state of Gentoo community?

Diabellical · n00b Joined: 15 Jan 2012 Posts: 1

While I am reasonably new to linux, everything I hear about Gentoo attracts me:
1. Great Documentation
2. Hands-Dirty = Learning
3. Infinitely Customizable

However given the investment time (not something I shy away from), I have heard some things about the Gentoo state, and Gentoo community which make wonder about the direction of Gentoo:

Kernel News:

hasufell · Retired Dev Joined: 29 Oct 2011 Posts: 429

I don't really know about all this drobins or not drobins stuff, but gentoo is still actively maintained.

The repository (portage tree) is split in stable and untested. Depending on your choice (or even a mix) update-procedure can be more or less complicated.
As for a full "stable" gentoo system there are no big updates of hundreds of packages unless you wait for half a year before you update the system.

Release process is not chaos, it is just rolling release. I never found myself left with a broken system after updating my "stable" gentoo.
Sometimes mixing stable and unstable can lead to solvable problems. Sometimes new versions of eclasses can break old ebuilds. People are quick on the bugtracker if it comes to that.

The main power of gentoo is that you can fix stuff yourself and that you got powerful tools which help customizing your system AND more importantly keep that level of customization throughout updates.
Basically you can customize any linux distro the way you like, but the convenience, efficiency and effort for different usecases may vary.

In my experience a failed compilation is much less "decapitating" than installing a broken binary-package compiled somewhere.
But all that depends heavily on the maintenance of a project and it's community.

Thistled · Guru Joined: 06 Jan 2011 Posts: 572 Location: Scotland

All I can say is this, I have used a few other Linux distros in my time, and since January 2009 have settled with Gentoo. (No turning back now :wink:

)
Sure, Gentoo has had its ups and downs (don't we / they all?), but problems usually get resolved.
Also, I have noticed the developer base has increased (or at least I get the impression it has) and the support is excellent.
It has the best documentation out of all the other distributions in my opinion (although ArchLinux is pretty good to - which is kind of Gentoo based) .
As for,

dol-sen · Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2012 6:14 am Post subject:

There were some more difficult times at times, but mostly those comments are exaggerations IMHO.

Recent times things have stabilized quite a bit. There have been many improvements in portage and package handling in general which automate things even more. Thus requiring even less user interaction to resolve.

Bottom line: Don't let some exaggerated/outdated posts about the state of gentoo discourage you from trying it. Just look at some of the recent "I'm Back" forum threads in this forum topic for an example.

[forgot] If gentoo was in such a bad state, then why is an entity as big as Google, using gentoo to create it's ChromeOS. Not to mention hire gentoo devs for various operations and develoment. [/forgot]
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phajdan.jr · Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2012 9:56 am Post subject: Re: state of Gentoo community?

Yamakuzure · Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2012 11:44 am Post subject:

I am using Gentoo as my main OS since 2003. At work all servers run debian, and while it is sometimes annoying to do administrative stuff with something as colorless and uninformative as "apt", I have seen worse. Thanks to the possibilities given by VMware, I tried various other distros in the last two years, like Ubuntu ("No, you are not allowed to do that!") or Arch ("Yeah, just do it, but every single piece by hand, please! (*)". I've always got the feeling that I am missing something important on other distros within seconds.
Thus if I changed, and I am damn sure of that, I'd ditch the other distro within days if not hours and come back anyway. So why leave?

Gentoos shape is great these days!

(*): Pakman is great, but installing a wm does not mean it installs xorg for you. :roll:

Edith just forgot: The only other "distro" (well, it is none, it is just a book!) is LFS. This I do to have the possibility to quickly build chroot environments with different toolchains. I need that for my work sometimes. But once I feel I have mastered LFS, I'll walk over to DIY Linux. (Quote: "Folks new to DIY Linux should first head over to the Linux From Scratch (LFS) project to learn the basics." - And thats what I'm heeding...)
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Randy Andy · Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2012 1:10 pm Post subject:

Diabellical

i gave my statement also at the Linux User site (as Randy Andy), some hours after you've written these post here.

