[NEWS] New release strategy to provide more current media

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d2_racing · Post by **d2_racing** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 8:55 pm

If you have read the message from a former dev, I think that this thing is not on a good start at all.

zaccret · Post by **zaccret** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 9:38 pm

d2_racing wrote:If you have read the message from a former dev, I think that this thing is not on a good start at all.

As you said, this is a start and this is one dev. I think we should be patient, they've just changed the strategy a few days ago.

d2_racing · Post by **d2_racing** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 10:30 pm

Maybe, but this dev is not a normal dev. He was the leader of the Releng, so I think that this kind of comment can have some impact here.

I have read the reply from DR and I don't think it will be a walk in the park....

Etal · Post by **Etal** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 11:08 pm

d2_racing wrote:Maybe, but this dev is not a normal dev. He was the leader of the Releng, so I think that this kind of comment can have some impact here.

I have read the reply from DR and I don't think it will be a walk in the park....

As far as I understand, he left Gentoo, and now they decided to change the release policy...

nixnut · Post by **nixnut** » Sat Sep 27, 2008 8:06 am

AM088 wrote:As far as I understand, he left Gentoo, and now they decided to change the release policy...

Don't confuse a temporal order of events as a causal relationship between them. The idea to change how releases are done is not related to wolfo's retirement. He was actually trying to make that change happen.

Moonboots · Post by **Moonboots** » Sat Sep 27, 2008 12:17 pm

I find it difficult to read the intentions of DR , friend or foe ?

rogerx · Post by **rogerx** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 8:40 am

dirk_salewski wrote:There's one thing that caught my attention above all:
... opment 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
I agree. Also think the text ui installer is more then adequate. Too many things have gone wrong with gui based installers in the past 10+ years with other distros. (more time spent with eye-candy, rather then trying to fix more important bugs!)

arth1 · Post by **arth1** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 2:56 pm

Xake wrote:
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?

What Gentoo sorely lacks is a CD for headless installation on servers. Just try launching an installation CD with the serial hooked up to a term, and see how far you get. It's a shame that you first have to do a minimal install of another distro because the design of the Gentoo CDs makes the assumption that you have a graphics card and directly connected keyboard or mouse, Microsoft Windows style.

bastibasti · Post by **bastibasti** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 6:23 am

Hey Guys.

I havent used the Gentoo Install CD for Ages. I usually build my own Live CD and its really easy as I use a script (from linux-live.org) to build the CD. Like that you install a normal Gentoo with all the apps and just build the CD from it. Each directory gives you a module. You could for example updte the kernel by exchanging one module. The system uses AUFS, and like that you dont need to change anything on the install to make it work on the CD.

bladewing678 · Post by **bladewing678** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 2:50 pm

First of all, I apreciate the idea of weekly builds since I like the funtoo ones.

I have no use of the minimal CD, since I have a customly built CD which starts ssh and sends me a message including the DHCP IP etc.

So, I think the new prioritys are set well, BUT I'd like to be able to use Firefox 3 without switching my whole system to unstable

Gentoo is the only distri that really fits to me, since it's so customizeable, so go on devs, you are on the right way.

This is my last year of High-School, when I'll go to College I should have enough spare time to support the project (skills in C, C++, C#, python, java, bash and basic)

Till then

bladewing *tumbs up*

srunni · Post by **srunni** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 5:21 pm

I really don't see the need for a minimal CD. I always use SystemRescueCD installed to a USB flash drive, since it has a GUI, allowing me to browse the docs with Firefox.

What I would like to see is more frequent stage releases. Right now, I use drobbins' stages from funtoo.org, because the official ones are severely outdated. It would be nice to see ``official'' frequent stage releases.

bastibasti · Post by **bastibasti** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 9:32 pm

I think it makes a whole lotta traffic also on the mirrors. Why not providing a kind of script that installs a fresh stage3 into /mnt/gentoo from scratch? the LiveCD would have a gentoo system containing all build tools like portage tree and emerge etc, an would use ROOT=/mnt/gentoo

like this, you would not need to provide a stage3 and also you would build your own stage with the flags you want.

djotaku · Post by **djotaku** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 4:03 am

I'm curious what this means for Linux Magazines. They usually include distros that have recently released. What will be the release that gets them to put Gentoo on the cover disc and review the latest version. Perhaps for press release purposes there should be an official release at least yearly.

bastibasti · Post by **bastibasti** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 5:58 am

Yeah lets do a live cd each year with some cool edge-cutting software on it (everyone can see the good performance of gentoo) and an independent installer that will be included. I know it is totally against gentoo's philosophy to provide a binary installed system, but maybe there should also be a bunch of pr-compiled packets like X and DE's for a quick start. later the consumer could recompile.

