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ValerieVonck
n00b
Joined: 17 Aug 2017
Posts: 47
Location: Erpe-Mere, Oostvlaanderen
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 Posted: Sun Dec 03, 2017 11:07 am Post subject: My observations / rants about Gentoo 17.0 profiles & Gen |
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All,
I am only using Gentoo in Virtual Box, but in multiple versions:
- Gentoo Base (no desktop)
- Gentoo KDE Plasma
- Gentoo on ZFS
...
A couple of days ago, I did an | Code: | | emerge-webrsync && emerge -avuND @world |
, so far so good, but then out of curiosity I read the news, this truly shocked me.
New profiles were suddenly added (after more then 3-4 years), ok no problem, did what was said.
Did a compilation of about 1100+ packages.... the emerge -e @world broke down in the middle ...
Again, this did not bother me.
What is bothering me lately, it is that big changes are not communicated on the website / forums anymore.
- No update on the site
- (Barely) Updates on the handbook
- Announcement forum is only used as a paste bucket for GLSA (?)
- Sticky posts are originally from several years ago, which are no longer updated,
- Some categories of the forums are no longer relevant, (like amd64, ...)
- Bugzilla contains about +600 k bugs  (which are not resolved for ages)
- Wiki is out-of-date and swamped with old / incomplete articles, ....
Updates that I had to find on my own: hardened sources where going away, (posted on the site, profiles are still available) , kernel 4.14.x is buggy, move to new profile set, openRC article on news that bombed my install, ...
Even for me, it was hard to find what was needed to be done, only an incomplete (?) post of the person who has decided to update the profiles and let them loose in the wild.
Why does the Gentoo community not complain about the lack of communication / transparency about the changes & the quality of the documentation & the behavior of the people in the lead?
Is there still a community of end-users?
Is this distribution only aimed at dev's / admin's of the Gentoo foundation?
Like another poster said in another thread : https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1072256.html, I am also becoming frustrated about the lack of decency of certain developers / advocates / admins who are apparently do no appreciate the community,
toward the end-users of this distro.
Again, rebuilding the lot, see what happens.... 
And just asking a question, is this distribution still worth the effort and / or relevant????
And don't start saying it is all about choice, correct, but make an effort to foresee Quality Assurance so that the end-users truly can choose a stable environment..
Just my $0,02...
P.s. I am following / using Gentoo from 2000  
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Inter antecessum est melius
Last edited by ValerieVonck on Sat Dec 09, 2017 8:25 am; edited 1 time in total |
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bunder
Bodhisattva
Joined: 10 Apr 2004
Posts: 5934
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ValerieVonck
n00b
Joined: 17 Aug 2017
Posts: 47
Location: Erpe-Mere, Oostvlaanderen
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| Posted: Sun Dec 03, 2017 11:59 am Post subject: |
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Which I did, and it is my post...
My point being, for inexperienced users it is hard to find...
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krinn
Watchman
Joined: 02 May 2003
Posts: 7470
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| Posted: Sun Dec 03, 2017 12:20 pm Post subject: |
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| ValerieVonck wrote: | | My point beign, for inexperienced users it is hard to find... |
Inexperienced users that don't read the news because way to hard to find then won't switch to 17 profile, and they will get a message from portage that 13 profile is dead 6 months later (yes, just a message that it is deprecated, it won't mean their gentoo will be dead). |
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davidm
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Joined: 26 Apr 2009
Posts: 557
Location: US
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| Posted: Mon Dec 04, 2017 7:09 pm Post subject: |
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| ValerieVonck wrote: |
Which I did, and it is my post...
My point beign, for inexperienced users it is hard to find... |
The thing is though that these new users need to learn to read the news or else they will not make it administering their Gentoo box. This definitely is a distro where a certain amount of effort is expected of the users. If the user cannot even bother to read the news then they are lost and it probably won't work out. It sounds harsh but IMHO they either should learn to read the news or find a different distro.
I agree with what you said regarding some of the stickies, wiki, and the bug reports. But sadly I suspect that is due to lack of manpower (or womanpower). We (self included) need to step up a little more and try to contribute to make things better where we can. Gentoo is a community and we are all able to contribute to improve something we don't find adequate. |
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Mr. T.
