[NEWS] New release strategy to provide more current media

Message

dberkholz · Post by **dberkholz** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 6:06 am

This forums thread is for discussion of the www.gentoo.org posting, "New release strategy to provide more current install media." Post your comments and suggestions here.

In future releases, Gentoo will focus on a more back-to-basics approach that will give you up-to-date install media on a regular basis and make much better use of our human resources. We're looking into automated weekly builds of the minimal CDs and stage tarballs as well as maybe an annual LiveCD release. We will keep you updated as we decide on the details of this new approach.

Consequently, we're canceling the 2008.1 release. The release engineering team has to reconsider its priorities—we overstretched our human resources during the prolonged 2008.0 release process. This caused too much stress for our release engineers and multiple postponements of the release.

You can help! The release engineering team is looking for new volunteers because it perpetually has a severe lack of manpower. We are particularly looking for people with a good grasp of ebuild development and the ability to debug/fix problems that crop up during building and testing of the stage tarballs and ISO images. We will update the staffing needs page with more details.

frenkel · Post by **frenkel** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 7:06 am

This is great news, the basic cd's and stages are the only things that matter to me!

sven_sol · Post by **sven_sol** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 8:14 am

to be honest, I've never used a full-fat CD, just the minimal install.

Good idea guys!

Sven

Dagger · Post by **Dagger** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 8:16 am

If there is anything I can help with, please give me a shout.

soth · Post by **soth** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 8:23 am

++ sven_sol
It's all I've ever needed.
Good decision!

Naib · Post by **Naib** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 8:28 am

finally commonsense returning

zaccret · Post by **zaccret** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 9:07 am

I think it is a really good strategy. As an actual user, I really rarely use the LiveCD. But the minimal CD sometimes helps (and for new users too), I hope you will soon be able to automate weekly builds of the minimal CDs, THIS will be the great new!

rogerx · Post by **rogerx** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 9:38 am

If the entire task of building the Minimal CDroms, go for it. I think, in the long run, will provide more stable Minimal Cdroms. (Noticed there is a bug present in the Minimal CDroms, but the LiveCD doesn't have the bug ... as such, I end-up using both.)

One thing to note, man files were not in the last CDrom builds. Not good when I need to manually execute e2fsck, once in a blue moon! (e2fsck -h is basically useless as it only outputs the more common options!)

As for releases, it really doesn't matter AS LONG AS Gnome and it's Libraries are unmasked in a timely manner! (I'd hate to wait a 1+ years for recently released Gnome releases! In the past, devs wait for the Gentoo Release to unmask such packages.)

One idea, is to get an text based user interface installer into the Minimal. And, then just roll the graphical installer on top of it for the big LiveCD. This way, the Release Team should only have to worry about the graphical user interface bugs. With a whole year to work towards a release, all bugs for the main (text ui) installer code should be worked-out by then.

Hey. Whatever works best as we're leading the way for the rest of the Distros!

andretti · Post by **andretti** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 11:56 am

I think this is a wise decision. Although I'm not an expert in gentoo, I feel quite comfortable using the minimum stage.

I personally believes having "guides to create" may be more useful than the Live CD and stage3 product itself. Nevertheless, if we teach more people to create (or there are more people around capable of doing it), this ultimately would ease pressure on human resources...

yoshi314 · Post by **yoshi314** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 12:52 pm

to be honest, I've never used a full-fat CD, just the minimal install.

i've never used gentoo's livecds. minimal or not.

recent knoppix or other livecd + fresh stage always did the trick.

i think it's good to focus on minimal install cds. they could come with elinks browser, for convenience, though

dstcruz · Post by **dstcruz** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 12:57 pm

+1 to that. I don't think I've ever installed Gentoo with a liveCD.

dirk_salewski · Post by **dirk_salewski** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 3:26 pm

There's one thing that caught my attention above all:

we overstretched our human resources during the prolonged 2008.0 release process

I know that the gentoo installer is discussed in another thread, but it seems to me that these two issues might be somewhat interrelated:

Some years ago Gentoo managed to become THE distro to use, out of the blue, despite an admittedly cumbersome setup process. I don't want to take the back-to-the-roots-position, stating that Gentoo is "c00ler" than anything precisely because of its remarkably rocky setup. On the other hand, though, that doesn't necessarily mean that Gentoo benefits from an installer when it comes to attracting new users or keeping existing ones with us. So, if there is some kind of management board that deliberately allocates developer resources to the installer, I'd vote to stop this practice and use the resources on release or anything else.

That wouldn't necessarily mean that development of the installer had to stop - it would just be more a related project than an official one, like e.g. paludis.

The best way to do it would probably be to make a poll about this. If it turns out that the installer is considered not necessary by the majority of the current user base but frequent releases or up-to-date firefox are, then I'd proceed accordingly. Happy users are the best advertisement for the project. So, if the overstretching of resources can be resolved in such a way, I'd second this proposition: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-70 ... aller.html

Greetings,

Dirk

chtof · Post by **chtof** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 4:16 pm

Hi ! Who can I contact to contribute ? Randomly one of the developers ? Or a developer who is in my interest and it will propose me some tasks ? In other words, how it works to participate to this project ?

juangiordana · Post by **juangiordana** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 4:28 pm

Take into account the design of this area on the web page, having to look at 100 places to download something is really annoying and will confuse people who wants to begin playing with the distro.
You should also recommend people or point, in some way, to use a thumb drive installation instead of burning a CD each time.

