the
ground up using Gentoo Linux?


[ = People who want to learn how Linux works = ]

The last category is a bit problematic. People who flock to Gentoo with
little Linux experience are generally after a specific feature, like
the 3D desktop (oh, that was 10 years ago), a replacement for a
favourite desktop environment gone insane (this happens all the time)
or access to the latest version of some newfangled application they've
read about and want to try out (like cryptocoins or geolocation or
containers to name a random few).

Gentoo already naturally gravitates toward offering those, since writing
and distributing ebuilds for brand new software is easy and since Gentoo
developers equally tend to volunteer their time to such novelties. More
generally interest in a certain category of applications coincidentally
means better quality in how we deliver those in ebuilds.

This category of users generally doesn't start using Gentoo for the
learning experience - they might appreciate that only after they've
got comfortable with it. People who want that tend to go with LFS.
Attracting people who want to "learn Linux" is therefore impossible, and
having those that we do attract "learn Linux" instead of "learn yum"
is a nice side-effect.

For half a year now I have been trying to find a Linux related job, and
actual Linux sysadmins/application developers generally don't know what
Gentoo Linux is (i.e. they've never heard of it) or they assume the
anti-ricer pose and the "we use an Enterprise distro" defence. All my
(nearing) 10 years of Gentoo Linux development mean nothing to them,
and nothing seems to have changed there in 10 years. Even if it cures
your curiosity about Linux, it doesn't offer much "office cred" in
return.

People who want or need to use software that their distro doesn't yet
offer in a straightforward manner tend to find HOWTOs and thereby simply
follow the script (copying and pasting commands apparently teaches you
how stuff works?). When that succeeds, they don't need to think about
learning Linux or find another distro.

I generally agree that attracting young/inexperienced users is a bonus,
but it's extremely hard to "focus" on.


     jer