Re: Gentoo: To mirror or not to mirror?

[Steven Pritchard <steve@silug.org>]

On Sun, Feb 23, 2003 at 12:21:49PM -0600, John Bell wrote:
> On Sun, 2003-02-23 at 11:40, Nate Reindl wrote:
> > Remember what Steve said?  ``I personally think Gentoo's a joke.''
> > 
> I must have missed steve's comments the first time around.  Steve, Why?

a) No option to install pre-compiled (and tested) binaries.
b) BSD init scripts.

So (a) means that the system is in no way supportable.  Ever seen what
happens when a buggy compiler is used to build a system?  I've seen it
first-hand while working on the StrongARM port fairly early on.  It's
ugly.  It's also almost certainly the explanation for the weird bugs
that Mandrake has always had.  (Even though they got rid of the buggy
compiler a few versions back, the weird bugs are just now starting to
go away.)

And (b) is enough to make one system nearly unmaintainable, much less
a large number.  If I can't script a way to do the same operation on
any number of systems, I won't bother doing it on one.  (I don't even
install software on my own systems without building an rpm first, as
an example.)

In the past I've been able to support a couple hundred Unix boxes
almost by myself...  What I learned doing that is what makes it
possible for me to support a large number of clients remotely now.

> Just curious, let see a show of hands of who runs gentoo.

And how many of you run it on more than a couple of systems?

BTW, I'm not faulting any of you who run Gentoo.  I'm also not saying
there aren't nice things about it.  I really wish Red Hat put a small
fraction as much effort into making a system that's so easy to
bootstrap on another architecture.  Even Debian hasn't done as well.

Honestly, it seems to me that Gentoo could be a really compelling
alternative with just a little effort.

Steve
-- 
steve@silug.org           | Southern Illinois Linux Users Group
(618)398-7360             | See web site for meeting details.
Steven Pritchard          | http://www.silug.org/

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