Why I'm dropping recommendation of Gentoo

Message

Yuusou · Post by **Yuusou** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 8:58 pm

I agree with the fist post entirely. I don't care what the devs want to tell me, but Gentoo is unstable as of late. Remember the xorg-x11-7.1 breakage? Good god, you'd have to be really really crazy to put that into ~arch. I mean, ~arch has usually had some level of functionality whereas 7.1 had NO functionality at all. In my opinion, 7.1 hadn't left Alpha test phase before it was out in ~arch. BIG mistake there. Also, an issue I have with the community is that all of the devs have this thing where they say: "Why do you want to do that?" or "Why not do this instead?" Long story short, you devs are breaking your philosophy of freedom of choice by causing the users to always take the easy way out. In addition, a lot of times me and others I have seen get feedback such as: "You shouldn't be doing that" etc. So what? Let the user do as they will, your job is to help them in the ways you are able, not to ridicule them.

As for the short QA times, well yes, I do agree some of that is gone, but I still notice some packages getting into stable arch that really shouldn't be. Testing needs to be more rigorous and have a stricter policy of how to do it. Another problem I see is package removals. Sure packages like ipw2200 are replaced by kernel drivers, but you cannot deny the fact that those drivers don't ALWAYS work. As such, the Gentoo devs are breaking compatibility and their philosophy of giving the user choice. If you gusy want the users to have choice, you won't break compatibility. Don't give me the "no maintainer" excuse either. If there's no maintainer, find one, if you can't find one, don't update the package. It's better to have an alternative that works that is MAYBE slightly out of date than to have no alternative at all.

One HUGE issue I have with Gentoo devs, is the CFLAG recommendations. In all honesty, some of the recommendations for CFLAGS are ridiculous. So what if a user wants to use -O3 or -fomit-frame-pointer, etc? Let them do it. They work perfectly fine and I speak from experience. Just because they don't work for you, doesn't mean they don't work at all. In this kind of area, I feel that because the Gentoo devs don't like certain options, they hide these things from the users and ultimately the user is compromised. This is exactly the direction that Microsoft took and is continuing to take. Same thing goes for packages. Just because it compiles on one person's system with the absolute minimum CFLAGS, doesn't mean it is stable. Gentoo should be testing with harsher flags to ensure the flexibility for those who want to be what you devs so immaturely call "ricers". Real mature guys...

Honestly, Gentoo has gone way down hill since when I started using it when 2005.0 came out. The stability has crashed, the power remains the same, but the support and choice have almost completely disappeared and by this I am very saddened. Perhaps some other people will develop a system like Gentoo but with better user friendliness and better support and freedom of choice. Or perhaps Gentoo will stop acting like Microsoft and start being more careful of what their users are saying. Ultimately, the users decide what goes in Linux. By taking away options and by destroying compatbility and choice, you are defeating the entire purpose of open source and are ultimately heading down the road of Microsoft and Apple. Ban me if you want, but you know full well that this is true and if you don't want to admit it and change it, so be it, but I forsee the crash of Gentoo if something is not fixed. By that I mean that without listening to what the users want and giving them stable software, then the users will make like the poster of this thread and leave. What's left after that? Corn flakes...

Syntaxis · Post by **Syntaxis** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 9:57 pm

Yuusou wrote:[...]

Lol - are you perhaps really Eugenia Loli-Queru in disguise?

Dom Lachowicz wrote:Simply put, too many "squeaky wheels" like Eugenia have forgotten that, whenever they ask that a bug be fixed or a new feature be added, they're asking a developer for a favor. My mother taught me that when you ask for a favor:
* You ask politely, which may mean that you have to ask that person in a special manner (i.e. via bugzilla)
* You can't be overly-demanding, otherwise you'll be ignored (or worse...)
* If the favor gets done at all, it gets done on the favor-giver's timeframe
* If that person is unwilling to fulfill your request, say "thank you" and either go ask someone else, do it yourself, or forget about it entirely
* If/when the favor is fulfilled, express some modicum of gratitude to its giver.
I guess that it all boils down to the adage that "you'll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar."

[...]

By and large, we developers are here doing our thing because we like doing it. We really do like when others find our stuff to be useful - so much so that we might start paying a good deal of attention to what they're saying. But that doesn't mean that users get to decide how I spend my hour between getting home from work and passing out.

