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R0b0t1
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Joined: 05 Jun 2008
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 Posted: Mon Sep 04, 2017 9:13 pm Post subject: |
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| desultory wrote: | | R0b0t1 wrote: | | I have been using Gentoo for over a decade now, and my experience has shown me that the main barrier to contributing is bureaucracy. Many users feel like their contributions are not wanted, usually because it is hard to get the attention of the people who must approve their changes. Other users simply do not want to spend time navigating the project structure even if it is responsive. This is kind of sad, because it is usually these developers - the ones busy with other things, who just want to use Gentoo, and not maintain it - that have the domain specific knowledge that is necessary to fix or forward the bug reports that Gentoo users generate. |
Having been considering making such an offer for a while now, how about this: if you, in the general sense of the term, have some specific contribution that you want to make to Gentoo but cannot find how to go ahead with making it, contact me via my gentoo.org e-mail address and I will point you in the right direction? It might not be the fastest response in the history of e-mail, but I will at least give it a shot, consider the offer open on an experimental basis. |
I appreciate the offer, however I am not sure if I will be able to make use of it. Most users who could contribute seem to have a hard time figuring out how to contribute in a way that is accepted by most members of the project. Most users will not be subscribed to gentoo-dev nor will they be likely to look at the bugtracker. If they do neither of those things, how will they be made aware of problems they might be able to fix?
| desultory wrote: | | R0b0t1 wrote: | | There have been a few cases where developers have maintained their charges in a way that has upset many of their users and made knowledgeable non-developer contributors switch distributions or retract their help. One instance I can remember reading about on the user mailing list is the Gentoo games project. |
So, just to be clear, the one case that comes to mind of a team that was unresponsive to users is that of a team that was disbanded due to perceived lack of responsiveness? Given that the Council was at turns deferring and deliberately giving the team time to react or otherwise respond, timeliness seems the biggest addressable issue there. |
I may have misrepresented the complaints I saw. The exception that seemed to have been taken was that the team was being disbanded despite there being plenty of users still consuming the packages. Perhaps this wasn't the best example, but it still left users feeling like they were being ignored by Gentoo developers.
| desultory wrote: | | R0b0t1 wrote: | | During my time using Gentoo I have seen many proposed changes to the handbook, most of them insightful and useful. To my knowledge none of them ever made it into the handbook. |
Just to provide a bit of context here, proposals by whom, made where?
| R0b0t1 wrote: | | The only changes that have made it in seem to be those proposed by the clique of developers that maintains the handbook and individuals that have been in close contact with them for some time. |
Changes proposed by those maintaining the handbook and those in close contact with them would generally seem most likely to be implemented; as to whether those are the only changes implemented, while I lack specific data on that point I do doubt it. |
I don't really fault them for only considering additions that they are aware of, but one would think that if they are maintaining such a project they would be actively seeking useful contributions. Most additions are typically presented in an ad-hoc fashion in #gentoo or a related channel as someone experiences an issue with the material in the handbook. Needless to say they do not stick around long enough to submit material for consideration, but concerned users that I have seen try to follow up on their behalf seem to get nowhere.
Users who would contribute to the handbook seem to be doing other things now because it is so hard to propose additions. A good example is Sakaki's EFI Installation Guide. There are other users who have similar guides. The material in these guides would fit very well in the AMD64 handbook as it describes steps that are applicable to most AMD64 systems. Unfortunately, it seems like all handbooks are mostly a clone of the main template and do not yet have very many useful platform-specific steps in them, despite the separate architecture named handbooks existing, presumably, for exactly this reason. This could be taken further with provisions for allowing board or vendor specific instructions, and I suspect users would quickly find useful things to submit for consideration.
Last edited by R0b0t1 on Thu Sep 07, 2017 10:20 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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pjp
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| Posted: Mon Sep 04, 2017 10:45 pm Post subject: |
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| NeddySeagoon wrote: | gcc-7.2.0 mostly works. I'm using it on amd64, arm64 and x86.
