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Perhaps that was the reason for many, but mine was purely technical. In Arch Linux, I found something superior, so that's where I moved.

When something superior to Arch comes along, I'll switch just as easily. This, I think, is one of the greatest benefits of using free software. Or 'lax software'. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/lax

Yeah, I think I'll start using that term. Nothing that can refer to loose bowels can be all bad.

> > "Strong personal attacks by some of the current developers of the project."
> ^
> That's not fair...

Actually, it was a quarrel with Ciaran McCreesh, ex-developer, that resulted in Daniel Robbins' resignation. Ciaran is considered by some current developers as a trollish person.

I was an active Gentoo user and proponent for ~3 years, but eventually I moved (back) to Debian and Ubuntu some months ago. Still, this stream of events really saddened me.

The thread that started all this can be found here:
* http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/46339

Look at this too:
* http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/46339/focus=46404
* http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/46339/focus=46467
* http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/46339/focus=46482
* http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/46339/focus=46496

And finally:
* http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/46478/focus=46489
* http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/46478/focus=46491
* http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/46478/focus=46495
* http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/46478/focus=46498

Plus, another developer has left for the same reasons:
* http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/46478/focus=46500
* http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/46478/focus=46503

Summing up:
"300 messages, two developers, and 17 cups of coffee later.. "
* http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/46339/focus=46555

..Hmm, interesting

-----------------
Date: 2007-03-04 20:36:59 GMT

On Sun, Mar 04, 2007 at 01:17:03PM -0700, Daniel Robbins wrote:
> Yep, I agree. Thanks everyone for being tolerant of >my confusion and disruption while I look for a way to >remove Ciaran from gentoo-dev.

Stop it. You don't like him, fine. I personally don't like you, no problem. And many people hate me, good too.

Please go back to your hacking and improve Gentoo. You just can't 'remove Ciaran from gentoo-dev', live with it, or leave Gentoo if you don't like the way we do things now.

- ferdy
------------------
Date: 2007-03-04 20:44:28 GMT
That's actually a very good idea. I definitely don't want to be associated with this project.

-Daniel
-----------------

It would seem to me that drobbins as fallen victim to the script-kiddie developers that Gentoo nurtured over time. What seemed like a a valid attempt to bring focus and scope to disruptive bantering between separate projects backfired when faced with flame throwing immature personalities. I think trying to ban the guy might have been misplaced effort with what might have been good intent but as I said before what you have is developers who may not have the experience or understanding that maintaining and establishing a separation of concerns[1] is something to be sought after.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_concerns

You can't control members, there are idiots in all distros. I would say the majority of people are quite helpful and you just got unlucky or didn't listen.

Have been part of the gentoo forums for years, it appears seasoned users generally bend over backwards to help new users.

But when that very element "Portage" is being threatened by the disruptive approach of development for competing technology "Paludis[1]" in the same place those user will be needing more help to get less done and the underlying infrastructure moves closer to simply collapsing due to a lack of direction.

[1]http://paludis.pioto.org/faq.html#why

Do you have a link to that thread? I've always found the community itself pretty helpful. (Unless of course they were angry because you didn't bother to search, read the documentaion etc. which is a completely different matter..)

I think you've missed the fact that the issue here is within the core rather than the community as a whole.

One has to be extremely stupid in order to receive such a reply. Like not knowing how to turn on a computer.

gentoo is surely not for non-geeks. If you don't know what you are doing, you shouldn't be using gentoo. It'll never work out. Certain technical skills are a requirement. It's no good if you are so unskilled, you don't understand our explanations.

That said, I've never had any problems with getting help. People at the gentoo-user mailling list are always very kind and helpful - unless of course you refuse to read the documentation we are pointing you to (or are a jerk posting spam about dolphins getting killed in Japan - that was one more person to my kill-list).

If you don't understand the documentation you are free to ask for our help and we will gladly help you.

gentoo is surely not for non-geeks. If you don't know what you are doing, you shouldn't be using gentoo. It'll never work out. Certain technical skills are a requirement. It's no good if you are so unskilled, you don't understand our explanations.

I don't really agree with this. I do think that users (and to some extent devs) like to trade on this, but I personally got well into the Gentoo experience without really learning any general-purpose Linux skills. The skills are the same you need for any distro, namely how to follow the checklist:

1) Google and search the forum for your prob
2) If you don't find a solution this way, ask in the forum (showing some evidence that you've tried to solve it yourself)
3) If the forum concludes something's broken, file a bug.

