So yes, Gentoo spends more time in package management because of compiling. So what? It's a choice! Get over it. If you don't like compiling all of your software, use a binary distro. I really fail to see the problem here.
Gentoo is not designed to fit all users, and the developers will be the first to tell you that.
Use whatever you like. Some people don't want or need the low-level control that Gentoo provides, or the rapid release process... and therefore Debian, Slack or Fedora is probably more appropriate for them. If that's you, then rock on with your binary distro. I suspect that most, if not all, Gentoo users don't really care. Someone else's OS choice is not for your benefit.
It will be interesting to see how many security exploits will be found in Solaris as a result of this, if and when it ever happens. That's a potential short-term liability for existing Sun customers, and some I bet won't appreciate it.
First, stop drinking IBM's kool-aid. Are your memories that short? IBM was a corporate monster before you had Microsoft to complain about. Forget their friendly facade at present, they're not your friend, even though it may seem so.
Like Sun, they do some good things for the community, but I wouldn't say it's been nearly to the extent that Sun has.
Stop and think about it. Sun in part, or in whole, gave the world OpenOffice, XML, Java, massive contributions to GNOME, and a vigorous voice against hijacking/breaking open standards as Microsoft was oft to do.
Sun's never been cheap, but they've been the friendliest UNIX vendor out there, and fighting the good fight.
So they've fallen off the horse competitively. So what if they're endorsing Solaris over Linux -- it only makes sense. They do have a better product for the kinds of tasks that business environments require. If you don't think so, you have to stop smoking crack.
You can brag about your webpage which runs on RedHat and hosts your blog, but Solaris is inherently predictable and trustable in critical situations. That costs money, but less money than it takes when shit goes wrong.
If you run Linux, you have to test everything like mad -- because of the nature of open-source and the way things change and break. With Sun's stuff, they do a massive amount of regression testing. Much of the testing burden you'd have to do yourself is gone.
Before you think you know so much, examine the realities of business and what Sun has done for everybody, and the industry as a whole.
Everyone conveniently forgets all of this in the midst of their Sun-bashing.
How much do you know about Java?
Sun makes money (or at the very least, offsets the cost of Java's R&D effort) through certifying third-party products for Java, and through licensing J2ME for mobile phones, etc.
Just think about how many mobile phones there are out there, and that a very high percentage of them are all wired and licensees of J2ME. The embedded space for them is paying off rather well, though it's probably not enough to sustain Sun's other business from being clobbered by Linux.
As for Apple... how nice it is to take a base technology like FreeBSD, hire some of the FreeBSD people who were building it solely for the LOVE, slap on a proprietary GUI layer and selling it for a profit?
A rose by any other name...
Apple is the master of the graphical UI (were and still are) and now they have the best of both worlds: solid u*ix foundation, apple's strength in user interface. Pleasing their core audience, pleasing a new audience (or should I say making converts out of some diehard *nix geeks), and advancing technology in one shot.
Well-played, I say... even if you aren't one to drink Jobs' kool-aid.
Apple is able to use free software because that is not their business. Their business is selling hardware.
People say the same thing about Sun. But last I checked, software was a big part of both businesses -- without software, there would be nothing to drive the hardware.
So you can say that the "core" of Apple's business is to produce hardware, but they cannot sell it without software. So in that sense, in any sense, software is vital.
Apple charges premium prices for their computers. [...] You don't think that they're being a "money grubbing whore"?
You're changing context here. This isn't about Apple. It's about the inevitable goals of the developers of open-source software, whether that be BSD, or GPL, or whatever license.
IMO, everyone needs to stop expecting to get a quick buck off any software they make, unless it's so brilliant that people can't live without it. Instead, think about the long-term impact of making something worthwhile that will, someday, benefit a large audience. Even developers of fairly small apps or libraries can find themselves meaningful, gainful employment because of it. It just may take awhile.
It's funny reading some of the/. readers... you'd think that nothing but the GPL exists.
Case in point. Apple is making money off of FreeBSD's technology. And likewise, some of the FreeBSD folks are making money by working for Apple.
Granted, it took a long while and a lot of hard work for that sort of arrangement to happen -- but it shows what CAN happen... and if you can live through the lean years, there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Try sticking by what you believe in, what makes your conscience rest easy, instead of being a money grubbing whore.
I don't notice the performance gains everyone else seems to be (subjectively without benchmarks) but it's not giving me any hassles. And I very much like the new xconfig & gconfig.
Also having ALSA integrated is one less thing I have to worry about now.
Thumbs up.
A lot of things have been greatly exaggerated. Evaluate everything on the basis of how well it works and how you are treated as a user. Don't listen to the FUD. The signal:noise ratio is -dev is not particularly good. Things are fine.
