Re: [gentoo-user] Anxiousness? [was:Tips/Tricks for Gentoo on low-spec computer?]

[b.n.]

Mark Knecht ha scritto:

>    The one thing I would respectfully suggest is that you carefully
> build your own portage overlay. My experience with Gentoo over the
> last few years is that there is a _anxiousness_ in the portage
> maintainer area to move newer revisions of software into portage
> quickly and then just as quickly to remove from portage what users are
> currently using.

Really?

I am usually a bit annoyed by the contrary. On an almost 1-year old
Kubuntu (8.04 Hardy Heron) I can find packages that are just barely x86
stable now on Gentoo.

A couple of examples I am aware of:
Firefox 3: stable just since one month on Gentoo x86, was included in KB8.04
Qtiplot: 0.9.x stable and working on KB8.04, all releases ~x86 (and a
hell to compile on a stable system -still didn't manage to do it) in Gentoo.

Python releases are often behind, and not mentioning KDE 4, which is
even default on 8.10 Kubuntu and on Gentoo was still hardmasked last
time I checked (but probably Gentoo is just right in this respect,
everyone keeps telling me to wait before digging into KDE 4).

I fully understand that there are good reasons for that, and that the
meta-distribution status of Gentoo makes harder to check packages (and
also that the Ubuntu folks wildly release unstable stuff... firefox 3 rc
in 8.04, for example). I just feel that (stable) Gentoo is actually a
bit *behind* the average Linux distribution in its revisions of software.

Most importantly, I also feel that that's something new: when I first
installed my system, more than 4 years ago, I felt it was *ahead*. I
wonder if it's due just to the sheer increase of work required to test
packages, or if there are decisions behind that (or if it's just me
having false memories).

m.