If I unsderstand well, there will be no GTK installer on it, just a weekly compilation of stage3 and portage tarballs. Please, clarify that.

dberkholz · Post by **dberkholz** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 4:45 pm

dirk_salewski wrote:So, if there is some kind of management board that deliberately allocates developer resources to the installer, I'd vote to stop this practice and use the resources on release or anything else.

There isn't. Since Gentoo's an all-volunteer project, people work on whatever they want to work on.

Xake · Post by **Xake** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 5:07 pm

This will go well with a nice release soon, release often...
That way if there is a minor issue it will soon be taken care of, and there will soon be a live-cd with the fix to try out.
Also if the liveCD/stages will follow portage, then we will not have problems like outdated kernel and/or utilities (have been bitten by this).
And I think having a livecd with recent things on could be a nice thing as those time I have been bitten by "old-things-on-live-media" hunting around internet finding a CD with the newer stuff can be pretty boring and time-consuming...

That said I hope the installer does not go away (and including the text installer on the minimal could also be a good idea for testing out the installer-core). It have saved me lots of time when setting up new machines. The only thing it currently lacks from my point of view is support for more choices. I would love to be able to install hardened (no need for GRP) with the help of the installer, and support for lvm/dmcrypt and alike. It does not have to be able to partition it, just install onto it.

node_one · Post by **node_one** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 6:02 pm

chtof wrote:Hi ! Who can I contact to contribute ? Randomly one of the developers ? Or a developer who is in my interest and it will propose me some tasks ? In other words, how it works to participate to this project ?

See [topic=702248]this topic[/topic].

SirYes · Post by **SirYes** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 7:17 pm

andretti wrote:I think this is a wise decision. Although I'm not an expert in gentoo, I feel quite comfortable using the minimum stage.

I personally believes having "guides to create" may be more useful than the Live CD and stage3 product itself. Nevertheless, if we teach more people to create (or there are more people around capable of doing it), this ultimately would ease pressure on human resources...

May I repeat that I was concerned about the installer the very moment is started to exist?
Just look at [post=2963718]this old post of mine[/post]. Now scroll back to today and call me a visionist.

Finally the installer became LiveCD, which now turned out to be troublesome to support. Oh, the irony.

On the positive note, I recently finished two fresh Gentoo installs on a new 4-core Phenom and Core2 Duo laptop.
Boy, they are fast! I hope you all devs will be okay.

elcugo · Post by **elcugo** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 7:21 pm

+1

I think the installer and LiveCD are a bit pointless for Gentoo, you only need to install ONCE, everything else is done via portage.

cassiol · Post by **cassiol** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 8:23 pm

helloo

are great news.
i think minimal cd is everything gentoo needs, but need add more hardware support.
i know are many new hardware, but if everyone help
for the minimal CD does not get too big maybe two minimal cds: desktop minimal cd and server minimal cd
are only ideias.

Xake · Post by **Xake** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 9:59 pm

cassiol wrote:for the minimal CD does not get too big maybe two minimal cds: desktop minimal cd and server minimal cd
are only ideias.

And what should de diffrence between them be? And the size of the current minimal livecd is not massive, and I do not think people will complain about it growing some megs for handling more hardware.
The minimal livecd is in the rest exactly minimal. The only thing it does (and should do) is leave you with a working network and a working shell you can do something from.

The only thing I miss is maybe an easy interface for configuring wireless, setting up a standard wep/wpa connection should not need so much work.

kernelOfTruth · Post by **kernelOfTruth** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 10:28 pm

sven_sol wrote:to be honest, I've never used a full-fat CD, just the minimal install.

Good idea guys!

Sven

++

I've always preferred the minimal install cd in favor of the full-fat CD

a related blog-entry: sad but there's a kernel of truth in it

I hope that gentoo won't disappear in the nothingness too far

long live Gentoo

I'm here, and I'm here to contribute (reporting bugs, sending in patches, helping out on the forums, etc. etc.)

Hwoarang · Post by **Hwoarang** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 11:13 pm

Ah I see

I agree with the new strategy . Seems better and will manage the manpower more effectivly

. Gentoo users are the most active users since the gentoo bugzilla has a huuuuuuuuuuuuuge traffic

.

Keep up the good work guys

Long live Gentoo !!

isilia · Post by **isilia** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 11:52 pm

Great news! I have to admit I used the live DVD once though.

d2_racing · Post by **d2_racing** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 12:02 am

That's a great news, I used to install Gentoo with the Stages and Snapshot by Daniel Robbins

It will save a lot of compilation time for a new user.

[NEWS] New release strategy to provide more current media

[NEWS] New release strategy to provide more current media

Minimal sometimes works, but usually the LiveCD always works

w00t!

How it works to contribute to this project ?

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