For the last 6 months, Gentoo has been white-hot in terms of new users and the rate of change. The team has been juggling a lot of new ideas, issues, and influx of new developers.
I'm sure you all can do the math in knowing when the # of users goes up, so does the amount of noise in Bugzilla and the forums (and IRC). But some of the policies and procedures hadn't been adjusted to scale with the spike in new users yet.
There are growing pains. The Gentoo "organization" came from a somewhat informal, immature development process that was well-suited to getting it up off the ground. That worked well in its time. However, we have a lot more users now; things have to change.
Inevitably, you end up frustrating two types of developers: those who agreed a change should happen but wanted it painted "RED" instead of "BLUE" (if you get my meaning), and those who liked things as they were.
Others yet don't mind the changes, but feel some of their proposals should be getting through in equal time/priority. It's frustrating for some, sure. People are busy and have real lives and paying jobs, etc. Working in OSS demands that you have flexible expectations of others, patience, and humility.
Daniel and Kurt's restructure plan may or may not be the best solution. We won't know for sure until 3-6-9-12 months from now, but it's a step in the right direction.
The whole point of these changes is to help scale the organization better, and improve communication -- all of which (hopefully) will give new ideas traction, and get them completed sooner.
I remain a Gentoo developer. For me, apart from FreeBSD, there is really no decent alternative for what Gentoo does well. From a my "developer" standpoint, it's a pretty simple thing. If I continue to have fun and learn while on the team, I will stay.
I remember Alan Cox saying once that he doesn't expect Linux to go on forever, but that parts of it will go on to form new things later on. That's an awesome statement because it asserts what I believe OSS is all about. Patent-free code sharing.
Zynot developers should be prepared to credit the Gentoo organization as appropriate for the work they have borrowed, and to pay close attention to the specific individuals who made contributions. We're all doing this for free, all that most people ask for (at the least) is proper credit.
Existing Gentoo developers should not be offended by the fork. Let's not allow ourselves to be balkanized by it. I'd jump at an opportunity to work with Zynot devs on a "shared" Gentoo-Zynot project in the future.
Ideally both will share code. I hope everyone can put their egos aside to let it happen when it makes sense.
I wish Zach and the others well in Zynot and I personally believe both projects can co-exist. And if either one fails in the future, hopefully the best aspects of both can be merged into a new whole again. That's the beauty of OSS.
Should be exciting (at least, as exciting as operating systems ever get)...
Slashdot Mirror
So yes, Gentoo spends more time in package management because of compiling. So what? It's a choice! Get over it. If you don't like compiling all of your software, use a binary distro. I really fail to see the problem here.
Gentoo is not designed to fit all users, and the developers will be the first to tell you that.
Use whatever you like. Some people don't want or need the low-level control that Gentoo provides, or the rapid release process... and therefore Debian, Slack or Fedora is probably more appropriate for them. If that's you, then rock on with your binary distro. I suspect that most, if not all, Gentoo users don't really care. Someone else's OS choice is not for your benefit.
Fools!
It will be interesting to see how many security exploits will be found in Solaris as a result of this, if and when it ever happens. That's a potential short-term liability for existing Sun customers, and some I bet won't appreciate it.
Check out this rant about ATI's broken promises for 64-bit and Linux...
Does this mean that Friendster will render a page in 29 seconds versus 30 now?
First, stop drinking IBM's kool-aid. Are your memories that short? IBM was a corporate monster before you had Microsoft to complain about. Forget their friendly facade at present, they're not your friend, even though it may seem so. Like Sun, they do some good things for the community, but I wouldn't say it's been nearly to the extent that Sun has. Stop and think about it. Sun in part, or in whole, gave the world OpenOffice, XML, Java, massive contributions to GNOME, and a vigorous voice against hijacking/breaking open standards as Microsoft was oft to do. Sun's never been cheap, but they've been the friendliest UNIX vendor out there, and fighting the good fight. So they've fallen off the horse competitively. So what if they're endorsing Solaris over Linux -- it only makes sense. They do have a better product for the kinds of tasks that business environments require. If you don't think so, you have to stop smoking crack. You can brag about your webpage which runs on RedHat and hosts your blog, but Solaris is inherently predictable and trustable in critical situations. That costs money, but less money than it takes when shit goes wrong. If you run Linux, you have to test everything like mad -- because of the nature of open-source and the way things change and break. With Sun's stuff, they do a massive amount of regression testing. Much of the testing burden you'd have to do yourself is gone. Before you think you know so much, examine the realities of business and what Sun has done for everybody, and the industry as a whole. Everyone conveniently forgets all of this in the midst of their Sun-bashing.
