The tuning part is downloading everything and re-compiling. That's just too much wasted time. Not necessarily I want an uptodate system. I don't want my BD4 version to change, in case it will become backward compatible and screw up my Subversion repositories. I don't want my glibc to change, in case my XXXXX stops working (and the list goes on).
I want to work with my OS, not work on it constantly, just to get it running most of the time. All binary distributions are friends of sysadmins. Source distributions are fun but they are also a pain. My apt-get/yum/up2date/urpmi/(insert pkgmgt system here) setup also keeps me uptodate with security updates but it takes a very small time to maintain such a system compared to the bandwidth of downloading every dependent source code and wasted time of re-compiling them.
Gentoo has its niche, especially in the Fun Things To Do department. I love to play with it, mess with it, break it. I don't like it when I need something running and I need it there and then.
Apart from the initial steps of using fdisk, mkfs etc. Gentoo is not teaching anything extra that you can't learn by using Slackware. It feels like more technical, it isn't. The main two differences between a Redhat/Suse/Mandrake installation and a Gentoo installation is, to be able to finish Gentoo installation, you have to read the manual, on the other hand, without reading the manual probably your Redhat/Suse/Mandrake installation will succeed. The second is you will be spending quite a long time undproductively, waiting for downloads and compiles to finish whereas Redhat/Suse/Mandrake will install within an hour.
Gentoo is fun. You should not get confused with something being fun and productive. Gentoo is not productive.
You won't be able to install Gentoo onto an obsolete box with 1GB of disk and a whopping 128MB of RAM unless you are very very patient and you won't have anything else but Gentoo on that box for some time. You can install Slackware on something even much slower and smaller. Redhat/Mandrake/Suse might not even work.
You choose what you want to use, the distribution should not dictate what you can do, you should be able to choose what distro to use for a particular role. SuSE 9.1 is a very good user/desktop distro (so is Mandrake 10). Probably if you want to run Oracle 10g, you will have to use SuSE SLES 8 (with all of its out-dated packages but you shouldn't care, the reason you are using that particular distribution is because Oracle installs and runs without any pain).
On the other hand I'm sick of wasting time on tuning my OS. I want it to work, out of the box, 100% of the time. Redhat&Suse work fine for that matter. If I want to run something on an obsolete box, Slackware is good enough and still takes less time to install and configure.
Gentoo is fun but it has no place on my servers and desktops. I have one image on a spare disk and when I'm in the mood, I can screw my system as much as I like.
Whatever happened to "Release early, release often"...?
It is still there but it pisses off your customers because they either bought it too early and missed some functionality or they got it too late and lost a lot of money because and it is too late to get the advantages of your product.
It works fine on amateur level, it stinks at professional level.
Probably you are living in the wrong country. A lot of WV Beetles from 70s are still running around in Europe. Ditto with Citroen 2CVs, Renault 5s, Fiat 131s (argh, I hate that car).
In UK, there are a lot of classic cars running around but the testing regime and the consumer society means that any car that's older than 9 years is completely worthless. I couldn't sell my Nissan (which was in perfect working order). I got my current car, a Volvo 940 for 450 pounds and probably I could have had it for much less.
Quite a lot of the 70's european automobiles are actually pretty high quality (unless it is British, they were rubbish).
Japan taught UK how to make a car reliable by importing Toyota.
There was one blossom of this plant a couple years ago in Cambridge, UK. Probably you remember that one. I was living in Cambridge at that time but never bothered to go and smell how it smelled. Now I live 10 miles outside Cambridge, I simply wouldn't bother at all.
You must be smoking some good crack. 1.2.x kernels were both stable and small. We had servers running 24/7 w/o any stability issues long long time before 2.0 kernels ever arrived to the scene.
In Soviet UK, that's called "Neighbourhood Watch Area", yellow & bright stickers. You can't move your house without some nosy neighbour disturbing you (been there, done that).
That would have felt safer, not be/make safer. The British goverment is doing the same mistake. They have this slogan "Bobies on beat" which is exactly what you wrote. Does it reduce crime? No way. Bad guys just wait until the constable walks away. On the other hand, the perception of being safer has increased. With the same money, they could have employed someone to sit in a patrol car, ready for action or get some more helicopter time where they can actually follow the culprit when the guys on the beat can't.
It is now almost 10 years since I used a real 3270 terminal. My Univ had an IBM mainframe and it was quite fun. It cost an additional three years to my degree. Playing with the mainframe was better than listenint to lectures.:-)
I might be confused it with Luna 9 which was the first spacecraft to do a soft landing on moon and transmit pictures but that might be me and my wishfull thinking.:-)
Lunokhod 2 wandered around for 37km and survived for about 6 months. That's a looooong walk.:)
When there is no more public interest and there is enough data to keep the people busy, what's the point? On the other hand, there are so many master/phd degree workers out there and these data can be used by so many. What you need is someone pointing the way. A lot of science can be done by recycling old data.