Remember that being a prat makes us like doing our thing less. And that means that not only is whining not getting you anywhere, it's doing both you and the community a disservice. And that won't work out well for anyone involved.

That's not to say that a non-developer can't complain from time to time, file bugs, or request enhancements. In fact, these things are encouraged, provided he/she follows my mother's protocol. It's heart-warming when I see how a bugfix or enhancement helps a user.

But you must remember that when you ask for help, you must tread lightly. You must criticize constructively rather than destructively. All told, you'd do well to heed my mother's advice. Keep a sense of perspective.

sageman · Post by **sageman** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 11:32 pm

golding wrote: Anyway, I started reading everything I could about configuration, setups, different distros and what little things I could do to enhance my system.

I kept bumping into pages and/or sites written from the Gentoo point of view, easily the most readable of any pages I could find.

Because of this, in mid '04, I decided to switch distros to Gentoo, and I must say, the best thing I did regarding Linux for me. About a year later I decided to become involved in the forums rather than lurking.

Same here. Used Slackware for a year or so and switched over to Gentoo in early 2004 (what a coincidence!) after I really understood the beauty of package management systems like portage. YaST and Redhat's dealie didn't work so great for me, and Slackware, well, just not as up-to-date and I was getting tired of hand compiling things like X11 (Xorg wasn't around/popular at the time), yeah, with the 'ol "./configure && make && make install" and then breaking stuff.

Switched to Gentoo and have had the same install since then in 2004, no re-installs at all (although I did have to "emerge -e world" before, when upgrading to the GCC 4 toolchain).

znmeb · Post by **znmeb** » Thu Mar 01, 2007 3:12 pm

Syntaxis wrote:
Q-collective wrote:
labrador wrote:Both redhat and debian make it possible to ask for only security updates.
Gentoo doesn't have it.
Ever heard of glsa-check?
Glsa-check is an improvement, but still not enough. True security-only updates would require backporting of security patches.

glsa-check is provisional -- it's functionality that is supposed to be merged into Portage itself, but that does not appear to be a priority.

Simius · Post by **Simius** » Thu Mar 01, 2007 4:28 pm

Syntaxis wrote:
Q-collective wrote:
labrador wrote:Both redhat and debian make it possible to ask for only security updates.
Gentoo doesn't have it.
Ever heard of glsa-check?
Glsa-check is an improvement, but still not enough. True security-only updates would require backporting of security patches.

(Repost from "Why I don't care if you are dropping recommend of Gentoo". I think there are lots of people who just don't get this, so let me repeat myself.)
I understand that you want a "stable" tree with backported safety fixes. I don't know whether you know what kind of a work that is - if you don't, I suggest you look into it. It's hard labour.

I'm pretty sure Gentoo itself - the Gentoo dev team, the Gentoo mirrors, etc. - will not do a "stable" tree with backported fixes. Gentoo is a bleeding edge distro, not a "safe" distro, and the Gentoo devs are pretty busy with keeping the system up-to-date.

That said, the infrastructure Gentoo has makes it more than possible for a third party group (like you and your friends) to fork the Portage tree, find rock-solid versions of each package, and start backporting safety fixes, and patches for hard-to-reproduce bugs that are still showstoppers when they do manifest... You could call it Gebian.

A repository could be set up, and if somebody wants to use it, he just changes his rsync server setting.

As you can see, nobody forbids the creation of such a tree. It's just that nobody really WANTS to create such a tree. (Many would WANT the tree, but none of them is too keen on getting down to the dirty work and doing it himself.) There is entirely too much pressure on the Gentoo devs to keep Portage on the bleeding edge, which, for multimedia work, certain software development projects, games, and the like, is much more important than having a 100% flubless system.
Especially if that 100% flubless system is 2 years behind its time.

So if you want such a tree, start organizing a developer community, and begin coding.

mimosinnet · Post by **mimosinnet** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 10:09 am

I find this thread difficult to read and I have been to some posts similar to this one (i.e., why gentoo sucks,...). I believe there are many interesting points made in it.

What gentoo is, what it means and what it should be seems to be something very important for the gentoo project and for its users.

For me it is a pity that all the effort in the thread gets unprocessed. For a comparison, it would as if everybody post their own script and there were no integration between the scripts each person posts.

