Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo healthy?

On Monday 18 December 2006 19:54, Grant wrote:
> > > I've caught a whiff or two lately that Gentoo is declining in
> > > popularity amongst users and developers.  Is it all in my head?  I
> > > personally still love Gentoo.
> >
> > there are always several phases in the life of a distri.
> >
> > Beginning, when it becomes 'cool' and a sudden surge in users, some time
> > of high popularity, a decline, and at the end, only the users who are
> > really 'the right ones' for that kind of distri are left.
> >
> > So the 'always using the cool thing' users are gone and the 'we are using
> > what the cool guys were using' crowd is leaving now. So what? Are they
> > important? No. At some point ubuntu will suffer the same. And then the
> > next cool distro de jour.
> >
> > Some decline in user interest is normal - and a healthy process. Because
> > it removes the 'I use it because it is cool' and 'I use it because
> > everybody else uses it' type of users.
>
> I'm thinking this over a bit more, and it seems like the best thing
> for Gentoo (or any distro) is a lot of users.  More users must mean
> more active developers, and more active developers must mean an
> increased rate of growth for the software.

this kind of users never turn into devs. This kind of users are writing 'good 
bye postings' in the forum about how much gentoo sucks and that 
INSERTNAMEHERE is much better.

>
> I believe the great benefit of Gentoo is its flexibility, and
> flexibility is like a meta-benefit because it makes possible any other
> benefit.  What do you think makes Ubuntu the distro of the moment?  Is
> it ease-of-use?  If Gentoo focused more on ease-of-use aspects of the
> Ubuntu variety, they would attract more users and thereby increase the
> rate of growth for the software.

all the hype about it (in ubuntus case, the hype even started before it was 
released, thanks to good marketing).

There is something called 'target audience'. Do you want to target the noobs? 
The 'I don't want to read anything' crowd? At the beginning, there was a 
big 'gentoo is for advanced users type' sign on the front page. If you dumb 
gentoo down to make it idiot-proof only idiots will use it. It is a good 
sign, that people from other distros are asking questions in the gentoo 
forums, because they expect good answers there. It is also a known fact, that 
ubuntus forums are very big - but good answers are rare. When ubuntu f*ed up 
a X update sometime ago, ou had thousands of helpless users. Do you really 
want that kind of people in gentoo?

I don't. They don't turn in admins or mods, they don't become devs, they whine 
a lot and because of them, choices are removed and the distro dumbed down.

Linux is not windows - and gentoo is not ubuntu, or linspire. If someone wants 
an easy-to-use Iamstupidandwanttostaythatway distro, there are already 
douzends of them. No need to turn gentoo in another one.

>
> Popular migration from one distro to the next sends a very important
> signal to any distro that wants to grow.
>


nope. It is just the wave of people who want to use the 
cool-distro-of-the-day. This people are like locusts. They wander from distro 
to distro. If something new pops up, they go there and stay a while before 
they 'discover' the next cool one and go there. And if you try to adapt to 
them, you will loose badly.

Debian did not adapt to the locusts, and they are a fine, healthy distro. 
Redhat did not adapt to them, mandriva tried and got bitten.
-- 
gentoo-user@g.o mailing list