Maybe you are worrying about stable? |
Does 7 "mostly work" more than 6? I was considering 7 (only just upgraded to 5 the other day) but had one package installed in the list of bugs being tracked. The list did seem fairly small. So I looked at 6 and was surprised at the number of open bugs listed in the tracker. My first guess was that 7 just hadn't been tested enough to find enough issues, but maybe 7 is just in "better shape"?
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Naib
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: Removed by Neddy
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| Posted: Mon Sep 04, 2017 10:50 pm Post subject: |
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| pjp wrote: | | NeddySeagoon wrote: | gcc-7.2.0 mostly works. I'm using it on amd64, arm64 and x86.
Maybe you are worrying about stable? |
Does 7 "mostly work" more than 6? I was considering 7 (only just upgraded to 5 the other day) but had one package installed in the list of bugs being tracked. The list did seem fairly small. So I looked at 6 and was surprised at the number of open bugs listed in the tracker. My first guess was that 7 just hadn't been tested enough to find enough issues, but maybe 7 is just in "better shape"? |
6 to 7 is pretty seamless
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ian.au
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| Posted: Mon Sep 04, 2017 10:59 pm Post subject: |
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| casualx wrote: | | ...<snip>I reccently compared some distros like arch, ubuntu and debian - debian and mint were pretty fine but with the others I just ran into problems...it was a nightmare and debian outdated in stable and testing/sid is another thing. Mint has no option for dist-upgrades or theyre mostly broken...</snip> |
Then,
| casualx wrote: | | ...<snip> the current state of gentoo make me feel worried in many ways - even gcc is so much outdated, compared to other distros like arch - still love gentoo but when I have a look at those important outdated packages I really feel sad...</snip> |
So what is the real complaint here? Gentoo stable is too stable? I really don't get your point. All I care about with gcc for example is that everything builds with it. If you want bleeding edge gentoo makes that simple too, start unmasking and sweep up the broken bits every now and then... subsequently you can file your bug reports or configuration tips, and before you know it you will have 'found a way to contribute', if that is really what you want to do.
This whole 'Gentoo is dying...' is pretty funny, I remember it being declared dead with the crematorium furnace being stoked a few times since I've been using Gentoo (which is since 2004 from memory, way before I ever had a forum account) - When DR left, when he returned  and more recently when Roy Marples left, yet here we are still, using the most configurable, stable and useful linux system I have ever found. |
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pjp
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| Posted: Mon Sep 04, 2017 11:01 pm Post subject: |
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| Naib wrote: | | 6 to 7 is pretty seamless |
6 didn't look worth switching to. If I'm counting correctly, 6 still has 83 open issues, while 7 only has 16. If GCC 7 has some 70+ undiscovered issues, then I'd avoid it. As it is, 6 looks worthy of avoiding due to the open issues.
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Naib
Watchman
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| Posted: Mon Sep 04, 2017 11:05 pm Post subject: |
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| pjp wrote: | | Naib wrote: | | 6 to 7 is pretty seamless |
6 didn't look worth switching to. If I'm counting correctly, 6 still has 83 open issues, while 7 only has 16. If GCC 7 has some 70+ undiscovered issues, then I'd avoid it. As it is, 6 looks worthy of avoiding due to the open issues. |
reasonable point of view. I will say 7 is very strict and a lot of packages have had to be patched (immediately by upstream or intermediate patches). Now whether this has improved how gcc builds object code who knows.
4 - 5 included the stdlib++ rebuild
5 - 6 was seamless
6 -7 was seamless
one could say 5 - 7 but I am not to sure how well gcc copes will building a newer version with a 2generation old compiler. It might work BUT you might have to entertain 5-6 for the tool chain, 6-7 for the toolchain then a possible emerge -e @system...