A better way to read this information could be to have it in a wiki like wikipedia. All the agreements on the good and bad of gentoo, its strengths and weaknesses, the needed directions, could be displayed, discussed and improved. I see this thread as 'SOCIAL KNOWLEDGE' about gentoo, that complements the technical knowledge behind it. Would it be possible to have a wiki (like gentoo-wiki.com) where users of gentoo could improve this 'social knowlege'? When starting a post there would be many pre-discussed issues that not need to get repeated.

Simius · Post by **Simius** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 11:34 am

Drysh wrote:Possible: Yes
Easy: No

Sorry, I need a system easy to manage. If you said that the problems with using Gentoo in a production enviroment are solved, I would try. But saying it is possible won't solve my problems (and neither convince my boss). Debian for production, Gentoo to play.

Thanks.

You are certainly right in a way, but I think there are much finer points.
Gentoo, as I see it, is mainly a desktop distro - it needs constant attention. For a server that I turn on, and leave running for two years, I wouldn't use it either.
However, for desktop production work, like multimedia or programming, I'd use and recommend Gentoo anytime.

wzinet · Post by **wzinet** » Sun Mar 04, 2007 3:47 pm

jstubbs wrote:
jbannon wrote: This brings me straight back to my point regarding the ACE, BOOST and glibc libraries. Any strategy based on atomistic testing of system libraries is doomed to failure because such system-level libraries are so pervasive. The compiler farm will help and is good news but there is something more fundamentally wrong in the testing strategy itself: it apparently regards ebuilds as mutually independent when in actual fact they are not. A rethink is needed for library testing at least as changes to any system level library will require re-testing, and probably recompilation, of every dependent package. I appreciate that this is not very good news for the testers or for users but it is the only way I can think of to address such problems.
Or fix isses retroactively.

Seriously, we don't have the manpower to put in place that kind of testing policy. The only way I could see it happening is via sponsorship of full-time developers.

Two things:
1. Any Chance that Portage could get some sort of feedback mechanism built in. (I expect most users are too lazy to file bugs for stuff that gets fixed shortly after, so doing this automatically would help).
2. Can we set up a user-distributed compile-farm? I'm sure that we could use some spare cycles on users machines for the server farm. Personally I wouldn't object to my machine being used (with reniced jobs, provided I can stop the jobs if I feel like it)

As I see it, portage has a lot of connectivity to the server anyway, and what could be better than using the users as the server farm? It shouldn't be too difficult to maintain a log of "Compiled/Failed to Compile under these conditions" - being use flags, and dependancy versions. Then packages can be marked as stable when it compiles correctly over all conditions, rather than no bugs reported for a certain period of time.
It will also allow for packages marked as stable to be returned to unstable if a lot of people start having problems (>1%?)

Obviously some people will be unhappy with sending data back, but let them turn it off.

Beyond that I'm slightly shocked that it is possible to mark a package as stable if it's dependancies are not - that should be an automated check!

Keep up the Great Work though, Gentoo works for Me (TM)

steveL · Post by **steveL** » Sun Mar 04, 2007 8:17 pm

Simius wrote:So if you want such a tree, start organizing a developer community, and begin coding.

Well there is supposed to be a frozen tree project starting from 2007.0. We'll see how many users contribute to backporting security patches

Yuusou · Post by **Yuusou** » Mon Mar 05, 2007 4:19 am

In response to Simius' comments, I heard of a project already well underway to fulfill those goals. o.o

RDWest2005 · Post by **RDWest2005** » Mon Mar 05, 2007 6:23 am

I want to add to the first page.

I have not read all of this thread yet.
I will be back!

But let me add.

Take you userfriendly distro and loop through 100,000 inserts of 5 columns of short text data to mysql.

for ($i=0;$i<100000;$i++)

My Gentoo Box Will Tripple your Insert Time!!!

My Gentoo can Select * and Display 1.5 Million Records in (hehe- try to compete).!

Move on. This isn't a NooB Distro!

L8r guys

=p
~RD

pfadt_mann · Post by **pfadt_mann** » Wed Mar 07, 2007 1:09 am

I have given up on gentoo! The loading over the internet and the emerge process just sucks. If I hurt some feelings, I am sorry but there is just no other way to put it! For someone who understands enough to get in trouble but not enough to decide what kernel options of modules to add, and a real life, this is just too much!