I would offer my help on building this kinda live cd cause i feel like giving something back to the community...

I think the make.conf should be editable by GUI (cpu detection if non-i686 is wanted etc) but i guess writing some gui would take some time as there is enough time beeing spend on maintaining the portage tree.

andip · Post by **andip** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 10:33 am

im sorry if i've misunderstood things here, but why the fuck do you wanna focus on what's on the CD's? i mean, who the hell cares? once you've done very basic installing, you do "emerge --sync" before starting updating, and at that point you're totally off the cd's afaik.

imo it would be FAR better use of resources to focus on keeping portage _up to date_! something it's not been in ages. 2 very good examples that i know of would be firefox and kde. both are waaaaaaaaaaaaaay out of date in official portage. never mind what you can get by using overlays and keywords etc.

as you might be able to see, i've been using gentoo for quite a while, and have had few complaints, but this seems like a gross misplacement of effort.. i'm just hoping i've misread something, or missed something else completely, and thus misunderstood this topic.

balkira · Post by **balkira** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 2:21 pm

andip wrote:but why the fuck do you wanna focus on what's on the CD's?

I think there is a confusion between the purpose of a livecd and the purpose of an installcd (even though we merged them in a single cd). For a livecd we have to focus on the content (X/wm hardware detection). As for an installcd, one has no content (the net installer) and the other one (the offline installer) just has tarballs (or bins whatever).
My point is that the content of a livecd (blingbling compiz kde/gnome/wifi neat kernel modules) appears as a "frontshop" saying "hey if you install me here's what you can get" to all the people willing to try Gentoo: in my opinion, Gentoo has to focus on that at some degree.

andip wrote:i mean, who the hell cares? once you've done very basic installing, you do "emerge --sync" before starting updating, and at that point you're totally off the cd's afaik.

The newcomers care. They want to see the livecd first before diving into the mechanics (read hassle of change/learning) of adopting Gentoo. For well aware Gentooists, you're right, we do not have the same approach, a --sync is all we need.

andip wrote:imo it would be FAR better use of resources to focus on keeping portage _up to date_! something it's not been in ages.

Well an update a day is well enough for me, depends on the use.

baaann · Post by **baaann** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 4:07 pm

How would you present the typical Gentoo experience? Not only does it evolve constantly and therefore not fitting the constraints of a release cycle, but the multitude of install options available mean that to truly represent, a number of liveCD's would be required. If it is to draw new users, then I think that a minimal graphical cd including new media(possibly similar to the google chrome comic) as a means of demonstrating Gentoo's advantages, would be more beneficial

onefriedrice · Post by **onefriedrice** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 7:06 pm

bladewing678 wrote:So, I think the new prioritys are set well, BUT I'd like to be able to use Firefox 3 without switching my whole system to unstable

You do know that you can emerge unstable packages on a per-package basis, right? Or are you making a joke that there are so many packages (xulrunner, etc) that you have to switch to unstable, that it's virtually as if your whole system is switched to unstable? I can't tell which because you seem to know what you're talking about, but you also only have one post. Meh, whatever.

arth1 · Post by **arth1** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 7:25 pm

srunni wrote:I really don't see the need for a minimal CD. I always use SystemRescueCD installed to a USB flash drive, since it has a GUI, allowing me to browse the docs with Firefox.

Chicken-and-egg situation. You can't install from a bootable USB stick until you have installed a system you can produce the bootable USB stick with.

