Bryan Østergaard ([info]kloeri) wrote,
@ 2007-10-14 22:01:00
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Goodbye Gentoo
So... I think this has been coming ever since I retired as a Gentoo Developer. I've become more and more happy about that decision (mostly because I feel more and more at odds with Gentoo and the developer community surrounding it) so I finally took the plunge a couple of weeks ago and removed Gentoo from my laptop.

All my other boxes will follow slowly as I have time to reinstall them. I have no ill feelings towards Gentoo but simply see it as a project that's failed in many ways and I most certainly wish the new council luck with bringing Gentoo back on track.

And for the curious among you: no, I'm not going to spoil the surprise by telling you what I'm using now. I'd much rather see you giving some serious thoughts to what's wrong with Gentoo and how to fix it. Heck, even if you come to the conclusion that I'm just a crazy old guy at least you've given it some thought :)

(23 comments) - (Post a new comment)

a guess
(Anonymous)
2007-10-14 09:04 pm UTC (link)
You are now running cygwin?

/Sune

(Reply to this) (Thread)
Re: a guess
(Anonymous)
2007-10-15 01:30 am UTC (link)
Winget!

(Reply to this) (Parent)
which distro
(Anonymous)
2007-10-15 02:09 am UTC (link)
Do you still have an alpha machine? There's not (http://pld-linux.org/) much (http://www.debian.org) choice (http://alphacore.info/) among other linux distros for alpha nowadays... my guess is that you are now running FreeBSD.

(Reply to this) (Thread)
Re: which distro
[info]kloeri
2007-10-15 07:31 am UTC (link)
A very good guess. I'm not running any BSD however even though I've considered FreeBSD seriously.

I have 5 or 6 Alphas but also need to cover Itanium II, Sparc, MIPS and Arm. A Linux distribution doesn't need to support all those archs however as it's fairly easy porting a distribution to a new arch.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
Re: which distro
(Anonymous)
2007-10-15 12:47 pm UTC (link)
As you said source-based in another thread:
I presume that LFS lacks the level of sophistication that you demand. Following the hordes of ex-Gentoo-users to ArchLinux also seems not your style.

So there's not much left. RockLinux? LunarLinux?

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
Re: which distro
[info]kloeri
2007-10-15 01:05 pm UTC (link)
Neither. You're actually a bit off when you think I require some level of sophistication. At the moment I'm enjoying taking things apart and testing weird, new things.

The smaller the distribution, the easier to do so as there's not a lot of preconceived ideas about how things are supposed to work and what users should be allowed to do.

I mentioned earlier that arch support isn't a problem and one of the crazy things I'm currently enjoying is making things work on unsupported archs and extending things in other semi-random ways.

(Reply to this) (Parent)
One more guess...
[info]fox2mike
2007-10-15 04:27 am UTC (link)
Windblows!!! :p

How're things Bryan?

(Reply to this) (Thread)
Re: One more guess...
[info]kloeri
2007-10-15 08:07 am UTC (link)
I'm happy to say that I'm not using Windows on any of my boxes :) It's all open source for me, both professionally and off duty.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]tallman9
2007-10-15 11:38 am UTC (link)
About a month ago, after I bought my new pc, I decided to try gentoo on it. Intallation went fine. But when I tried simply to install kde or gnome or even xfce - emerge failed. But that is not the main point...of course I could find a way out, but simply waiting for hours for emerge to compile something I can install in a few minutes under a binary distro is not what I prefer doing.

Can you give us a hint? is it a binary or source based distro?

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]kloeri
2007-10-15 12:02 pm UTC (link)
I'm a big fan of source based distributions. Not because of some mythical performance advantages but rather because of the added flexibility and control it provides.

I think it's safe to rule out binary based distributions. I know debian (and other binary distributions) allows me to build packages from source but that doesn't really give me the things I love about a real source based distribution.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]hauntedunix
2007-10-15 12:17 pm UTC (link)
If it's not Source Mage GNU/Linux, you're doing it wrong.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]kloeri
2007-10-15 12:31 pm UTC (link)
I've looked at Source Mage (being one of the more popular source based distributions) but that's not it either.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]mindcrime
2007-10-15 12:18 pm UTC (link)
I thought you ran LfG. (Linux for Girls!) ;)

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]kloeri
2007-10-15 12:26 pm UTC (link)
LfG sounds like a lot of fun. Something to consider :)

(Reply to this) (Parent)
kloerix!
(Anonymous)
2007-10-15 12:21 pm UTC (link)
Is it kloerix?

(Reply to this) (Thread)
Re: kloerix!
[info]kloeri
2007-10-15 12:25 pm UTC (link)
Definitely not. I'd find Kloerix rather tacky and I would never allow a distribution or program to be named after myself. I'm not nearly important enough for that and it wouldn't really make sense if I ever left such a project.

I've learned that leaving a project can be just as important to me as contributing depending on the circumstances.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]kevmille
2007-10-15 02:24 pm UTC (link)
How about the move over to Sabayon? Do you think this community has a chance of reviving the Gentoo of the past? I have been using Sabayon for nearly a month now, I like it. Some things break here and there but they can be fixed...

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]kloeri
2007-10-15 05:18 pm UTC (link)
I haven't tried Sabayon but building on Gentoo I'd expect it all the technical problems at least. And being tied so closely to Gentoo I don't really have any plans to try it either.

What I want these days is opposite to Gentoo in many ways and I don't think a Gentoo derivative have much chance of providing that.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]kevmille
2007-10-16 06:15 am UTC (link)
Fair enough. I am using Sabayon to bring me back to the Gentoo realm again. I was never happy with the other distros with openSUSE being the only exception.

Best of luck. Have you played around with Backtrack Linux yet?

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]kloeri
2007-10-16 09:02 am UTC (link)
I've used Backtrack a fair amount for security work. It's fairly good for that purpose but I see it more as a special purpose tool than a general purpose distribution.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]tallman9
2007-10-15 07:13 pm UTC (link)
Maybe Sourcerer? LFS?))

(Reply to this)


(Anonymous)
2007-11-15 11:40 am UTC (link)
open*: opensolaris, openbsd or openvms

(Reply to this)

I know! I know!
(Anonymous)
2009-03-25 05:01 am UTC (link)
I know what it is! Ooh! Ooh! Pick me! Pick me!

(Reply to this)

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