IMHO, Sedna is big and close enough. I think it's just the turf-war between astronomers: No one wants to admit the other guy actually found a nice planet. All this nonsense about planteoids and rest... Call all of them planets if you like, they still would be there, still orbiting sun.:)
Thinking of what 'planet' means in greek: Wanderer. It makes sense. It is a planet. It wanders around the sky.
Slashdot Mirror
Tsk tsk... Speed limit is 60 on country lanes. Be careful not to squash any hedgehogs, bunnies and foxes.
I want to work with my OS, not work on it constantly, just to get it running most of the time. All binary distributions are friends of sysadmins. Source distributions are fun but they are also a pain. My apt-get/yum/up2date/urpmi/(insert pkgmgt system here) setup also keeps me uptodate with security updates but it takes a very small time to maintain such a system compared to the bandwidth of downloading every dependent source code and wasted time of re-compiling them.
Gentoo has its niche, especially in the Fun Things To Do department. I love to play with it, mess with it, break it. I don't like it when I need something running and I need it there and then.
It isn't hard but it is very time consuming.
It's a shame that you have to be an AC to write such an insightful message.
Gentoo is fun. You should not get confused with something being fun and productive. Gentoo is not productive.
You won't be able to install Gentoo onto an obsolete box with 1GB of disk and a whopping 128MB of RAM unless you are very very patient and you won't have anything else but Gentoo on that box for some time. You can install Slackware on something even much slower and smaller. Redhat/Mandrake/Suse might not even work.
You choose what you want to use, the distribution should not dictate what you can do, you should be able to choose what distro to use for a particular role. SuSE 9.1 is a very good user/desktop distro (so is Mandrake 10). Probably if you want to run Oracle 10g, you will have to use SuSE SLES 8 (with all of its out-dated packages but you shouldn't care, the reason you are using that particular distribution is because Oracle installs and runs without any pain).
On the other hand I'm sick of wasting time on tuning my OS. I want it to work, out of the box, 100% of the time. Redhat&Suse work fine for that matter. If I want to run something on an obsolete box, Slackware is good enough and still takes less time to install and configure.
Gentoo is fun but it has no place on my servers and desktops. I have one image on a spare disk and when I'm in the mood, I can screw my system as much as I like.
It is still there but it pisses off your customers because they either bought it too early and missed some functionality or they got it too late and lost a lot of money because and it is too late to get the advantages of your product.
It works fine on amateur level, it stinks at professional level.
Definitions used in this post:
Amateur: not for profit
Pro: for profit.
In UK, there are a lot of classic cars running around but the testing regime and the consumer society means that any car that's older than 9 years is completely worthless. I couldn't sell my Nissan (which was in perfect working order). I got my current car, a Volvo 940 for 450 pounds and probably I could have had it for much less.
Quite a lot of the 70's european automobiles are actually pretty high quality (unless it is British, they were rubbish).
Japan taught UK how to make a car reliable by importing Toyota.
There was one blossom of this plant a couple years ago in Cambridge, UK. Probably you remember that one. I was living in Cambridge at that time but never bothered to go and smell how it smelled. Now I live 10 miles outside Cambridge, I simply wouldn't bother at all.
Coool! I'm downloading the XML format of the human genome now, then I can write a couple of java apps to browse through the genome. Really coool!
But we're working on high frequencies and I always wear my tin-foil hat while operating. :-)
Time to warm up the good old FT-847...
Oh well, I'm licensed for 5 years now. I can't find any use in day to day life but it is fun. That's what is important for me.
You must be smoking some good crack. 1.2.x kernels were both stable and small. We had servers running 24/7 w/o any stability issues long long time before 2.0 kernels ever arrived to the scene.
Checkout AMSAT. You can't get more FOSS than an amateur radio satellite.
In Soviet UK, that's called "Neighbourhood Watch Area", yellow & bright stickers. You can't move your house without some nosy neighbour disturbing you (been there, done that).
That would have felt safer, not be/make safer. The British goverment is doing the same mistake. They have this slogan "Bobies on beat" which is exactly what you wrote. Does it reduce crime? No way. Bad guys just wait until the constable walks away. On the other hand, the perception of being safer has increased. With the same money, they could have employed someone to sit in a patrol car, ready for action or get some more helicopter time where they can actually follow the culprit when the guys on the beat can't.
must go to bed. too many typos...
It is now almost 10 years since I used a real 3270 terminal. My Univ had an IBM mainframe and it was quite fun. It cost an additional three years to my degree. Playing with the mainframe was better than listenint to lectures. :-)
Try listening to amateur frequencies. Sometimes you can find intelligent people talking about technology. See you there. Ta ta.
Lunokhod 2 wandered around for 37km and survived for about 6 months. That's a looooong walk. :)
I'm an idiot, sorry, you are absolutely right.
As opposed to the odds of an 3270 terminal surviving my fury...
When there is no more public interest and there is enough data to keep the people busy, what's the point? On the other hand, there are so many master/phd degree workers out there and these data can be used by so many. What you need is someone pointing the way. A lot of science can be done by recycling old data.
Thinking of what 'planet' means in greek: Wanderer. It makes sense. It is a planet. It wanders around the sky.