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ct85711
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Joined: 27 Sep 2005
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| Posted: Tue Sep 05, 2017 2:11 am Post subject: |
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I haven't used 7.2 yet as my computer died and I haven't reinstalled gentoo yet on the new machine (switched cpu from amd to intel, so a full reinstall for me). Otherwise, from my experiences with 7, is that there were only few issues that I encountered. The only significant issue I had with 77.1, was it's interactions with firefox, that supposedly been corrected in 7.2. I never did have any issues when I used gcc-6 on my machine.
Now that I think of with, I do recall a minor issue of lxc/lxd segfaulting when I shutdown/restart. That issue, I didn't get to troubleshoot that to figure what was causing that. |
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desultory
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Joined: 04 Nov 2005
Posts: 9410
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| Posted: Tue Sep 05, 2017 3:50 am Post subject: |
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| THE_CODER wrote: | Request Daniel Robbins Returns
How about facilitating the return of Daniel Robbins as BDFL? That should spur some life into Gentoo, he did want Gentoo in the first place and he placed up the history to the why as well. |
Having been around for that having been tried, I can tell you with some degree of certainty that it really would not work as well as you seem to be imagining.
| R0b0t1 wrote: | | Most users who could contribute seem to have a hard time figuring out how to contribute in a way that is accepted by most members of the project. |
Which was rather the point of my offer, if someone has a matieral contribution to make but cannot find how to get the process started, ask me. It does not get much easier than just ask.
| R0b0t1 wrote: | | Most users will not be subscribed to gentoo-dev nor will they be likely to look at the bugtracker. If they do neither of those things, how will they be made aware of problems they might be able to fix? |
Active developers can largely avoid the developer lists without all that much loss, but avoiding the bug tracker for a project while claiming to be actively looking for problems to fix seems highly suspect; even if they are already encountering problems which they want to fix, since they should be filing bugs about them.
| R0b0t1 wrote: | | I may have misrepresented the complaints I saw. The exception that seemed to have been taken was that the team was being disbanded despite there being plenty of users still consuming the packages. Perhaps this wasn't the best example, but it still left users feeling like they were being ignored by Gentoo developers. |
Games were not generally expunged; maintenance of games was decentralized which, if anything, increased the available developer pool for games work.
| R0b0t1 wrote: | | I don't really fault them for only considering additions that they are aware of, but one would think that if they are maintaining such a project they would be actively seeking useful contributions. Most additions are typically presented in an ad-hoc fashion in #gentoo or a related channel as someone experiences an issue with the material in the handbook. Needless to say they do not stick around long enough to submit material for consideration, but concerned users that I have seen try to follow up on their behalf seem to get nowhere. |
What did the ones who did follow up do to follow up?
| R0b0t1 wrote: | | Users who would contribute to the handbook seem to be doing other things now because it is so hard to propose additions. A good example is Sakaki's EFI Installation Guide. There are other users who have similar guides. The material in these guides would fit very well in the AMD64 handbook as it describes steps that are applicable to most AMD64 systems. Unfortunately, it seems like all handbooks are mostly a clone of the main template and do not yet have very many useful platform-specific steps in them, despite the separate architecture named handbooks existing, presumably, for exactly this reason. This could be taken further with provisions for allowing board or vendor specific instructions, and I bet users would quickly find useful things to submit for consideration. |
General addenda specific to any given architecture is precisely the point of having architecture specific handbooks, which itself tends to imply that the architecture specific handbooks would largely remain similar aside from such addenda. Material specific to any given processor or board is probably beast dealt with in documentation specific to that hardware, leaving the general handbook as a general guide. |
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unheatedgarage
n00b
Joined: 19 Sep 2016
Posts: 60
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| Posted: Tue Sep 05, 2017 4:14 am Post subject: |
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My journey was one from someone who literally couldn't care less about how computers worked, to someone who grudgingly made the switch to Ubuntu when I fried my Windows 7 partition (and was too cheap to run out and buy another copy), to fiddling around with other distros and realizing that Gentoo is, indeed, the most configurable and flexible system out there.
