Gentoo has come a long way BUT I wish it had...

sickboy2583 · Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2004 7:36 pm Post subject:

aaaaaaaaagggggggghhhhhhhh

This thread is going nowhere :evil:

Please make it stop

isnogood · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 09 Jul 2003 Posts: 96

msimplay · Apprentice Joined: 20 Jun 2004 Posts: 161

djm · Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2004 9:53 pm Post subject:

That's not what I said at all.. my point was that it doesn't matter how easy to install Gentoo/other linux distro it is, most people won't do it - not only are they too afraid but the very idea that a pc can run something other than windows is alien to them

Gentoo/linux not being easy to install, or arrogant linux users aren't what's stopping them from installing linux is all I was saying, and...

That's a whole different issue - forget GUI installers, most people need preinstalled linux, and even then they wouldn't buy a pc with just linux on (and dual booting might be too much for some) unless they had to because it was cheaper

Nothing to do with me being leet at all...
_________________
the forums.gentoo.org poster formally known as metal leper

msimplay · Apprentice Joined: 20 Jun 2004 Posts: 161

gullyg · Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2004 10:48 pm Post subject:

Heres my take on a gui installer

Dev's time is a finite resorce which could be spent in better ways than developing a gui installer, such as creating bug fixes and improved stability, better apps, support for more platforms etc.

When you take into account vida-linux and the excellent documentation that exists for gentoo linux the above point becomes even more valid.

The issue about haveing a gentoo install up and running in less than an hour (mentioned a while back in this thread) is, i feel, a non-issue. If you going to have your os compiled from source it's going to take time, as far as i'm concerned if you want that you may as well use debian/other excellent binary based distro. - After all gentoo is for ricers :lol:

As for the "l33t" side of gentoo (i really hate that term) - i don't think theres anything wrong with a bit of elitism. I personally don't think a huge influx of users who know absalutly nothing about linux is a good thing, personally i think people should learn a bit about linux before coming to gentoo.
For us normal "ungodlike" mortals switching from windows to gentoo is too steep a learning curve - the mandrake/knoppix/suse/xandros etc is a good grounder for more advanced things. Some people with go on to gentoo or debian etc some will stay with the more easy to use distros. I think this is a good thing as it filters out the people who want to learn more from the people who are quite happy to stay on their "easy to use" distro of choice (which theres nothing wrong with - linux after all is about choice). This makes it easyier for those willing to learn to do so as their crys for help aren't drowned out by those of "i can't find how to install ProgramX - please spoon feed me the answer because i can't be bothered to look on the web or rtfm (I'm proberbly guilty of this btw).

Anyways if you don't have to pay for such a great distro - you should at least put some effort in.

_________________
Not Y3K compliant

CPCFF

millenium_psyrax · Posted: Wed Sep 15, 2004 6:08 am Post subject:

Once again a bunch of pretend leets bagging a guy with some ideas. You might not like his ideas, but hey, users like miqorz shit me to tears. They think by typing emerge fluxbox makes them some L33T hacker genius. Come on man, don't be such a pussy, want to be a L33T move to an environment where you're whole system isn't updated NICE AND NEWBIE like with a simple

emerge sync
emerge -Ud world
revdep-rebuild

I could get a monkey to type that shit in. Leave the guy alone, he made some suggestions. The only thing stopping his suggestions from making the portage tree, isn't rock apes like you thinking that typing the above three lines is hard, it is the fact that the developers are busy juggling the build outside your sandbox. They are doing the hard work, dealing with segfaulting gcc builds and taming them so that people like you can type emerge <new-gcc> version and simply rebuild your system with

emerge -Ude world

You want to graphical tools (which I don't think you need, but you don't need the bullshit that goes along with making the suggestions) you will just have to wait till the upstreams builds integrate more easily into systems, and one of the talented Gentoo developers can dedicated him or herself to newbie installs. I for one think that a profile system would be good for newbs, we already have one for the system and bootstrap.
_________________
Define ironic: Java (noun) a unicode using Objective C whose claim to portability fame is having a compiler that can only compile code for ONE architecture, a slow virtual machine.

(c) Craig Sproule freely redistributable under the GPL version 1.2.

amiatrome · Posted: Wed Sep 15, 2004 12:15 pm Post subject:

millenium_psyrax · Posted: Thu Sep 16, 2004 7:01 am Post subject:

Just read more of this forum.

Seems to be 2 folk.

The GUI dudes (who I have nothing against, though I doubt I will use your tools, thousands will. Plus GUI's are a lot harder to program for than the command line, but don't tell the leet's that)

The "typing emerge and watching config and makefile stuff fly by that I don't really understand makes me feel real leet and all, you know, like Neo and his gang, looking at this scrolling stuff gives me control over the matrix."

I don't think GUI's and power are mutually exclusive

BTW miqorz seems to be a postwhore dickhead.