How much do you know about Java? Sun makes money (or at the very least, offsets the cost of Java's R&D effort) through certifying third-party products for Java, and through licensing J2ME for mobile phones, etc. Just think about how many mobile phones there are out there, and that a very high percentage of them are all wired and licensees of J2ME. The embedded space for them is paying off rather well, though it's probably not enough to sustain Sun's other business from being clobbered by Linux. As for Apple... how nice it is to take a base technology like FreeBSD, hire some of the FreeBSD people who were building it solely for the LOVE, slap on a proprietary GUI layer and selling it for a profit? A rose by any other name... Apple is the master of the graphical UI (were and still are) and now they have the best of both worlds: solid u*ix foundation, apple's strength in user interface. Pleasing their core audience, pleasing a new audience (or should I say making converts out of some diehard *nix geeks), and advancing technology in one shot. Well-played, I say... even if you aren't one to drink Jobs' kool-aid.
Apple is able to use free software because that is not their business. Their business is selling hardware.
People say the same thing about Sun. But last I checked, software was a big part of both businesses -- without software, there would be nothing to drive the hardware.
So you can say that the "core" of Apple's business is to produce hardware, but they cannot sell it without software. So in that sense, in any sense, software is vital.
Apple charges premium prices for their computers. [...] You don't think that they're being a "money grubbing whore"?
You're changing context here. This isn't about Apple. It's about the inevitable goals of the developers of open-source software, whether that be BSD, or GPL, or whatever license.
IMO, everyone needs to stop expecting to get a quick buck off any software they make, unless it's so brilliant that people can't live without it. Instead, think about the long-term impact of making something worthwhile that will, someday, benefit a large audience. Even developers of fairly small apps or libraries can find themselves meaningful, gainful employment because of it. It just may take awhile.
It's funny reading some of the /. readers ... you'd think that nothing but the GPL exists.
Case in point. Apple is making money off of FreeBSD's technology. And likewise, some of the FreeBSD folks are making money by working for Apple.
Granted, it took a long while and a lot of hard work for that sort of arrangement to happen -- but it shows what CAN happen... and if you can live through the lean years, there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Try sticking by what you believe in, what makes your conscience rest easy, instead of being a money grubbing whore.
I don't notice the performance gains everyone else seems to be (subjectively without benchmarks) but it's not giving me any hassles. And I very much like the new xconfig & gconfig. Also having ALSA integrated is one less thing I have to worry about now. Thumbs up.
Note: I am a Gentoo developer...
A lot of things have been greatly exaggerated. Evaluate everything on the basis of how well it works and how you are treated as a user. Don't listen to the FUD. The signal:noise ratio is -dev is not particularly good. Things are fine.
For the last 6 months, Gentoo has been white-hot in terms of new users and the rate of change. The team has been juggling a lot of new ideas, issues, and influx of new developers.
I'm sure you all can do the math in knowing when the # of users goes up, so does the amount of noise in Bugzilla and the forums (and IRC). But some of the policies and procedures hadn't been adjusted to scale with the spike in new users yet.
There are growing pains. The Gentoo "organization" came from a somewhat informal, immature development process that was well-suited to getting it up off the ground. That worked well in its time. However, we have a lot more users now; things have to change.
Inevitably, you end up frustrating two types of developers: those who agreed a change should happen but wanted it painted "RED" instead of "BLUE" (if you get my meaning), and those who liked things as they were.
Others yet don't mind the changes, but feel some of their proposals should be getting through in equal time/priority. It's frustrating for some, sure. People are busy and have real lives and paying jobs, etc. Working in OSS demands that you have flexible expectations of others, patience, and humility.
Daniel and Kurt's restructure plan may or may not be the best solution. We won't know for sure until 3-6-9-12 months from now, but it's a step in the right direction.
The whole point of these changes is to help scale the organization better, and improve communication -- all of which (hopefully) will give new ideas traction, and get them completed sooner.
I remain a Gentoo developer. For me, apart from FreeBSD, there is really no decent alternative for what Gentoo does well. From a my "developer" standpoint, it's a pretty simple thing. If I continue to have fun and learn while on the team, I will stay.
I remember Alan Cox saying once that he doesn't expect Linux to go on forever, but that parts of it will go on to form new things later on. That's an awesome statement because it asserts what I believe OSS is all about. Patent-free code sharing.
I wish Zach and the others well in Zynot and I personally believe both projects can co-exist. And if either one fails in the future, hopefully the best aspects of both can be merged into a new whole again. That's the beauty of OSS.
Should be exciting (at least, as exciting as operating systems ever get)...
It's good to see Matt Dillon still being productive in the FreeBSD space.