It was Gentoo that inspired me to go back to school. It was Gentoo that made me want to get a degree in computer science. I'm looking forward to contributing as a student, and maybe, one day, becoming a developer.
Also, a big shoutout to NeddySeagoon. Whenever I've waded into the ocean with questions, inevitably his posts have been there with answers. Thank you. |
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pjp
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| Posted: Tue Sep 05, 2017 4:59 am Post subject: |
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| Naib wrote: | | pjp wrote: | | Naib wrote: | | 6 to 7 is pretty seamless |
6 didn't look worth switching to. If I'm counting correctly, 6 still has 83 open issues, while 7 only has 16. If GCC 7 has some 70+ undiscovered issues, then I'd avoid it. As it is, 6 looks worthy of avoiding due to the open issues. |
reasonable point of view. I will say 7 is very strict and a lot of packages have had to be patched (immediately by upstream or intermediate patches). Now whether this has improved how gcc builds object code who knows.
4 - 5 included the stdlib++ rebuild
5 - 6 was seamless
6 -7 was seamless
one could say 5 - 7 but I am not to sure how well gcc copes will building a newer version with a 2generation old compiler. It might work BUT you might have to entertain 5-6 for the tool chain, 6-7 for the toolchain then a possible emerge -e @system... |
Thanks for the info. Maybe I'll try 6 and then 7. Upgrading to 5 only took ~12 hours for the final @world (I didn't pay much attention to the toolchain and @system times).
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Yamakuzure
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Joined: 21 Jun 2006
Posts: 2284
Location: Adendorf, Germany
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| Posted: Tue Sep 05, 2017 9:26 am Post subject: |
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| pjp wrote: | | Naib wrote: | | pjp wrote: | | Naib wrote: | | 6 to 7 is pretty seamless |
6 didn't look worth switching to. If I'm counting correctly, 6 still has 83 open issues, while 7 only has 16. If GCC 7 has some 70+ undiscovered issues, then I'd avoid it. As it is, 6 looks worthy of avoiding due to the open issues. |
reasonable point of view. I will say 7 is very strict and a lot of packages have had to be patched (immediately by upstream or intermediate patches). Now whether this has improved how gcc builds object code who knows.
4 - 5 included the stdlib++ rebuild
5 - 6 was seamless
6 -7 was seamless
one could say 5 - 7 but I am not to sure how well gcc copes will building a newer version with a 2generation old compiler. It might work BUT you might have to entertain 5-6 for the tool chain, 6-7 for the toolchain then a possible emerge -e @system... |
Thanks for the info. Maybe I'll try 6 and then 7. Upgrading to 5 only took ~12 hours for the final @world (I didn't pay much attention to the toolchain and @system times). |
I have switched to gcc-6.3.0 when it came to the tree, and am running my system all built with 6.4.0 now. Everything works just fine, including KDE Plasma, Palemoon (*), LibreOffice, and even Plasma on Wayland.
(*) Palemoon, however, needs one manual "fix". The merge will fail. "ebuild /var/lib/layman/octopus/www-client/palemoon/palemoon-27.4.2.ebuild merge" will complain, that "major" and "minor" aren't declared in some file. That file simply needs an "#include <sys/sysmacros.h>" at the top, then the build can finished with the above command.
... sigh ... unfortunately there is no easy way to report bugs @ palemoon.org. Or I am too stupid to find it...
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baaann
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Posts: 558
Location: uk
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| Posted: Tue Sep 05, 2017 10:50 am Post subject: |
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| Yamakuzure wrote: |
(*) Palemoon, however, needs one manual "fix". The merge will fail. "ebuild /var/lib/layman/octopus/www-client/palemoon/palemoon-27.4.2.ebuild merge" will complain, that "major" and "minor" aren't declared in some file. That file simply needs an "#include <sys/sysmacros.h>" at the top, then the build can finished with the above command.
