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Reformist
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 07, 2003 2:06 pm    Post subject: Optimization forum Reply with quote

Currently, posts regarding optimization info for gentoo are stuck between gentoo chat and tips and documentation. There are tons of posts on how people can make cd writing smoother, faster X & desktop applications, better framerates on UT, etc., as well as important server / job management and optimizations. A forum with that kind of info would be great for the users who get frusterated if their system is running too slow for their tastes and wish to read 10293120938 posts about optimizing gentoo, specifically. I know when I first installed gentoo the first post I wanted to read was various CFLAG settings for different environments (workstation, server, archs).
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garo
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 07, 2003 2:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think a optimalization forum is good idea.
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rac
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 07, 2003 6:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I have three main concerns, and if people can convince me on these points, I could be persuaded to support this idea:
  • Would it get enough traffic to justify a separate forum? The current bar here, for lack of a better one, could be Gamers and Players. If it would get as much or more traffic as G&P, that would satisfy me.
  • The layout of the forums now is Assistance/Discussion, and then domain or function specific under there. How does this fit in? I guess the forum could be called "Tuning Gentoo" or something, and go under the assistance group, but the moderators would have to give it a much wider berth than the other assistance forums, because, as Reformist noted, Tuning would draw some traffic from Chat. Can we do this without confusing the main forums layout?
  • Is this the most deserving new forum that could be created? There are other suggestions (an ebuild forum, a kernel forum, for example) that have been proposed.

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ebrostig
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 07, 2003 7:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I feel it is not The Right Thing (Tm) to do to create a new forum.

In order for most people to see posts regarding the subject, I think it is best left under the current forums. maybe even direct all optimization issues to Portage & Programming? That forum deals specifically with programming issues, and I think it would fit nicely here if anything.

Erik
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 07, 2003 11:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, I don't know about putting optmization under portage and ebuilds. Optimization postings do not have to be as technical as to pertain to portage or programming in general, but for example, using hdparm. The other forum request, "ebuilds request/postings" would actually better fit under there, but it would clog that forum with discussions about portage interspersed with specific ebuild request topics.

Also, rac, I would think an optimization forum would go under discussion. Those users are usually more advanced and can discuss certain options for an arbitrary setting and provide benchmarks etc. Some of the most popular threads have to do with kernel options for speed and functionality, like supermount and preemptive kernel processing. Lots of those could fall under optimization, many wouldn't.
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steveb
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 08, 2003 12:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

i think a new forum just for the optimization is not a good thing.

the only reason i would vote for a new forum for optimization would be, that it would be much easyer to search for messages about this topic.

but to be honest, i would rather improve the search functionality then producing a new forum.

the things i would like to see in the current forum would be:

more search options:

  • All words
  • Any words
  • Exact phrase
  • Boolean Search

a category for release:

  • 1.1a
  • 1.2
  • 1.4rc1
  • 1.4rc2

a category for platform:

  • ppc
  • x86
  • sparc
  • alpha

and the following things would help as well:

  • allowing to select multiple forums for the search query
  • more sort options (i would kill for a relevance rating)
  • allow to search within search results
  • allow me to use fuzzy search (find similar words or phrases)
  • allow me to use a search where word variants are searched as well (for example: a search for create will also find creates, creating, created, and creator)


to allow such a search possibility, it would be required that the post-message-form allows me to select or type in the needed categories.


cheers

SteveB
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 08, 2003 7:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yes, the searching could use some upgrades. If we're going to spend this much time talking about forum categories, we might as well modify the forum script and change a few things.

The searching really sucks, and is very picky about queries. "gnome2" turns up lots of topics, while "gnome 2" returns zero (using 'search for all terms'). "Abiword 1.1.0" yields _no_ search results, and yet there is a topic named "abiword 1.1.0" with that string mentioned many times:
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=17687
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rac
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 08, 2003 6:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Reformist wrote:
If we're going to spend this much time talking about forum categories, we might as well modify the forum script and change a few things.
There are two phases to any job: deciding what to do and doing it. When it comes to adding new forums, deciding what categories forums should go in, forum descriptions, the hard part is deciding what to do, everybody can participate, and everybody's contribution is equally useful. The actual doing is dirt easy, and any of the admins can do it in under 10 minutes.

One of the things that I liked about the Gentoo Forums when I joined was the organization of the forums. When we had the August reorganization, a lot of thought and discussion went into it. I think it improved the layout even more. So I don't think it's a waste of time to talk about forum categories.

Modifying phpBB's search feature is a whole different animal. In that case, the doing is very hard, and whoever does the doing must commit to continuing to maintain it across upgrades to the underlying phpBB software (or to doing enough advocacy that it gets integrated upstream). I believe I can speak for all the admins when I say that none of us have the time or inclination to do that now. What steveb is suggesting is tantamount to completely replacing the phpBB search function. If somebody wants to volunteer to do this, and also maintain it against future upgrades to phpBB, please post your willingness to do so here.

Quote:
The searching really sucks
"Sucks" is a pretty strong (and IMHO overly harsh) statement here.

Quote:
and is very picky about queries.
Here's how the phpBB search function works. Each post is split into words. First, some characters are replaced. There are three classes of characters here, those that get replaced by spaces, those that get elided, and those that get left alone. Next, whitespace is used to delineate words. All words of less than 3 or more than 20 characters are dropped. Then an entry is made in the dictionary table for every word that is not in the dictionary, so that it can be referenced by number. An entry is made in a colossal table for each and every word in each and every post. That's what gets searched against.

To get back to Reformist's two examples, gnome2 is a word. 'gnome 2' is two words, one of which is impossible to match because it is one character long. "1.1.0" is three words, each of which are impossible to match, because they are one character long. One modification that it might be feasible to make would be to change the status of '.'. If it were left alone, version numbers would become searchable. However, words at the end of sentences, followed by periods, would become unsearchable, because a separate entry would be made including the period. If it were elided, the end-of-sentence problem would go away, but then you would have to search for "abiword and 110", and "2.1" would become "21" and fall under the three-character limit.
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 08, 2003 9:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I didn't say forum topic discussion was a waste of time; it's very important, which is why I'm participating. I understand the forum is a popular script, and I think the search suggestions provided by steveb are good. Some would be easy to code, like a boolean search, and some not, like a gentoo-by-version search. The frontend of the search form could be modified, and for basic puproses, one could have a radio box for architectures, and the actual query would just have an "AND [arch]" appended to it. I don't think that's what the original poster had in mind, since the architecture would have to be mentioned in the post, but I think it serves practical purposes well. Changes such as that do not need to involve the original author of the forum script.
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 02, 2003 12:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think an Optimization Froums would be top quality! My gentoo box runs much slower than I would prefer, especially considering the hidden possibilities in my hardware. My level of skill at the moment makes the task a monumentally complicated one with all sorts of funny little words that are hard to remember! I think providing a centralized place for discussion of such matters would be a boon to the community! for example:
not long ago I posted a thread regarding performance issues with quake2 and a voodoo5 in the games forums, sooner or later, a similar thread was posted by a fellow user. neither thread recieved much responce and for good reason i think, i.e. who wants to talk about old hardware and games when there is new hardware and games that needs to be fully integrated. I think an Optimization/Performance board would be a great place for owners of old hardware to learn about each other's setups and how to best rig up their own.
here are a great many threads regarding optimization but they're hard to search. it's like trying to find out about sacred geometry in india, every reference you find will include it, but rarely will it be implicitly shown to you. An optimization board would also help alot of newbies (like myself) become ex-newbies, by familiarizing them with the higher up (or deeper in) levels of the modern gentoo system =)

cheers
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