The skills are constructing good queries, and polite well-structured requests for help. Innit?

gentoo is surely not for non-geeks. If you don't know what you are doing, you shouldn't be using gentoo. It'll never work out. Certain technical skills are a requirement. It's no good if you are so unskilled, you don't understand our explanations.

I don't really agree with this. I do think that users (and to some extent devs) like to trade on this, but I personally got well into the Gentoo experience without really learning any general-purpose Linux skills. The skills are the same you need for any distro, namely how to follow the checklist:

I agree entirely (with the second poster). I DO think that there are a select bunch of people who are Gentooers, but I think that's true of any distro...It would be true for various distros of Windows and the Mac, too, if they had an open source development model...However, I don't think that that select group is necessarily geeks...I know several geeks who are way geekier than I am, who wouldn't even touch Gentoo w/ a bargepole...some because they have tried Gentoo and hated it, some not.

Perhaps now but, in 2004, I don't believe Ubuntu was growing at quite the same clip.

Just curious, but I was under the impression that Ubuntu has been growing faster?

Not in 2004 it wasn't.

Not in 2004 it wasn't.

Still not convinced...

Gentoo: 2004 - 2000 = 4 years
Ubuntu: 7.04 - 4.10 = 2.5 years

Would it be safe to say that more people are using Ubuntu now, than people were using Gentoo in 2004? plus, remember that we're talking about growth rate, so the fact that Ubuntu has only been around for 2.5 years makes the growth even faster.

Would it be safe to say that it really doesn't matter? Seriously guys, this article is about Gentoo, not Ubuntu. Not every single article on $givenlinuxdistro has to devolve into a Ubuntu vs. the world debate. Besides the point your trying to make is quite irrelevant. I'm neither a Ubuntu or Gentoo user, but I can almost guarantee you that anyone happily using Gentoo couldn't give a small rodent's rear parts about Ubuntu's growth rate.

I can almost guarantee you that anyone happily using Gentoo couldn't give a small rodent's rear parts about Ubuntu's growth rate.
Yes, that's understood, I'm just pointing out what I believe could be a possible inaccuracy in the article.

Not every single article on $givenlinuxdistro has to devolve into a Ubuntu vs. the world debate.
I'm sorry that you feel this way.

I think you're not understanding the context of the statement. The person was saying that, in 2004, Gentoo was, up until that time, the fastest-growing distro in Linux's history. Since that time, Ubuntu has grown and, perhaps now, holds that distinction.

Yes, I'm sure what you've said is true... But from the article: "By the time he resigned from the project some four years later, Gentoo had become the fastest growing Linux distribution of all times..."

But "all times" back in 2004 doesn't involve the future, guess why? ..

Paludis is really nice, but having two separate administration systems for Gentoo is incredibly stressful for the project. If there isn't enough support in the Gentoo community to replace Portage with Paludis, then the Paludis people need to realize that they want their own project. They can't continue to maintain a replacement package and configuration management system within the constructs of the existing Gentoo project.

This isn't like the Compiz/Beryl situation, where the rationale for the fork is questionable and the gap between the two projects seems likely to diminish over time. The Paludis community has a vision for Gentoo that doesn't look like it's going far within the Gentoo community, and it's a vision that continues to diverge from Gentoo and Portage. It's time that they detach their project from Gentoo for the benefit of both communities.

There are three I know of, actually. And if they conform the the same standards in supporting ebuild features, it really shouldn't matter which one you're using. That's what the PMS project mentioned in the flamethread is about.

And it's already detached in the sense that it isn't a Gentoo dev working on it, and he seems to do just fine on his own. You might have already guessed I'm a satisfied user of Paludis; it suits my needs. Wouldn't recommend it to someone starting out with Gentoo until they learned to use Portage right, though.

Edited 2007-03-12 21:35

Adding to the stress on the project, unfortunately, are those egos. Around when I left Gentoo I recall reading a bunch of threads where Ciaran was defending himself from other developers who apparently thought he was (or had once been) extolling Paludis as the cure-all to all their Gentoo problems if only people would give up on Portage and see the wondrous joye of his creation. (NOT a good way to win people over, as I've learned myself) I never saw him actually saying anything like that, but that was only the public forums.

