Nevergrading Gentoo

[halcon]

...Strange that nobody runs Gentoo on a toaster. This is an anomaly

[apiaio]

Maybe stupid question. English is not my native language. What does it mean

run Gentoo on a toaster

?

[halcon]

What does it mean

run Gentoo on a toaster

?

Something like this.

[apiaio]

And I thought that it is idiom or joke.

[Hu]

It was probably meant as a joke, but given the state of modern electronics, it's not absurd enough to be impossible.

[gtwrek]

run Gentoo on a toaster

For perhaps, a more realistic example of what I actually think fits this category. My outdoor water sprinkler system is running on a Raspberry Pi running Gentoo. I've not updated gentoo on it (or anything else for that matter) in 7-8 years.

It's an appliance, it does it's job => don't fix something that's not broken.

It's so far behind, to update, I'd probably just reinstall.

[dmpogo]

Yes, this is true. I was angry about that also because I also had different wallpapers for fast identifying (and I never understood the function of these "activities" - never worked with that ... but I am an old man ...)

I am an old man, and the sun set for me when they got rid of virtual desktops larger that the screen, and the concept of viewport that you can move smoothly over large area. In favour of windowmaker like workspace concept.

They got rid of that because it's been built into X for a decade now. man 1 xrandr

And used by what modern window manager ?

[Hu]

You don't need any particular window manager to use xrandr's panning capability, as far as I know. You need your window manager not to do something weird when your cursor hits the edge of the visible area, since you want the X server to handle that by panning around. Beyond that, just set the panning area via xrandr and then use the system.

[NeddySeagoon]

Panning can be set up in an xorg.conf.d/ fragment too.

Set the virtual desktop to be whatever you want.
Set a viewport to define the visible bit.
Take care to set the the initial position of the viewport within the virtual desktop or be prepared to not see anything but background whe Xorg starts.
The default is 0,0 which is top left.

When the pointer approaches the edge of the viewport, the viewport will move towards the edge of the virtual desktop.
It take a bit of getting used to.

[xahodo]

I do once a day too. Been considering doing so once a week instead.

[RobPearce]

I used to update regularly, to keep things "fresh", especially as attempting to upgrade after a long pause can be troublesome.
Recently, however, the Gentoo team are determined to shaft me and make it a completely useless distro. They are removing EVERY SINGLE F%"£ING PACKAGE that I use, and none of the "alternatives" are ever any good.
I'm seriously contemplating giving up Gentoo as a lost cause and moving to something like Fedora (despite its tendency to be hard to update). I will surely miss the ease of creating my own customised package set (and, indeed, my own packages) but short of forking the whole distro and managing it competently myself (way too much effort) I can't live with constantly battling the idiot maintainers.

[Banana]

I used to update regularly, to keep things "fresh", especially as attempting to upgrade after a long pause can be troublesome.
Recently, however, the Gentoo team are determined to shaft me and make it a completely useless distro. They are removing EVERY SINGLE F%"£ING PACKAGE that I use, and none of the "alternatives" are ever any good.
I'm seriously contemplating giving up Gentoo as a lost cause and moving to something like Fedora (despite its tendency to be hard to update). I will surely miss the ease of creating my own customised package set (and, indeed, my own packages) but short of forking the whole distro and managing it competently myself (way too much effort) I can't live with constantly battling the idiot maintainers.

Kinda harsh words, eh?

I think everyone here is open for suggestions and feedback und a civil maner. Feel free to open a new topic about your feedback, but not here.

[arnvidr]

Sounds like a manpower problem, not a "idiot maintainers" problem. I'm sure they would like help with the packages they need to remove because they can't maintain them.

[Tony0945]

RobPearce,
You have to maintain your own overlay. That WILL take maintenance work, Or fork packages yourself.
I hate it when a good package without problems is trashed just because "upstream dead since 2014".
We must get rid of the Windows mindframe that everything needs constant update or somehow evil spirits take it over.
A for-profit company has to push new new hew and use the well known FUD to generate new profits. A non-profit community effort will do better to embrace improvements, especially evolutionary improvements, but not change for the sake of change.

If you stick around you will find that, like any human endeavor, Gentoo has people and cliques. People that are hairless apes, not demigods. The same factions and fighting for dominance that is found in every human interaction from PTA meetings to military invasions.

Just like code, best to keep it small, clear, precise, and bulletproof.

EDIT:
For what it's worth, I'm considering nevergrading also. Last saturday entirely taken up by resolving blockers. Not a single desired package had an upstream change. I say desired package because there were a few library changes that may or may not have had an effect on my systems. I can honestly say that except for simplescreenrecrder, I have not seen any change in my computers performance or usability. despite man-weeks of effort in total.
What have the last five Xorg changes done for me? I'm sure they were good for someone, like gamers, laptop users, and such. But i have plain ordinary desktop PC's and am way too old to game. You may have noticed that i can barely see what I'm typing. I do have programs that I've been working on for literally years, but ninety per cent of my time is taken by maintenance.

[pjp]

I used to update regularly, to keep things "fresh", especially as attempting to upgrade after a long pause can be troublesome.
Recently, however, the Gentoo team are determined to shaft me and make it a completely useless distro. They are removing EVERY SINGLE F%"£ING PACKAGE that I use, and none of the "alternatives" are ever any good.
I'm seriously contemplating giving up Gentoo as a lost cause and moving to something like Fedora (despite its tendency to be hard to update). I will surely miss the ease of creating my own customised package set (and, indeed, my own packages) but short of forking the whole distro and managing it competently myself (way too much effort) I can't live with constantly battling the idiot maintainers.

Please do not refer to people as idiots.

How many of the packages are still actively being maintained upstream? How many of them have a dependency on Python 2.7? Those are the two most broadly applicable reasons I've "recently" seen packages being removed. And as mentioned, manpower might be a possibility. Do you have any ability to contribute to being a proxy-maintainer for any of the packages?

[OldTango]

Using cron jobs I sink my server nightly and my other systems sync to my server nightly. I run emerge updates once every week (two weeks max). Running stable systems rarely brings any serious headaches during upgrades. Yes they do occur but there easy to resolve at the same time. If upgrades go longer than two weeks, the number of packages can increase to more than 100. Even then I can do the upgrades on multiple systems in the background while working in a WIN 10 VM, watching videos on youtube and playing some Klondike all at the same time.

I find it more difficult to upgrade systems that have gone months without maintenance. I have one stable running system now that will require a re-install, but it is just waiting for new hardware to arrive.

If you want to whole experience painless and simple, then keep it simple.

Best Tango.....