... sigh ... unfortunately there is no easy way to report bugs @ palemoon.org. Or I am too stupid to find it... |
I was intrigued that an open source project would not have that readily available, so had a look and you are correct, not a mention! However Google threw up this
https://github.com/MoonchildProductions/Pale-Moon/issues
and the bug is reported |
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Yamakuzure
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Joined: 21 Jun 2006
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Location: Adendorf, Germany
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| Posted: Tue Sep 05, 2017 2:47 pm Post subject: |
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*yay* thanks a lot!
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Important German:- "Aha" - German reaction to pretend that you are really interested while giving no f*ck.
- "Tja" - German reaction to the apocalypse, nuclear war, an alien invasion or no bread in the house.
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pjp
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| Posted: Tue Sep 05, 2017 3:17 pm Post subject: |
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| Yamakuzure wrote: | | I have switched to gcc-6.3.0 when it came to the tree, and am running my system all built with 6.4.0 now. Everything works just fine, including KDE Plasma, Palemoon (*), LibreOffice, and even Plasma on Wayland. |
Thanks, maybe it won't as bad as it seemed.
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Yamakuzure
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Joined: 21 Jun 2006
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Location: Adendorf, Germany
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| Posted: Thu Sep 07, 2017 8:51 am Post subject: |
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| Yamakuzure wrote: | | *yay* thanks a lot! |
aaaaaaand fixed! 
| pjp wrote: | | Yamakuzure wrote: | | I have switched to gcc-6.3.0 when it came to the tree, and am running my system all built with 6.4.0 now. Everything works just fine, including KDE Plasma, Palemoon (*), LibreOffice, and even Plasma on Wayland. |
Thanks, maybe it won't as bad as it seemed. |
I am currently updating to gcc-7.2.0. Works like a charm so far!
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Important German:- "Aha" - German reaction to pretend that you are really interested while giving no f*ck.
- "Tja" - German reaction to the apocalypse, nuclear war, an alien invasion or no bread in the house.
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ShanaXXII
Apprentice
Joined: 29 Jun 2014
Posts: 283
Location: Canada
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| Posted: Thu Sep 07, 2017 1:34 pm Post subject: |
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More recently, I've been (trying to) contribute to Gentoo via package updates.
Mostly for my own benefits. 
E.g. a package is outdated or download url no longer works and I update it so its usable again.
I'm just concerned I might break an ebuild, 'cause I'm not very experienced in writing ebuilds.
Maybe when I have more time, I'll look to find other ways of contributing. |
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charles17
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Joined: 02 Mar 2008
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| Posted: Thu Sep 07, 2017 1:47 pm Post subject: |
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| ShanaXXII wrote: | I'm just concerned I might break an ebuild, 'cause I'm not very experienced in writing ebuilds.
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There are several tools helping you not to break it:And finally, the devs would never merge something breaking gentoo. |
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NeddySeagoon
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Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Posts: 54216
Location: 56N 3W
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| Posted: Thu Sep 07, 2017 2:21 pm Post subject: |
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charles17,
| charles17 wrote: | | ShanaXXII wrote: | | I'm just concerned I might break an ebuild, 'cause I'm not very experienced in writing ebuilds. :lol: |
... And finally, the devs would never merge something breaking gentoo. |
Never is a very long time but the devs try not to break things.
Packages of that are know to break things can be found in the tree in testing and not keyworded at all.
That's so that its easy for adventurous users to test and report what breaks.
gcc-6.x is a good example. Its in ~arch and has a tracker bug for things that are known to not work. gcc-6 cannot move to stable until everything on the tracker has been dealt with.
gcc-7 is in the tree with no keywords. It has a tracker bug too.
Once you stray off the beaten path in Gentoo you might "get eaten by a grue" but you don't need to start over.