If resentment towards a developer and/or a developer's bad attitude overwhelms the technical merits of what they're doing, THEN you have serious problems. I mean, bad manners is one thing, but when it bleeds over into the work...

If the data (ebuilds) are truly orthogonal to the logic (paludis, portage), then I fail to see the harm in having an arbitrary number pieces of logic to manage the data.

I could post a similar slagging-off of Debian, ending with the statement that "After that horrible experience I have been a Gentoo fan."

See for example the post in my blog in which I point out that the same bug has existed in the Ubuntu/Debian X11 video driver for four years now.

I've been using Gentoo since August 2003, with the same installation moved twice to a new hard disk and once to a different computer (CPU, motherboard, hard disk, everything), and I can assure you that in these 3 years, 7 months and 12 days I spent most of the time enjoying my system, without 'pain and suffering'. Maybe it was just PBKAC.

I agree. I have actually done the same thing as you.
I started in a PII(350mhz) four years ago, and my same install has been moved to two different machines and four different disks. Only some minor hardware tweaks were necessary.

Great, I've been a Gentoo fan. Then I heard all of the hype about Ubuntu and decided to try out Kubuntu. It was horrible and broken. Crashed on me several times.

After that horrible experience, I went back to being a Gentoo fan.

It just isn't worth the pain and suffering to have a system that you can call your own.

That's an unfair accusation, it only takes three commands to install Gentoo:
cfdisk /dev/hda && mkfs.xfs /dev/hda1 && mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/gentoo/ && chroot /mnt/gentoo/ && env-update && . /etc/profile && emerge sync && cd /usr/portage && scripts/bootsrap.sh && emerge system && emerge emacs && emacs /etc/fstab && emerge gentoo-dev-sources && cd /usr/src/linux && make menuconfig && make install modules_install && emerge kde && emerge grub && cp /boot/grub/grub.conf.sample /boot/grub/grub.conf && vi /boot/grub/grub.conf && grub && init 6
that's the first one

(taken from bash.org =)

That said, I've used Gentoo and in terms of intermediate to advanced system administration it was by far the best distro I've tried. The package management is logical and you can easily adjust it to your needs or restore it to sanity.

--Intermission--
Compare that to Debian: I use unstable and KDE depends on gam; unfortunately gam completely breaks KDE on Debian, everything just freezes.
Fortunately KDE doesn't *need* gam, if it's not present KDE works fine.
*Unfortunately* apt doesn't believe me. So now I have to delete the gam binary every time apt updates it.
Just to make that clear: This has nothing to do with gentoo being source based. It's about apt having dependencies that aren't dependencies, because the mechanism apt provides for such recommendations that aren't dependencies but could be useful - funnily, they called them "Recommended Packages" - generally only recommends packages that haven't existed for 3 years.
--End Intermission--

Unfortunately I no longer have the time to compile everything and staying up to date with Gentoo was just too much trouble. If Gentoo had a regularily updated baseline binary distribution (let's say comparable to Debian testing+security updates) with most common packages, it would be perfect.

Edit:
Let me add that Gentoo still has the best docs. The Gentoo guides and wiki are heads and shoulders above anything else for most stuff that has been developed in the last five years (e.g. what do I need for suspend-to-disk, docs for Xorg). What's more, most of them are in depth enough that a advanced user can reference them for tricky problems but still step-by-step enough so that you can recommend them to newbies.
Great work.

Edited 2007-03-13 12:50

"""
The Gentoo guides and wiki are heads and shoulders above anything else for most stuff that has been developed in the last five years (e.g. what do I need for suspend-to-disk, docs for Xorg).
"""

Most distros include the Xorg docs.

But "what do I need for suspend-to-disk" catches my eye.

I've installed a number of distros on my laptop over the last few months for evaluation.

And in every case, the answer to "what do I need for suspend-to-disk?" has been... press the suspend button.

I suppose that it shouldn't surprise me that Gentoo makes you read the docs, do a few handstands, become one with the machine, etc. before software suspend will work.

Why does Gentoo have to make everything require rocket science?

Edited 2007-03-13 13:07

Why does Gentoo have to make everything require rocket science?

Because some people prefer not to be crippled by a failed X.org update[1]? As in, not having to depend on black automagic that may or may not work?