I have tried for more than a week to get a working system and only have a base system, no X. The GUI's look real pretty and the concept seems great, but if it won't load it's just not usable.

I am tired of Gatesware and looking for a viable alternative but every distribution of Linux has its quirks. Redhat removes the MP3 from it's MM Players, Suse also limits MP3s and a couple other things, I can't even get Debain to generate a sound and the same with Slackware. There are many package handlers out there that are not compatible with other systems, ot very limited to the ones they are compatible with.

There has got to be a way to auto detect and load without spending 12 to 15 hours per installation attempt and a ayatem with real sound, videos cards that work, X Windows that finds the mouse ... etc. If I was young, and working on a Computer Science degree, the distro would be great, but that aint so. I am neither young nor board, just trying to find something better. I spend a lot of time redoing the same command because it breaks halfway through it and to ensure it's repeatable bug, it has to actually repeat. The emerge --unmerge doesn't recognize the same package it installs, like xorg-x11. Hell, I could go on and on about this fickle system but it's just not worth it.

I would pay money to get a decent system that competes with Windows but this installation process is actually making Gate's case for him.

I have better things to do than load software, or attempt to load software the rest of my life.

freelight · Post by **freelight** » Wed Mar 07, 2007 1:17 am

Gentoo is not for people who want to put little to no effort into their system. This distro is for people who like to tweak and customize their computer.
Install Ubuntu, it's what all the newbies are using. It's as close to no effort as it gets.
Note that with most distros, you need to add unofficial "non-free" (as in rights, not as in cost) repositories for things like MP3 and DVD support, due to legal/licensing issues. This is very easy with distros like Fedora, and a simple google search and/or look at their forums will do wonders.
Oh, and if our feelings were hurt whenever someone didn't have the attention span to read the documentation and successfully install Gentoo, we'd have organized a mass suicide by now.

PaulBredbury · Post by **PaulBredbury** » Wed Mar 07, 2007 1:19 am

pfadt_mann wrote:I have better things to do

Obviously false, otherwise you wouldn't have written this.

Try Arch Linux and/or Sabayon.

pilla · Post by **pilla** » Wed Mar 07, 2007 3:03 am

Merged some misplaced posts.

sageman · Post by **sageman** » Wed Mar 07, 2007 4:17 am

pfadt_mann wrote:I have given up on gentoo! The loading over the internet and the emerge process just sucks. If I hurt some feelings, I am sorry but there is just no other way to put it! For someone who understands enough to get in trouble but not enough to decide what kernel options of modules to add, and a real life, this is just too much!

Sorry, but just take a bit of offense to this, I feel like I have a a "real life", spend about 50-60 hours per week with my classwork (I'm a senior Electrical & Computer Engineer), and have a girlfriend on top of that

Had no problem getting it working when I was working 40 hours per week in the "real world" as an Apps Engineer intern over the summer.

pfadt_mann wrote: I am tired of Gatesware and looking for a viable alternative but every distribution of Linux has its quirks. Redhat removes the MP3 from it's MM Players, Suse also limits MP3s and a couple other things, I can't even get Debain to generate a sound and the same with Slackware. There are many package handlers out there that are not compatible with other systems, ot very limited to the ones they are compatible with.

Well, I've got MP3's and audio to work with Redhat, SuSE, Debain and Slackware all within half an hour of the install (and that's a high-end estimate). And that was year's ago. Hell, I got it working when I *started* using Linux, back with Debian when it had a 2.2 kernel (no built-in USB support at the time, as I remember, please correct me if I'm wrong, quite a while ago). I'm not trying to make a knock at you, just saying, it's certainly possible, if you know where to look.

pfadt_mann wrote: I would pay money to get a decent system that competes with Windows but this installation process is actually making Gate's case for him.

Ubuntu is a good way to go to have a Linux system that "just works" (for the most part), while sacrificing some of the low-level power/customization of Gentoo (at least, out-of-the-box, it's certainly directed at being that type of experience). Have you tried Mac OS X? With the ability to run on x86 platforms now, and the fact that you "would pay money", there really is no reason to try. It's got a lot of power, works "out of the box" and doesn't require you to really understand your system, like Linux (and especially, Gentoo) requires.

RDWest2005 · Post by **RDWest2005** » Wed Mar 07, 2007 8:50 pm

"Out Of The Box?"