Guru
Joined: 26 Dec 2016
Posts: 477
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| Posted: Tue Dec 05, 2017 6:49 am Post subject: |
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Personally, I plan to stop contributing.
Continue to express your point of view! It allows to apprehend the reality. - I reworded these sentences because the previously translation was misleading.
In my opinion, the current state (critical) requires that the developers exchange on the forum. In general, it would be beneficial for users that developers periodically participate on the forum.
helecho.
Last edited by Mr. T. on Tue Dec 12, 2017 6:37 am; edited 1 time in total |
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asturm
Developer
Joined: 05 Apr 2007
Posts: 8935
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| Posted: Tue Dec 05, 2017 9:36 am Post subject: |
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| helecho wrote: | Personally, I plan to stop contributing.
Continue to testify! The testimonies allow to apprehend the reality. |
Sense you make none.
@ValerieVonck: I see you complain about kernel-4.14. If you don't want to be hit by such bugs, don't accept ~arch keywords. It is simple as that. |
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Mr. T.
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Joined: 26 Dec 2016
Posts: 477
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| Posted: Tue Dec 05, 2017 10:27 am Post subject: |
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| Asturm, would you mind answering a few questions? |
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ValerieVonck
n00b
Joined: 17 Aug 2017
Posts: 47
Location: Erpe-Mere, Oostvlaanderen
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| Posted: Fri Dec 08, 2017 6:23 pm Post subject: |
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| asturm wrote: | | helecho wrote: | Personally, I plan to stop contributing.
Continue to testify! The testimonies allow to apprehend the reality. |
Sense you make none.
@ValerieVonck: I see you complain about kernel-4.14. If you don't want to be hit by such bugs, don't accept ~arch keywords. It is simple as that. |
@astrum, I know about the (tilde) keyword manual modifications in the ebuild...
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Ant P.
Watchman
Joined: 18 Apr 2009
Posts: 6920
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| Posted: Fri Dec 08, 2017 6:27 pm Post subject: |
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| helecho wrote: | | Personally, I plan to stop contributing. |
The green ink will surely be missed. |
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asturm
Developer
Joined: 05 Apr 2007
Posts: 8935
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| Posted: Fri Dec 08, 2017 6:40 pm Post subject: |
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| ValerieVonck wrote: | | I know about the (tilde) keyword manual modifications in the ebuild... |
That's not a sentence. What do you mean? |
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ValerieVonck
n00b
Joined: 17 Aug 2017
Posts: 47
Location: Erpe-Mere, Oostvlaanderen
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| Posted: Sat Dec 09, 2017 8:23 am Post subject: |
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| asturm wrote: | | ValerieVonck wrote: | | I know about the (tilde) keyword manual modifications in the ebuild... |
That's not a sentence. What do you mean? |
Modify any of these two files to set the machine on "testing" / "unstable" build / architecture:
| Code: | | nano -w sys-kernel/gentoo-sources/gentoo-sources-4.14.2.ebuild |
or
| Code: | | nano -w /etc/portage/make.conf |
| Code: | | ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~amd64" |
My Mac keyboard does not have a ~ key by default.
That sign is called a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilde: Tilde
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miket
Guru
Joined: 28 Apr 2007
Posts: 488
Location: Gainesville, FL, USA
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| Posted: Sun Dec 10, 2017 3:53 am Post subject: |
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I suppose there ought to be a wiki page for beginners on Gentoo lore. Information is around, but somewhat scattered.
The thing is that, try as we might, such a page will always be incomplete--either from omission of things that someone forgot to say or when new circumstances arise. Yes, there are some things that have come up in Gentoo that are not adverted to in any of the normal channels. Yes, developers have been called to task for such omissions. It can take a lot of head-scratching on the part of the community to figure out what to do.
At least there has been discussion on the 17.0 profiles as well as discussion about how to get around some of the issues they raise.
That said, there is always a lot to say for going through the experience of trying things out. As the Spanish poet Antonio Machado wrote "[C]aminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar." ("Traveller, there are no roads; roads are made by walking"). The more you encounter of little problems and of their solutions, the better you get at figuring things out.
| ValerieVonck wrote: | | I know about the (tilde) keyword manual modifications in the ebuild... |
Actually, I had no problem parsing that. The basic thing is that you knowingly accepted a unstable version of the kernel. There are a lot of people who run with everything as ~amd64, but I don't think that is most of us. I hope that you were able to revert to an older kernel version. It's good to keep those around exactly for this kind of contingency.