As for using Firefox for reading docs, that's all well and fine on a laptop or workstation, but it won't do you much good if you're connected to a headless server through a tty.

srunni · Post by **srunni** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 7:29 pm

arth1 wrote:
srunni wrote:I really don't see the need for a minimal CD. I always use SystemRescueCD installed to a USB flash drive, since it has a GUI, allowing me to browse the docs with Firefox.
Chicken-and-egg situation. You can't install from a bootable USB stick until you have installed a system you can produce the bootable USB stick with.

But that's no different from using optical media - you need a working system to burn the optical medium from.

arth1 wrote:As for using Firefox for reading docs, that's all well and fine on a laptop or workstation, but it won't do you much good if you're connected to a headless server through a tty.

And SystemRescueCD has OpenSSHD available. It's not like it won't work on a headless server. I used SystemRescueCD installed to a USB flash drive to install to a headless server. I just booted up, enabled OpenSSHD, and SSHed in.

bladewing678 · Post by **bladewing678** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 7:57 pm

onefriedrice wrote:
bladewing678 wrote:So, I think the new prioritys are set well, BUT I'd like to be able to use Firefox 3 without switching my whole system to unstable
You do know that you can emerge unstable packages on a per-package basis, right? Or are you making a joke that there are so many packages (xulrunner, etc) that you have to switch to unstable, that it's virtually as if your whole system is switched to unstable? I can't tell which because you seem to know what you're talking about, but you also only have one post. Meh, whatever.

It was a joke, my package.keywords is quite long and even longer on my amd64 machine.

onefriedrice · Post by **onefriedrice** » Wed Oct 01, 2008 4:28 am

bladewing678 wrote:It was a joke, ...

Yeah, sometimes those fly right over my head. At least I caught onto the possibility, though.

zaccret · Post by **zaccret** » Wed Oct 01, 2008 5:16 pm

baaann wrote:How would you present the typical Gentoo experience?

Really good question ! I wonder if it could be possible to let the user easily builds its own LiveCD from a minimal CD (or from a yearly released LiveCD). A user would have to make some of these choices :
- select its architecture (x86, amd64)
- choose CFLAGS or a pre-defined set of CFLAGS (or the CFLAGS could be automated, containing only -march=arch or -march=native)
- choose USE flags or a pre-defined set of USE flags (default-linux, desktop...)
- choose a desktop environment
- choose a pre-defined set of packages.
The kernel would be generated with genkernel.

Then the "LiveCD creator" would generate the LiveCD and burn it.
Maybe this "LiveCD creator" could be based on the installer.

ellingsw · Post by **ellingsw** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 4:12 am

What about the ebuilds in portage?

I noticed the portage tree is starting to suffer from bit rot. I'm finding more and more packages are outdated and ebuilds for newer versions are not being created. Don't ask me to name them because I'm having problems remembering specifics.

Is Gentoo reaching out to upstream developers and encouraging them to write ebuilds? Better yet, is Gentoo reaching out to upstream developers and encouraging them to use Gentoo for their development systems? I think Gentoo should consider both as this would greatly boost the amount of developers and keep the portage tree updated.

Also, I think Gentoo should reach out to companies using Linux and encourage them to use Gentoo for their development systems and maybe even production. This would also boost the amount of developers working on Gentoo as well and possibly testing of packages with a shortened unstable period.

vitae · Post by **vitae** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 6:53 am

zaccret wrote:
baaann wrote:How would you present the typical Gentoo experience?
Really good question ! I wonder if it could be possible to let the user easily builds its own LiveCD from a minimal CD (or from a yearly released LiveCD). A user would have to make some of these choices :
- select its architecture (x86, amd64)
- choose CFLAGS or a pre-defined set of CFLAGS (or the CFLAGS could be automated, containing only -march=arch or -march=native)
- choose USE flags or a pre-defined set of USE flags (default-linux, desktop...)
- choose a desktop environment
- choose a pre-defined set of packages.
The kernel would be generated with genkernel.

Then the "LiveCD creator" would generate the LiveCD and burn it.
Maybe this "LiveCD creator" could be based on the installer.

Your LiveCD creator == emerge catalyst

adapt one of the *.spec files to your need (useflags, stage, arch) and run catalyst -f your.spec

I tried it this weekend. It is not so difficult

[NEWS] New release strategy to provide more current media

What About the ebuilds in Portage?