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NeddySeagoon
Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail. |
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ct85711
Veteran
Joined: 27 Sep 2005
Posts: 1791
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| Posted: Thu Sep 07, 2017 5:46 pm Post subject: |
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One of more common mis-conception is that you would need to reinstall to fix a problem. This is rarely the case, and is generally only needed for when you are trying to update a really old system (>1 year between updates, generally are recommended that you reinstall) or you transition from a amd to intel (or vice versa) cpu, or trying to go form a non-multi-lib to multi-lib system.
Outside of those cases, it is rarely ever necessary to install the system. The reason is because it doesn't really solve the problem, and you are more likely to encounter the same issue again. You'll find there are several people around that have the same linux installation for over 8-10+ years, because you don't need to reinstall. I know my Gentoo system is over 6 years and is still going strong. |
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saellaven
l33t
Joined: 23 Jul 2006
Posts: 646
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| Posted: Thu Sep 07, 2017 8:23 pm Post subject: |
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| ct85711 wrote: | One of more common mis-conception is that you would need to reinstall to fix a problem. This is rarely the case, and is generally only needed for when you are trying to update a really old system (>1 year between updates, generally are recommended that you reinstall) or you transition from a amd to intel (or vice versa) cpu, or trying to go form a non-multi-lib to multi-lib system.
Outside of those cases, it is rarely ever necessary to install the system. The reason is because it doesn't really solve the problem, and you are more likely to encounter the same issue again. You'll find there are several people around that have the same linux installation for over 8-10+ years, because you don't need to reinstall. I know my Gentoo system is over 6 years and is still going strong. |
November 6, 2007 here. This system has survived numerous hardware changes, the drives have been swapped out, etc. I rebuilt world a few times in there, usually due to gcc upgrades or features in newer CPUs, but never reinstalled. |
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Jaglover
Watchman
Joined: 29 May 2005
Posts: 8291
Location: Saint Amant, Acadiana
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desultory
Bodhisattva
Joined: 04 Nov 2005
Posts: 9410
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| Posted: Fri Sep 08, 2017 2:44 am Post subject: |
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| ShanaXXII wrote: | More recently, I've been (trying to) contribute to Gentoo via package updates.
Mostly for my own benefits.
E.g. a package is outdated or download url no longer works and I update it so its usable again.
I'm just concerned I might break an ebuild, 'cause I'm not very experienced in writing ebuilds.
Maybe when I have more time, I'll look to find other ways of contributing. |
When you have questions: ask. Either on the forums or on IRC in #gentoo-dev-help or #gentoo-proxy-maint, or even one of the suitable mailing lists (though, as things are, I would not expect the lists to be nearly as responsive as the other options).
| NeddySeagoon wrote: | | Once you stray off the beaten path in Gentoo you might "get eaten by a grue" but you don't need to start over. |
With Gentoo, one can typically escape a grue just fine, if they have the time and interest to make a path out.
| ct85711 wrote: | | One of more common mis-conception is that you would need to reinstall to fix a problem. This is rarely the case, and is generally only needed for when you are trying to update a really old system (>1 year between updates, generally are recommended that you reinstall) or you transition from a amd to intel (or vice versa) cpu, or trying to go form a non-multi-lib to multi-lib system. |
Just to be pedantic, it is entirely possible to update a system that is over a year out of date without reinstalling, it just tends to be (a lot) less work to reinstall. |
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R0b0t1
Apprentice
Joined: 05 Jun 2008
Posts: 264
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| Posted: Fri Sep 08, 2017 7:24 am Post subject: |
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| desultory wrote: | | R0b0t1 wrote: | | Most users who could contribute seem to have a hard time figuring out how to contribute in a way that is accepted by most members of the project. |
Which was rather the point of my offer, if someone has a matieral contribution to make but cannot find how to get the process started, ask me. It does not get much easier than just ask. |
Most people likely have no idea what is useful. This kind of goes along with the advice in other threads about becoming a developer: if you're setting out to merely become a developer you're going to have a bad time, and should wait until you find something you can contribute to. This makes sense, but there's a lot of people suggesting efforts to get more people involved with Gentoo. That's a great idea. What are they going to do?