Sorry you have a keyboard that doesn't let you type the ~ character. How in the world are you supposed to type in Spanish (or Portuguese or Vietnamese) on a keyboard like that? The typical way I do that is to switch to the US English international keyboard then type ~ then n to get an ñ. The same scheme is available in many other keyboard layouts. The key has other common uses, such as the bitwise-NOT operator in C. Apple left you in a lurch. Of course, maybe it's a gentle nudge for you to avoid going with ~amd64 full time 
Finally, I have a question for you. Your signature has "Inter antecessum est melius". This has me perplexed. Melius is the neuter nominative singular of melior ("better") and this agrees in number with the verb (est). So "(something) is better" or, say, "it is pleasant to do (something)". So what is (something)? "Antecessum" is the nominative or accusative singular participle of antecedere (to precede) yet the preposition inter usually takes a plural object (as in "inter alia" meaning "among others"). So what does the expression mean? |
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ValerieVonck
n00b
Joined: 17 Aug 2017
Posts: 47
Location: Erpe-Mere, Oostvlaanderen
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| Posted: Sun Dec 10, 2017 10:07 am Post subject: |
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@ miket
Thank you, you got my point.
Also, the developers of Gentoo are doing their best, that I must acknowledge, because they are doing a good job!
As a former developer myself, I know what dead-lines are, but in my current as Test Lead / Manager, I am looking @ Gentoo from a Quality Assurance point of view.
For my keyboard, I can use the tilde in Virtual Box, not in macOS. 
For the "rant" about the kernel, I was only asking in which state the kernel is for the moment, because at http://kernel.org the 4.14.x is listed as stable.
| Quote: | | Inter antecessum est melius |
is from Latin, rough fully translates as: In waiting / expectance of better times, this is from my personal life...
Kind regards,
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Zucca
Moderator
Joined: 14 Jun 2007
Posts: 3339
Location: Rasi, Finland
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| Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2017 2:26 pm Post subject: |
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| helecho wrote: | | In my opinion, the current state (critical) requires that the developers exchange on the forum. |
Afaik most of the devs discuss on the mailing lists.
| helecho wrote: | | Continue to testify! The testimonies allow to apprehend the reality. |
My understanding english segfaulted here.
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Gentoo IRC channels reside on Libera.Chat.
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miket
Guru
Joined: 28 Apr 2007
Posts: 488
Location: Gainesville, FL, USA
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| Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2017 9:48 pm Post subject: |
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| Zucca wrote: | | helecho wrote: | | Continue to testify! The testimonies allow to apprehend the reality. |
My understanding english segfaulted here. |
Funny, I didn't have that difficulty. The verb apprehend has a meaning in philosopy to indicate an operation of the mind in which it grasps ("siezes") the meaning of something. I understood that sentence to mean "Keep posting! Messages [in the forums] help [me] understand what is going on".
I'm a native English speaker with a good vocabulary and an interest in languages; I get to be pretty good at untwisting broken English. This example wasn't even a hard one. |
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Zucca
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Joined: 14 Jun 2007
Posts: 3339
Location: Rasi, Finland
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| Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2017 10:59 pm Post subject: |
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| miket wrote: | | I understood that sentence to mean "Keep posting! Messages [in the forums] help [me] understand what is going on". |
Ok. Thanks. The "apprehend" -part was clear, but I totally lost on the testimony -part.
But yeah. Sometimes announcements in the forums may not get the attention they need. I, however, have always read all the important news via eselect. If there's something unclear I search the forums. I maybe should also look in at those mailing lists.
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Gentoo IRC channels reside on Libera.Chat.
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Mr. T.
Guru
Joined: 26 Dec 2016
Posts: 477
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| Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2017 6:21 am Post subject: |
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Thank you miket, that's exactly what I meant!
I do not speak English well so I use a translation website: the sentences are translated approximately.