Us, We, errrg, Gentoo End Users are about High Performance!

Put your out of the box to the real test.

1 Custom Gentoo Boxen will prolly out Perform a "CLUSTER" of your "Out Of The Box".......

I'm not trashing other distro's at all here.

They are great for NooooB's to get started in linux for sure.

=p

punter · Post by **punter** » Wed Mar 07, 2007 11:30 pm

RDWest2005 wrote:
"Out Of The Box?"
Us, We, errrg, Gentoo End Users are about High Performance!

Put your out of the box to the real test.

1 Custom Gentoo Boxen will prolly out Perform a "CLUSTER" of your "Out Of The Box".......

I'm not trashing other distro's at all here.

They are great for NooooB's to get started in linux for sure.

=p

I wouldn't consider gentoo as a high performing distro.... using gentoo is all about "configurability" and "being up-to-date with softwares/packages".

sageman · Post by **sageman** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 1:59 pm

punter wrote: I wouldn't consider gentoo as a high performing distro.... using gentoo is all about "configurability" and "being up-to-date with softwares/packages".

Absolutely, I agree, configurability of the latest packages is the main focus (in my opinion) of Gentoo.

RDWest2005 wrote: 1 Custom Gentoo Boxen will prolly out Perform a "CLUSTER" of your "Out Of The Box".......

Not quite

.

RDWest2005 wrote: They are great for NooooB's to get started in linux for sure.

I've been using Linux for 7 (8?) years, and Gentoo for the last 3, and I can say, sometimes you do want it to "just work" right "out of the box", and that's fine, doesn't make you a "NoooooB" at all. Gentoo on my desktop, but I use Xubuntu Live CDs up in the lab, so it "just works" after you plug it in. I don't care about configuring the install for the specific system I'm using; I just want it to work, and that's good enough. For businesses, having a distro that works "out of the box" and lets you buy support, so if something does go wrong some guy can come in and fix it, minimizing downtime, is incredibly important, and Gentoo isn't there (yet). I do agree with you, if it is your first experience with Linux, and you don't have the time or want to spend the time to deal with the details of your system, maybe Gentoo is not for you; however, Gentoo is not the only choice if you are a seasoned Linux user, as there are many other options to weigh.

I will acquiesce though that I get frustrated sometimes using another distro since I am so use to the low-level control Gentoo gives you and how it gives you that control. I hate tutorials for configuring something that is like "well, click here, then click here, then click here, etc.". Just give me a file in /etc to modify! Of course, this is not the average user's response (my friends call me a command-line junkie, which I totally am).

Simius · Post by **Simius** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 3:31 pm

pfadt_mann wrote:I have given up on gentoo! The loading over the internet and the emerge process just sucks. If I hurt some feelings, I am sorry but there is just no other way to put it! For someone who understands enough to get in trouble but not enough to decide what kernel options of modules to add, and a real life, this is just too much!

Gee.
This comment is so immature, if you hadn't written about not being young, I'd have thought you're in elementary school.

Well, I don't know what you have against Windows. I use Windows XP on a daily basis, and honestly, it's a damn great OS. Yes, Windows had its dark days around Win95, or Windows ME, but you know, for doing daily work, XP is just perfect. It's mature, easy to manage, and with a little self discipline, you can keep it free from spyware, viruses and trojans too.
Well, it costs money, but someone had to work on it you know.

UNIX flavors have always been an engineer thing. At the university, we use UNIX flavors. Large servers on the Internet - managed by engineers - run some flavor of UNIX. At home I use Linux - a UNIX flavor, that is -, but you know, I'm an engineer. I've been trained in this shit.
If you are willing to take a crash course on your own, and learn some things mostly taught on universities to IT students, go ahead and use Linux (and quit whining). If you are not, quit bashing those who are, and stick with Windows XP. It's a beautiful OS, there's absolutely nothing wrong with it.

BTW, "loading over the internet" is a feature. It's called an update service. Open source software has much shorter cycles of development than closed source projects - buying a new CD every 2 years is quite inadequate here.
In case you dislike downloading the latest software from the Internet, you REALLY should stick with Windows XP. I can't tell you enough times, it's a wonderful OS. Once its source code has been leaked, and the hackers who looked at it said the code is beautiful. It's a great OS, and it will give you no trouble.

freelight · Post by **freelight** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 3:50 pm

Simius wrote:In case you dislike downloading the latest software from the Internet, you REALLY should stick with Windows XP. I can't tell you enough times, it's a wonderful OS. Once its source code has been leaked, and the hackers who looked at it said the code is beautiful. It's a great OS, and it will give you no trouble.

