I finally removed myself from all the Gentoo mailing lists. I did this with some sad thoughts. I had been using gentoo for almost 4 Years and it tough me quite a lot about Linux. Unfortunately I have been seeing the Gentoo project die over the past Year or so. After going to the Gentoo UK meeting in 2006 I noticed that nothing important / technical was discussed. It was all about the flame wars going on on the mailing lists. "How do we get more girls into gentoo? etc..". My friends that joined me, are still joke about it (Thx Will + Edd). Already then I could see the crumbling of the base. After some time I noticed that more and more packages where without developers and people didn't answer emails anymore. Version didn't get updated. That was the time when I decided I had to move. Then packages.gentoo.org went down without a replacement. This was a big shock, that this had happened, as everyone I knew was using this too look for packages. I moved on but still read the newsletters and the mailing list. Then the weekly newsletter stopped coming and the mailing list became a collection of `packages up for grabs`. Further they dropped the spark architecture due to all the developers leaving. Then a friend told me that they pushed out a broken update for expat. After flaming down Daniel Robbins offer to come back to gentoo and help it to recover 2 times gentoo was doomed. I could go on for ever with what went wrong. But I think the gentoo people should have taken the BSD attitude a little more serious
"SHUT UP AND CODE"
And stay a distro for geeks and not try to get into the ubuntu market. Because of this hacking wasn't fun anymore.
No I only have to administer 2 more gentoo boxes that I don't update anymore and am waiting till I can replace them with something alive.
Update:
It seams like the gentoo people are noticing that have a problem:
http://spyderous.livejournal.com/95715.html
After reading some comments I must say I changed to arch about 6 month ago and I love it.
I know someone is going to post a reply telling me that this is all not true and anyway it is my fault but I am just going to delete it without reading that crap.
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10 comments:
You might give Foresight Linux a go. The Conary package manager is quite comparable to portage and has many similar mechanisms. Foresight has many ex-Gentoo members as well as some ex-Gentoo developers in its ranks :D Give it a try and see what you think.
I am an Archlinux user and I am very proud for using this distro.
But I must say that Gentoo Project will never die. It will stand up once again, someone must take appropriate path to do it.
I recently returned to Gentoo after about a two year hiatus. I know the problems going on with Daniel Robbins and I would like to see him return in some form.
I disagree Gentoo will die, now (before I felt it). Gentoo is more refined than it was when I left a couple years ago. Portage seems easier to use now as well as some of the developers will say, many did not leave.
I think us bloggers may be making the situation with the Gentoo community look worse then it actually is.
Why I came back, Portage. It is still one of the best package systems around. apt-get and yum are great but they cannot even begin to compare with Portage.
I use FreeBSD on my desktop and I love Ports as well which Portage is based on.
IMHO, I think many of the Gentoo guys who left will eventually return and yes, the Foundation needs to make some changes and be more BSD-like.
Kevin (SaigonNezumi)
I'll toss my vote in for Arch Linux as well.
Another vote for Arch. I left Kubuntu for Arch and I'm amazed at the level of control you get, not to mention the stability and speed! I tried Gentoo once and didn't like it much. Didn't really feel like compiling every single app from source, but at least with Arch I have the option to if I want. Arch seems to be a good mix of key elements that make Gentoo, Slackware, and binary distros great.
Stop!..... Ricer time....
http://web.archive.org/web/20061004200708/http://www.funroll-loops.org/
Wellcome to Arch!
Why don't you disappointed Gentoo refugees try Source Mage GNU/Linux? Its compile from source system and open source philosophy is quite similar to Gentoo - the only difference being that the way it does things seems to work better... :P Its community is known for its positive democracy and friendliness too.
Try it out and find out for yourself:
http://wiki.sourcemage.org/
http://www.magepower.org/
"gentoo is not about newsletters and management."
Why thats all I see, bureaucrats. Where are the real brains? in the basement?
Gentoo Is Dead, not the concept, but the "name" and thus the distro. May we learn from this lesson and expire developers that do not contribute and be extremely wary of individuals that aspire for personal gratification via some superficial status such as a IRC operator or @leetdistro.org email - don't be so desperate for such immature developers, it will come back to bite you (as it has gentoo).
Furthermore, always be on the look out for talentless individuals that only have "diplomas in psychology" or some warped "Public Relation" experience - that deviantly aspire to test "game theory" on a simple and innocent linux development community.
Thus destroying it.
Live and learn.
Time for new concept (WIP).
Gentoo will be superseded, by a far superior concept. Its just a matter of time.
I used to use gentoo. But then I realized that packages didn't make it to the tree as fast. Portage was getting slower etc. Paludis was great, but that wasn't enough to bring gentoo back for me.
I now run archlinux on my laptop and FreeBSD on my desktop, and I love them. Packages are up to date. I can add packages to a repository with ease, and in arch, I can rollback if something goes wrong.
I am using OpenSolaris as well, but it's not ready for prime-time yet.
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