| desultory wrote: | | R0b0t1 wrote: | | Most users will not be subscribed to gentoo-dev nor will they be likely to look at the bugtracker. If they do neither of those things, how will they be made aware of problems they might be able to fix? |
Active developers can largely avoid the developer lists without all that much loss, but avoiding the bug tracker for a project while claiming to be actively looking for problems to fix seems highly suspect; even if they are already encountering problems which they want to fix, since they should be filing bugs about them. |
I agree, but my point was more that the bugtracker is self contained and not discoverable. For the average user when something doesn't work they just give up. I've been trying to get people to use the bugtracker but I don't know why they think it is hard to use, or what might be done to improve the situation.
| desultory wrote: | | R0b0t1 wrote: | | I may have misrepresented the complaints I saw. The exception that seemed to have been taken was that the team was being disbanded despite there being plenty of users still consuming the packages. Perhaps this wasn't the best example, but it still left users feeling like they were being ignored by Gentoo developers. |
Games were not generally expunged; maintenance of games was decentralized which, if anything, increased the available developer pool for games work. |
Perhaps I misunderstood what was happening. I have realized there are some users who like to complain. If I get the chance I will look over those posts again.
| desultory wrote: | | R0b0t1 wrote: | | I don't really fault them for only considering additions that they are aware of, but one would think that if they are maintaining such a project they would be actively seeking useful contributions. Most additions are typically presented in an ad-hoc fashion in #gentoo or a related channel as someone experiences an issue with the material in the handbook. Needless to say they do not stick around long enough to submit material for consideration, but concerned users that I have seen try to follow up on their behalf seem to get nowhere. |
What did the ones who did follow up do to follow up? |
I'm not entirely sure. Most seemed to give up. Personally, I only recently was able to find the Handbook project. Investigating the process for additions led me to conclude it's a lot of work to propose something extremely simple. Perhaps other people and myself have been complaining loudly enough that there have been some additions in that area, because I found more information in a minute or so than I did in hours of searching a couple years ago.
| desultory wrote: | | R0b0t1 wrote: | | Users who would contribute to the handbook seem to be doing other things now because it is so hard to propose additions. A good example is Sakaki's EFI Installation Guide. There are other users who have similar guides. The material in these guides would fit very well in the AMD64 handbook as it describes steps that are applicable to most AMD64 systems. Unfortunately, it seems like all handbooks are mostly a clone of the main template and do not yet have very many useful platform-specific steps in them, despite the separate architecture named handbooks existing, presumably, for exactly this reason. This could be taken further with provisions for allowing board or vendor specific instructions, and I bet users would quickly find useful things to submit for consideration. |
General addenda specific to any given architecture is precisely the point of having architecture specific handbooks, which itself tends to imply that the architecture specific handbooks would largely remain similar aside from such addenda. Material specific to any given processor or board is probably beast dealt with in documentation specific to that hardware, leaving the general handbook as a general guide. |
Right. I'm trying to say that there are really no architecture specific additions. I'm not suggesting users be railroaded into one installation path. It's just in the interest of preserving choice the handbook seems to not document anything at all.
I'm not necessarily saying huge sections on miscellaneous software should be put into the handbook proper, even for a specific architecture, but that links to pages which expand upon a subject or the configuration of a useful piece of software would likely be useful. This is what I was envisioning when I proposed that EFI or dual booting instructions might be "included" in the handbook.
Slightly unrelated: The state of the handbook is personally kind of odd. It gives a step-by-step tutorial on how to untar an archive, compile a kernel, and set up a bootloader, but then says "go configure your system." There's really no direction after you have your machine booting. A user who knows what to do at this point probably doesn't need to have the steps in the handbook broken out in the detail that they are. Granted, I tend to not use the desktop profiles. From reading discussions on the forum and mailing list it looks like a system will "just work" if you pick a desktop profile. |
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pjp
Administrator
Joined: 16 Apr 2002
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| Posted: Fri Sep 08, 2017 3:20 pm Post subject: |
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| ct85711 wrote: | | You'll find there are several people around that have the same linux installation for over 8-10+ years, because you don't need to reinstall. I know my Gentoo system is over 6 years and is still going strong. |
I used to do that, but stopped a long time ago. I usually wait long enough between hardware refreshes to need all new hardware. I also prefer to not disrupt my working systems while deploying a new one.