So here is the link for your information, if others also interested into you source of information of the review and the following comments.

http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/reviews/gentoo-12-review-the-product-of-an-established-community/comment-page-1/#comment-70915

Regards, Andy.
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hasufell · Retired Dev Joined: 29 Oct 2011 Posts: 429

I have to add...

not all things in gentoo are well documented, especially when it comes to writing ebuilds. In the end you are generally better off just reading the eclasses and do 'trial and error' because there are so many particulars about EAPI stuff etc you just have to find out and cant really read anywhere.
Some eclasses are not documented at all. That makes it incredibly difficult for new users to write working ebuilds even if they have the dev manual at hands.

The official (installtion) documentation is quite consistent, but outdated at some points and also lacks instructions for some stuff (e.g. grub2).
The official wiki is just starting over and is very small.
The unofficial wiki is great but sometimes it is more like a 'tinkerbox' with tutorials and not a place where you find the general information you are looking for. Despite those great articles about portage and useflags I think there is still no real consistent documentation about the gentoo mechanisms and their real extent. Many things you have to discover on your own or ask in #gentoo

In the end I dont miss much, because I can find it elsewhere on the internet. The documentation is 'sufficient', no more no less.

asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 8935

phajdan.jr · Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2012 5:03 pm Post subject:

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2012 6:22 pm Post subject:

Diabellical,

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, even if its wrong, outdated, predudiced ... and they have the power to publish it.

Install Gentoo and form your own opinion. After alll, thats the only one that matters.

I've used ~arch since the middle of 2002 and in nearly 10 years of Gentoo have only had a few nasty surprises at update time. The ~arch testing process ensures that these things don't happer to users of stable systems.

If you are not ready for a bare metal install yet, get VirtualBox for your native OS and install Gentoo in Virtual Box.
One thing you can't sample until you install and have problems is the Gentoo support community.
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hasufell · Retired Dev Joined: 29 Oct 2011 Posts: 429

yngwin · Posted: Mon Jan 30, 2012 5:47 pm Post subject: Re: state of Gentoo community?

phajdan.jr · Posted: Mon Jan 30, 2012 5:53 pm Post subject: Re: state of Gentoo community?

Ion Silverbolt · Apprentice Joined: 04 Nov 2004 Posts: 203

If anything, Gentoo is easier to use than ever thanks to improved portage and autounmask.

bobspencer123 · Guru Joined: 19 Dec 2005 Posts: 544

as far as I can tell Gentoo is not going anywhere though there will always be those who say or think it is or will.

Most every distro has it place in the linux landscape and imho Gentoo is the king of the source based variant and hopefully will always remain so.
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djdunn · l33t Joined: 26 Dec 2004 Posts: 810

i dont think i have 1000 packages to compile even if i emerge -e world
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Ormaaj · Guru Joined: 28 Jan 2008 Posts: 319

Martux · Veteran Joined: 04 Feb 2005 Posts: 1917

I am using gentoo as main OS for more then 10 years now. Always stayed out of politics and flamewars. It was never dead and hopefully will never die. The stability it has, even on ~arch these days is amazing. Still: setting up a backup solution is mandatory. What could be a bit noob-confusing is updating the config files. Rule of thumb: If you edited it manually, look into the changes before overwriting.
With the 1000 packages: On my system with KDE and what not are 822 packages installed with a very moderate memory footprint. *Any* other distro I tried or installed for friends has up to twice as much! Plus they all install a lot of crap and trying to update them to "upstream stable" sucks, if they are working at all afterwards (this means you, Kubuntu...). Not sure, Sabayon could be an exception.
I could go endlessly but you get the basic idea. As a last point I want to shout out a big "THANK YOU" to the glorious Gentoo-community which made me knowledgable of things like "5 minutes > thread solved or "one reply > thread solved" You rule buddies, let's go into the next 10 years

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