You had me going until this part.

sageman · Post by **sageman** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 3:56 pm

Simius wrote: Well, I don't know what you have against Windows. I use Windows XP on a daily basis, and honestly, it's a damn great OS. Yes, Windows had its dark days around Win95, or Windows ME, but you know, for doing daily work, XP is just perfect. It's mature, easy to manage, and with a little self discipline, you can keep it free from spyware, viruses and trojans too.
Well, it costs money, but someone had to work on it you know.

UNIX flavors have always been an engineer thing. At the university, we use UNIX flavors. Large servers on the Internet - managed by engineers - run some flavor of UNIX. At home I use Linux - a UNIX flavor, that is -, but you know, I'm an engineer. I've been trained in this shit.
If you are willing to take a crash course on your own, and learn some things mostly taught on universities to IT students, go ahead and use Linux (and quit whining). If you are not, quit bashing those who are, and stick with Windows XP. It's a beautiful OS, there's absolutely nothing wrong with it.

BTW, "loading over the internet" is a feature. It's called an update service. Open source software has much shorter cycles of development than closed source projects - buying a new CD every 2 years is quite inadequate here.
In case you dislike downloading the latest software from the Internet, you REALLY should stick with Windows XP. I can't tell you enough times, it's a wonderful OS. Once its source code has been leaked, and the hackers who looked at it said the code is beautiful. It's a great OS, and it will give you no trouble.

Well, I don't know how "great" or "beautiful" you can really call Windows XP. Especially not the Home edition, which my Dad uses, which is just crap. Not trying to turn this into a Windows vs. Linux debate, certainly enough of those, but just felt an urge to make a few quick points.

*The fact that you even have to worry about spyware and viruses makes it a pain.

* It is completely unusable for me, just by the fact that it has a horrible command line. In my opinion, software should be command-line based, with GUI frontends; if you can do it in the GUI, you should be able to do it on the CLI, as a rule, with few exceptions. I have to install Cygwin just to get a decent command line, but that's just a UNIX environment; it's not an actual Windows CLI.

* Additionally, Windows gives you so little choice. Try installing a different window manager or, even better, a completely different windowing API; it is not trivial in Windows at all. Linux gives me the freedom of choice: KDE, GNOME, XFCE or, a little bit of everything, with tons of window managers. I really don't like the Windows WM at all, I find it just horribly slow and ugly.

* Windows XP is unusuable since nothing is modularized in the kernel; your graphics card crashes? Reboot. Always rebooting. Every time you make a tiny change, better reboot. That is horrible to maintain.

* Try setting up and running ssh, apache and imap with Windows. Not fun. Very (relatively) easy with Linux. Any OS or distro that doesn't think ssh (or a CLI in general) is vital isn't worth anything to me.

* I hate installing programs in Windows; it's so much easier in Gentoo. Just emerge it, versus find it online via some GUI, click to download, find the file, click to open, run through a graphical installer, et cetera. Updating the software? Forget it. No simple "emerge -u". Such a pain.

Is Windows "usable"? Yes, barely, but I would never call it beautiful. Windows Vista fixes a few of these issues, but most remain (bad CLI, no decent update-over-internet feature, no ssh out-of-the-box, just one WM).

Simius · Post by **Simius** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 9:58 am

sageman wrote:* It is completely unusable for me, just by the fact that it has a horrible command line. In my opinion, software should be command-line based, with GUI frontends; if you can do it in the GUI, you should be able to do it on the CLI, as a rule, with few exceptions. I have to install Cygwin just to get a decent command line, but that's just a UNIX environment; it's not an actual Windows CLI..

I don't think someone "with a real life" would care much about the command line. XD
I agree Windows has a criminal command line, but you see, nobody expects one to use the command line in Windows, so nobody put effort into making it better.