I very rarely see the guy post more than a 2 line negative comment. He says, some people should just use a Mac * Mac OSX is Unix now, read up on some stuff man *

For everybody who thinks that Gentoo makes you leet. BUILD a small reiser4 LFS system, chuck gnome or KDE on it, go on, you'll only get so far before finding out that gcc-3.4.2 won't compile the latest glibc on a reiser4 partition without a special "gcc-reiser4 patch". Of course most LEETs wouldn't know that, because portage does all the work for you, you are already being spoon fed, so why not let the GUI dudes build tools that make it easier for other folks to use? If you don't like the tool, don't use it. But please stop preaching when you are using a system that does everything for you, and the only difference between portage and yum (the Fedora version of portage, which you all seem to hate) is, portage compiles the packages for you on your system, but it ain't any harder to use, and at the end of the day when something fails to compile, most of ya just go, oh well, devs will fix it soon.

BTW if any person in this forum thinks they are truly LEET and they use OpenOffice, think again. I have no problem with people using OpenOffice, but it shits me when they crap on about how great they are, using a GUI wordprocessor to emulate a windows product. Almost goes against the philosophy of gentoo.

BTW I've used LFS unstable on and off for years, and it is funky. I got sick of Gentoo when I noticed that groff-1.19 fails to compile with gcc-3.4, and that the fix for it is to upgrade groff-1.19 to a later release (simply 1.19.1). I don't know why this stuff ain't done quicker, if it is a point release and compiles and works properly, upgrade the BLOODY thing straight away for god sake. Gentoo is too debianified for me. It's upstream package updating is slow now (Fedora is more up to date). What Gentoo has over most distros though is, if you don't want printing it doen't install foomatic and stuff, my mate just installed Fedora he says no to printer support and it still installs Omni print drivers, foomatic and cups. Now that is poor.
_________________
Define ironic: Java (noun) a unicode using Objective C whose claim to portability fame is having a compiler that can only compile code for ONE architecture, a slow virtual machine.

(c) Craig Sproule freely redistributable under the GPL version 1.2.

miqorz · Posted: Thu Sep 16, 2004 8:27 am Post subject:

I'm really enjoying the useless flames - Just shows immature some people can be.

All my opinions are very valid and all you can say is "OMGOSH U SUX DIX."

Riiiight.

djm · Posted: Thu Sep 16, 2004 9:15 am Post subject:

Hmm, I don't think that using portage rather than LFS is the same thing as GUI or not

What do you learn by typing ./configure && make && make install a million times? (I know that installing LFS is a great learning experience, but it's also very tedious, where as isntalling Gentoo can teach you a lot, but with much less repetative typing (and can give a thirst for more knowledge)). Ok, so you need to manually patch some things to make them compile, but some things fail on Gentoo too. Either way you can search on google or wherever to find out what the problem is, you don't have to be leet and write a fix yourself

I know I can set up an LFS system, I know I can compile stuff without the help of portage, but I don't want to spend all day reading makefile/readmes to find out what configure options I have for everything (USE flags do it much more quickly, and if it turns out that something didn't get configured as I'd like, I can fix that later), nor do I want to have to monitor lots of websites to find out if there are any updates (that's the key thing for me - finding out when there are updates takes little skill, just time).

As said, it's very hard to write a GUI - if you ask me it's very very difficult to make an GUI/script to install Gentoo without taking away options, and you certainly couldn't do that with a 3 clicks needed Xandros style install

Openoffice has the advantage of being able to use the MS office file format, but what would be a "leeter" alternative in your opinion?

Thanks for the reiser4/gcc3.4.2 tip, I might set up an LFS system again soon

_________________
the forums.gentoo.org poster formally known as metal leper

miqorz · Posted: Thu Sep 16, 2004 9:24 am Post subject:

I'm going to run over my reasons for why this is a bad idea.

The BACKEND tools aren't ready for a FRONTEND. -

Bugging the developers for useless frontends when the backends are still being worked on hard is kind of selfish.

It's allready 'there' -

Vida Linux is exactly what you want - GUI installer and port-hole, Right?

And I was under the impression that Gentoo was here for people trying to get away from all this stuff..

Maybe I was wrong.. I'm looking forwards to FreeBSD 5.3.

If that sucks I'll look into, Crux - SourceMage and LFS.

millenium_psyrax · Posted: Thu Sep 16, 2004 10:44 am Post subject:

Finally, thanks guys. The whole point of being leet or not is moot. (In response to your question about a LEET alternative to OpenOffice that works with MS Word. I don't think there is any. Working with word and word format files is bad enough. Come on man, you are in Linux, use an open format. (Don't take this the wrong way).

I have looked through the Gentoo forum and seen a lot of people patting themselves on the back for not doing very much. Then when I saw a noob post what he thought would be some good ideas for Gentoo, I see him get shot down in flames and told to piss off. That ain't right.