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Quis separabit? Quo animo? |
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desultory
Bodhisattva
Joined: 04 Nov 2005
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| Posted: Sat Sep 09, 2017 3:52 am Post subject: |
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| R0b0t1 wrote: | | Most people likely have no idea what is useful. This kind of goes along with the advice in other threads about becoming a developer: if you're setting out to merely become a developer you're going to have a bad time, and should wait until you find something you can contribute to. This makes sense, but there's a lot of people suggesting efforts to get more people involved with Gentoo. That's a great idea. What are they going to do? |
As previously noted, I strongly suggest starting by taking objective stock of what one has to offer and what one wants to learn, logically the next step would be offering to make use of those skills and inquiring as to where one could develop the desired skills. The former would most commonly take the form of encountering, in whatever manner, a problem which one has the skills to fix, producing such a fix, and offering it to those maintaining whatever the fix was to be applied to.
| R0b0t1 wrote: | | I agree, but my point was more that the bugtracker is self contained and not discoverable. |
Scroll down. Alternatively, go to the wiki, or the main website, check out the "Gentoo Sites" dropdown in the upper right corner. On the mailing lists, in forum posts, in IRC channels, and (as suitable) on the wiki, direct links to bugs are commonplace. The bug tracker has builtin search functionality. Given all that, it seems trivially discoverable.
| R0b0t1 wrote: | | For the average user when something doesn't work they just give up. I've been trying to get people to use the bugtracker but I don't know why they think it is hard to use, or what might be done to improve the situation. |
?Users who give up immediately whenever anything does not work are virtually guaranteed to make poor contributors, even in passing (which would almost by definition be their expected manner of interacting much less contributing).
| R0b0t1 wrote: | | Most seemed to give up. |
Give up after having done what? It is exceedingly hard to formulate improvements to a system when the failure points are unknown.
| R0b0t1 wrote: | | Right. I'm trying to say that there are really no architecture specific additions. I'm not suggesting users be railroaded into one installation path. It's just in the interest of preserving choice the handbook seems to not document anything at all. |
Having minimal architecture specific sections is rather more of a feature than a bug, it allows users who have done other installs to pick up with another architecture with minimal additional mental overhead.
| R0b0t1 wrote: | | I'm not necessarily saying huge sections on miscellaneous software should be put into the handbook proper, even for a specific architecture, but that links to pages which expand upon a subject or the configuration of a useful piece of software would likely be useful. This is what I was envisioning when I proposed that EFI or dual booting instructions might be "included" in the handbook. |
References to external guides would seem to fit the current management setup, your described experiences, and your functional desires better than actually integrating additional guides into the handbook itself. Given that the external guides can and would retain additional flexibility and can be maintained by those with more domain specific knowledge than the general handbook.
| R0b0t1 wrote: | | Slightly unrelated: The state of the handbook is personally kind of odd. It gives a step-by-step tutorial on how to untar an archive, compile a kernel, and set up a bootloader, but then says "go configure your system." There's really no direction after you have your machine booting. A user who knows what to do at this point probably doesn't need to have the steps in the handbook broken out in the detail that they are. Granted, I tend to not use the desktop profiles. From reading discussions on the forum and mailing list it looks like a system will "just work" if you pick a desktop profile. |
The handbook is meant to guide one through getting a basic Gentoo system installed, given the flexibility of Gentoo, a basic system is quite basic leaving whatever role the system is to fill to guide the process of filling out a mature installed system. |
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