Yes, Linux has great features Windows doesn't have. I've never used XP home edition, but I use XP Pro daily, and - accepting that it's not a UNIX -, it IS a great OS. For me, it does what I want it to do. And that is about all one wants from any piece of software.
And as for beautiful, Windows XP is a well-designed OO project, I bet Microsoft plotted square miles of UML diagrams of it. As a software engineer, I think that is a Good Thing. Besides, for me, Windows XP looks and works seamless as a user experience, which means the designers did their job well.

BTW, if you used your Linux box with the same "security measures" as the average Windows user (ie. work and browse the web as root), you'd have to worry about spyware and viruses on Linux too. Make a non-privileged account for daily work, and Windows will be like 100 times more secure.

I'm not trying to turn this into a Linux vs. Windows debate... I like Linux, and do about 70% of my work on a Gentoo box. But this "four legs good, two legs bad" attitude is getting on my nerves. This poor lamer guy who doesn't even understand why he is required to download software from the Internet shouldn't be using Linux in the first place.

aidanjt · Post by **aidanjt** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 10:15 am

Simius wrote:I don't think someone "with a real life" would care much about the command line. XD
I agree Windows has a criminal command line, but you see, nobody expects one to use the command line in Windows, so nobody put effort into making it better.

Network administrators don't have a life and aren't important enough users? Actually Microsoft released windows power shell recently, another sorry excuse for a shell, although a mild improvement over cmd.exe.

Simius wrote:Yes, Linux has great features Windows doesn't have. I've never used XP home edition, but I use XP Pro daily, and - accepting that it's not a UNIX -, it IS a great OS. For me, it does what I want it to do. And that is about all one wants from any piece of software.
And as for beautiful, Windows XP is a well-designed OO project, I bet Microsoft plotted square miles of UML diagrams of it. As a software engineer, I think that is a Good Thing. Besides, for me, Windows XP looks and works seamless as a user experience, which means the designers did their job well.

Yeah, from a 'user experience' it 'works', from an engineering standpoint it's a total mess.

Simius wrote:BTW, if you used your Linux box with the same "security measures" as the average Windows user (ie. work and browse the web as root), you'd have to worry about spyware and viruses on Linux too. Make a non-privileged account for daily work, and Windows will be like 100 times more secure.

Uh, try plugging a Windows box directly to the internet (no NAT or software firewall), give it 15 minutes or so, infected. Linux has no such RPC vulnerabilities, also, *NIX has been designed from the ground up as a multi-user OS, every application that doesn't absolutely need root privilages works as a standard user, *NIX also discourages the use of 3rd party kernel modules. While again, the same can't be said for Windows, there are so many windows programs that force the need to run as Administrator because of stupid hardcoded paths, its just unbelievable, not to mention practically every program you install wants to have it's very own kernel module for the hell of it. Windows is essentially a single user OS with multiuser features bolted on, and that's been Microsoft's development methodology from the beginning, bolting crap on to a broken design.

Simius wrote:I'm not trying to turn this into a Linux vs. Windows debate... I like Linux, and do about 70% of my work on a Gentoo box. But this "four legs good, two legs bad" attitude is getting on my nerves. This poor lamer guy who doesn't even understand why he is required to download software from the Internet shouldn't be using Linux in the first place.

Well you effectively did that. I don't get pissed when people defend Windows because Microsoft are rich, but because they got rich peddling the worst operating system on the planet to the masses with FUD campaigns, blatant lies, and anti-competitive practices.

punter · Post by **punter** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 10:16 am

I'd suggest Ubuntu to whoever likes to use Windows.
I used ubuntu once..... it felt very much like windows.
95% of things worked out-of-box.... it provides you with excellent graphics and functionality.

but when I started to open a few apps and do things concurrently it started to slow down in responsiveness , just like windows.
I think ubuntu and windows are great in freeing the user from configurations.

I don't think gentoo would provide you with the highest performing system, but it certainly provides you with that consistency and overall efficiency that allows you to do faster concurrent operations.
I have yet to try FreeBSD, I think it would perform better if configured correctly.

Why I'm dropping recommendation of Gentoo

Re: Don't agree

Re: Don't agree

Re: Don't agree

I've been using Gentoo Around 2 years

gentoo: Too many issues

Re: gentoo: Too many issues

Re: gentoo: Too many issues

Re: gentoo: Too many issues

Re: gentoo: Too many issues

Re: gentoo: Too many issues

Re: gentoo: Too many issues

Re: gentoo: Too many issues