I don't know what you guys do, but I am a computer scientist. I am not going to preach or anything, but nothing ever gets done by picking on an idea, if it is bad (which I don't think the post that started this whole discussion is bad). If you don't agree with it, just move on, but if you agree with it slightly and think, not bad, but be good if it did this, well, say so. But give constructive criticism. Every good idea today was at one stage told it was a bullshit idea and unfortunately a lot of good ideas were shot in the foot because of this attitude of people.

It doesn't cost you anything to let him to say his piece. For instance, I think using an MS closed format is ludicrous under Linux, but obviously a lot of people don't. I don't go running around, picking shit on some guy when he says "Hey, OpenOffice won't compile". But I never will use OpenOffice. But computer scientists are known to see things a little differently, we ain't so worried about banners and flags, just worried about the most efficient way of getting something done.

In case you are interested though, I do all my documents in XML (quite often using the docbook format, but if it don't fit the semantics properly, I make my own schema), edit them in Emacs (see, I don't go picking shit on nano users now do I) and convert them to whatever format I want (PDF for sending via email, PostScript for printing and XHTML for web). BTW I can't wait till browsers are a little more XML standard compliant.

Have a good day guys
_________________
Define ironic: Java (noun) a unicode using Objective C whose claim to portability fame is having a compiler that can only compile code for ONE architecture, a slow virtual machine.

(c) Craig Sproule freely redistributable under the GPL version 1.2.

millenium_psyrax · Posted: Thu Sep 16, 2004 10:58 am Post subject:

djm · Posted: Thu Sep 16, 2004 11:04 am Post subject:

Whether or not Gentoo should have a GUI installer is something that should be discussed though (though maybe the people who matter are discussing it) - and the fact that there has been a discussion means that it's not necessarily a bad idea, but just because something isn't a bad idea doesn't mean it should be done. (Not everything is 100% a good thing or a bad thing)

Not everyone can use an open format, some people need to use other peoples documents or have other people be able to use theirs. Openoffice has it's own format for the rest of the time, which isn't closed source

I really need to stop posting in this thread...
_________________
the forums.gentoo.org poster formally known as metal leper

miqorz · Posted: Thu Sep 16, 2004 11:06 am Post subject:

I like Gentoo - Don't get me wrong.

It just seems to be going the opposite direction of what I thought (let's not get into that again - I'm really quite sickened by being called an elitist asshole for having unpopular views.)

But yeah, that's about the gist of it - I don't like the ideas of a "distro" telling me which way they think is best to do something.

If I think something is best done one way - I want it done -THAT- way.

It seems as if there are very few Linux distros which cater to these needs and I thought Gentoo was one of them, but if this thread is any clue - They're willing to sacrafice all this for "ease of use".

If I really wanted ease of use - I'd use Windows. I like spending the extra hour so to get it -right-.

When in doubt - Look to Foxtrot.

http://left-foot.org/Images/foxtrot_linux.gif

millenium_psyrax · Posted: Thu Sep 16, 2004 11:21 am Post subject:

millenium_psyrax · Posted: Thu Sep 16, 2004 11:33 am Post subject:

castorilo · Apprentice Joined: 25 Dec 2002 Posts: 157

miqorz · Posted: Thu Sep 16, 2004 3:36 pm Post subject:

I couldn't agree with you more if this were say - a SuSE forum..

It just seems that it shouldn't be too much to ask that people wanting to use Gentoo should have to learn what comes along with that.

I can't think of many - if anyone - that walked out of learning what they needed to install gentoo with a sour face.

Just because something "isn't bad" doesn't mean it's all that good either.

ferr0084 · n00b Joined: 28 Mar 2004 Posts: 5

miqorz, you have a very unfortunate and unattractive attitude and I believe you've twisted the foundations of gentoo linux.

First of all, you must be a very smart man. It's clear from your posts that you view yourself far superior to those fools who don't have the time to invest in such valuable persuits as the understanding of the most intricate details of gentoo linux.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you've never owned your own business or been in a position of management because you've apparently missed the idea that time is worth $$$. Some of us can't aford to invest the days/weeks it takes to climb gentoo's learning curve. Some of us just love climbing the curve for the hell of it. You seem to be a curve climber and that's OK too but you should not insist that everyone else revel in the labours of learning like you do.

I fail to see how the suggestions that the orriginal poster made will impose any constraints on your freedom to the details. He just wants the option to not be burdened by them as well.

But my main point is that you've misunderstood what gentoo linux is all about.

Gentoo linux was born of the desire to make a powerful and flexible linux distribution that's easy to use and allows for extreme configurability. Hence the birth of Portage.

From the gentoo philisophy page...

miqorz · Posted: Thu Sep 16, 2004 5:53 pm Post subject:

It's funny most of these so-called experts who like to flame with the name calling have next to no posts.. :roll:

Do you really have nothing better to do than name call? Grow up - Seriously.

Stormy Eyes · Posted: Thu Sep 16, 2004 6:46 pm Post subject:

Like my current sig line says...

ferr0084 · n00b Joined: 28 Mar 2004 Posts: 5