Testify and testimonies are not the right words. The right words are to show, to display, to express. |
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Tony0945
Watchman
Joined: 25 Jul 2006
Posts: 5127
Location: Illinois, USA
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| Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2017 2:41 pm Post subject: |
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| asturm wrote: | | ValerieVonck wrote: | | I know about the (tilde) keyword manual modifications in the ebuild... |
That's not a sentence. What do you mean? |
It has a subject (I), a verb (know) and an object (modifications). It is a sentence, even though it ends in three periods rather than one. |
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asturm
Developer
Joined: 05 Apr 2007
Posts: 8935
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| Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2017 3:51 pm Post subject: |
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| Let's not get silly here, you know it makes no sense as a response to my quote. And editing ebuilds in /usr/portage/ does not make any sense either. |
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jd2066
Apprentice
Joined: 04 Jun 2006
Posts: 155
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| Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2018 8:59 am Post subject: |
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| ValerieVonck wrote: | | [Post about News] My point being, for inexperienced users it is hard to find... |
The URL might be harder to find but as portage notifies you of new items, I don't think it matters.
As long as eselect news has existed, I have had no need to check the web site for news updates.
I started using Gentoo Linux around 2005.
I could be wrong but I don't recall the news feature being around at that time.
The improvements made to portage since I started used it to things such as dealing with blockers, rebuilding dependencies, news alerts, showing notices after an emerge to avoid missing notifications for some packages, etc. as made administration of Gentoo Linux a lot easier then when I started using it.
Regarding the main point of this topic, I'm not sure how much the things you listed really matter.
In theory the handbook shouldn't need many updates as I don't think many of the steps listed have changed that much over time (Could be wrong though, it's been a little while since I've needed to use the handbook).
Bugzilla and the wiki not having much activity does seem like an issue though I'm not sure how that would be solved.
Your kernel complaint is not valid if you had to unmask it to use it and had issues with it.
It's been the policy of Gentoo for quite a while that just because a package is marked stable by upstream doesn't mean the package will be marked stable.
The reason being that an upstream marking of stable doesn't mean it's stable for use on downstream distributions like Gentoo, just that for them they consider it stable.
So if the Gentoo package maintainer never said the package was stable for use on Gentoo and you used it anyway then the responsibility is on you to to deal with any issues encountered as it's not the fault of Gentoo that you used a version that wasn't marked stable.
Regarding the Profile changes, the issue for me was that there didn't seem to a lot of detail on the why of those changes.
The news item was just that a change happened and how to do the change.
Questions like:
1. What has changed that made PIE a must have for regular users and not just for hardened profiles?
2. What even is PIE? (Thanks to the forums, I now know more about it)
3. For Profile 17.1, what is the benefit of having a mulitlib system with no lib symlink? (I have looked at the bug reports and the forums and I'm still not really sure) |
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P.Kosunen
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Location: Finland
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jd2066
Apprentice
Joined: 04 Jun 2006
Posts: 155
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| Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2018 12:42 pm Post subject: |
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| P.Kosunen wrote: | | jd2066 wrote: | | 3. For Profile 17.1, what is the benefit of having a mulitlib system with no lib symlink? (I have looked at the bug reports and the forums and I'm still not really sure) |
17.1 is experimental testing profile, might not want to go there yet. |
Right, I'm aware of that and probably won't switch to it yet but I'm still curious as to the benefit of the change. |
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mv
Watchman
Joined: 20 Apr 2005
Posts: 6747
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| Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2018 6:23 pm Post subject: |
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| jd2066 wrote: | | 1. What has changed that made PIE a must have for regular users and not just for hardened profiles? |
Since it is upstreamed in gcc, practically any binary distribution uses it now. Not making it the default would mean that by default will be less secure than most other distributions with practically no advantage.
That being said, I dislike that it is package.force.used and not only default-enabled and thus users are IMHO pushed too strongly to enable it.
| Quote: | | what is the benefit of having a mulitlib system with no lib symlink? |
The benefit is only for exotic cases like gdb or for proprietary binaries.
On the other hand, there are no problems to be expected (once the corresponding bugs have been fixed which are now being reported in the teting period).
So a slight advantage compared to no disadvantage looks like a clear thing to me.
That being said, I dislike that other layout are no longer officially supported and thus agin IMHO users are pushed too strongly to enable it. |
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asturm
Developer
Joined: 05 Apr 2007
Posts: 8935
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| Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2018 6:31 pm Post subject: |
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| Since it requires rebuild of static libs on switch and may otherwise produce non-obvious failures, how else would you do it? It is not a use flag you can arbitrarily flip. |
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