Re: [gentoo-user] kernel 3.8 and external drivers

[Alexander Schwarz]

Am 12.03.2013 08:33, schrieb Yuri K. Shatroff:
>
> Again, following your logic, why not just let the user himself
> ./configure && make && make install as in old days? What is portage for?

Following your logic, if there's even one tool to make life easier 
everything has to be absolutely easy. So we should now utilize fancy 
wizards? Once again, that's following your logic.

>
> That is a testing issue. Of course, one can never know what will
> change, or whether the code contains a bug (before one is detected),
> but when someone *does* stumble upon such issues, it is up to
> maintainers to update portage to prevent the issue... that's what
> portage is for, isn't it?
> That said, the topic starter has run across an issue and I assume the
> action to be taken by the package maintainer is to add a test against
> kernel compatibility and eligibility of the native driver, so that in
> the future the issue not rise again. Am I right? Or do I completely
> misunderstand the purpose of portage, and everything?

First of all: Gentoo relies on volunteers to do work as testing. If 
something fails they CAN report it (like he did via this userlist). 
You're requesting enterprise features (everything tested to a great 
extent for every piece of hardware)? That's cool, because you can help. 
Just invest some time and help testing, everyone would be grateful.
Without those reports portage can't know. It's a tool and not a thinking 
human being, as such it's limited in many ways. How should it know that 
something will break other things if nobody tells it?

>>> 4. How and why would you expect to force all users to grep thru kernel
>>> src in search for a driver they might need, especially when the
>>> portage explicitly lists this driver? Also sometimes kernel drivers'
>>> description is not quite consistent and it is not easy to figure out
>>> whether it supports exactly yours card/chip/device, or moreover find
>>> it by grep.
>>
>> All kernel source? grep? Nope. Just reading a bit of help text. Maybe
>> using google. Doing it once.
>
> As I said, there is not always good help text for kernel options.
>

I tend to agree but then again: why even bother compiling the Linux 
kernel if it's too tedious?

>> Then you have a working setup you can use
>> for the rest of eternity (or the next couple of years...)
>
> Okay, and when someone like the topic starter *did* have a working
> setup with the "superfluous" driver from portage, ... do you feel the
> logic? :) When should one realize that this setup is no more working?
> I guess, just after it stopped working, right? :) Of course, again, if
> one is really concerned he will check each kernel release or whatever
> for the new stuff he's concerned about, but when all *worked*, why
> should he?
There are distributions out there who take care of *this*.  Instead of 
utilizing them you're trying to redefine Gentoo in a manner that more 
suits you. This is highly illogical, as alternatives are out there with 
the exact same thing you'd like to see.


> so, according to that, everyone who's striving to get
> linux/gentoo/whtever more user-friendly (including portage's key
> features) is an ubuntoid? You know, I came from FreeBSD where you're
> supposed to do much more work by hand, and after a dozen years I'm a
> little bit tired of that. I *can* do without things like portage's
> colorful output, for example (although it's helpful most of the time).
> But I really dislike things broken e.g. on `portupgrade -aR` and the
> sort and I can *not* call a system which allows that a quality system.
> That sort of user-friendliness has nothing to do with ubuntism ("we
> know better what you want") and visual beauty: that's about quality.
> (I know that there's no absolute quality, but when a system tends to
> fail, and justifies that with "user not having googled or having taken
> a way we, devs, didn't ever think to go" -- it's at least incorrect if
> not arrogant.)

You're mixing up Linux and distributions. Linux is a kernel, not more, 
not less. If the distribution is user friendly or not is defined for 
every single distribution.
The problem I see here: you want Gentoo to do certain things for you 
which is in direct conflict to Gentoo's principles. Gentoo really was 
never meant for the beginner, nor was it meant for the expert who just 
wants to USE things and SOMETIMES change crucial parts of the system.

In my personal opinion it's highly arrogant to download a distribution, 
seeing that you obviously don't like it (which is absolutely fine) and 
then jump on the mailing list. Patronizing everyone and telling them how 
that system should exactly change that it's acceptable in your eyes.

But, that's the whole beauty of open source: you can do things exactly 
your way by forking, helping as a dev/tester, developing your own things 
if you hate them, etc...
And before you tell me: "you want to troll me". Nope, I'm dead serious. 
Open source is all about getting involved if you want to change things.
Other certain operating systems don't even give you that choice and are 
more like: like it or leave it.