[1] http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=15587

I'm already aware of that unusual event. I actually encountered it on one of my machines and simply fixed it.

BTW, Xorg docs, included with Ubuntu and Gentoo both, would have been no help there. The problem was in the source code, not the xorg conf file.

Are you really arguing that because things can very occasionally go wrong with updates, Gentoo's policy of "crippled by default" is better?

Edited 2007-03-13 13:30

>Why does Gentoo have to make everything require rocket science? <

I don't think you really understand what Gentoo is all about.

Gentoo is for linux power users, tweakers, and developers, plain and simple. Gentoo was never developed or intended to be a distro for the linux newb, but for the experienced linux user or for the user who wants to learn a lot fast.

If you don't like it you don't have to use it, but don't bitch and moan because it isn't Ubuntu or Suse. If you want Ubuntu or Suse I suggest that is what you use.

I don't particularly like gentoo, and even I think that statement is absurd. I guess your supposition is that because gentoo provides excellent documentation then it must also require every user to read every piece of it before simple things will work. This isn't actually true, though, is it? It's also pretty damn close to flamebait.

It's equally as easy for me to point out that you, in effect, are saying it's bad to help you know how to fix a car instead of just drive one. Does understanding how to change a tire make the disro worse or less "user friendly" in some way? Do the better cars come without user manuals since only hobbyists and zaelots would ever want to fix their own car? Obviously this is a strawman, but please understand that your argument is just as weak, and fairly insulting, even to those who don't use gentoo.

"""
I guess your supposition is that because gentoo provides excellent documentation then it must also require every user to read every piece of it before simple things will work.
"""

You misunderstand my position. I *don't* think that Gentoo provides excellent docs.

But no one has actually addressed whether or not software suspend in Gentoo works out of the box... or if you have to do the handstands and Buddhist Meditation exercises first.

It just seems to me that in these days of Linux just working... in these days that I don't have to be embarrassed in front of clients because things that are effortless in Windows are hard under Linux, that Gentoo stands out as the "Green Acres" of Linux distros.

Most distros include the Xorg docs.

It's not about the Xorg docs, it's about Gentoo's own docs on X. Out of all parts that make up a typical linux system, X has in my experience the most useless docs. They're overly complicated, incomplete and outdated. I've yet to encounter a single problem where the X docs provided the answer.
Unlike lots of other packages' docs and man-pages I might add.

But "what do I need for suspend-to-disk" catches my eye.

I've installed a number of distros on my laptop over the last few months for evaluation.

And in every case, the answer to "what do I need for suspend-to-disk?" has been... press the suspend button.

I suppose that it shouldn't surprise me that Gentoo makes you read the docs, do a few handstands, become one with the machine, etc. before software suspend will work.

Why does Gentoo have to make everything require rocket science?

I tell (K)Ubuntu (I've got both destops installed; it shouldn't make a difference anyway. Btw. the debian machine I mentioned in my original post acts as my router and -with NX- as my linux desktop when I have to use Windows, just fyi) to suspend to disk. It suspends to disk. As you said, just the press of a button.

Unfortunately it doesn't wake up again. (It just complains that the swap partition it suspended to doesn't have a swap signature, which isn't too surprising as I assume the memory dump overwrote it)
While I'm not the only one with the problem for Ubuntu (Google found some others with the same troubles), I wasn't able to find a solution in any Ubuntu source.
In my experience the Ubuntu community tends to be friendly, helpful, but often only able to help with basic problems (i.e. "How do I use the Nvidia drivers").

Thankfully there is the Gentoo community which tends to be able to help with problems when you really need help about nuts and bolts stuff for Linux (i.e. "How do I build a moon-rocket...erm what exactly is needed for suspend-to-disk to work")

I used Gentoo since ver. 1.4. Yeah, it's not for everyone (it has been mention ad nauseum but some still don't get this point). Even today I still think the community is doing fine. Case-in-point: XFCE4.4 has recently been unmasked and the new updates are blocked even if the prior version is uninstalled. One hop to the forum and the answer is provided there by the friendly people. I would say that the "RTFM" posts are much less than 1 in 100 for every 100 questions asked.

The dev flame wars may do some damage to the community. But I would say that there are bad apples in every linux community I've been to, either Debian and *buntus.

As for the comment about suspend-to-disk. Sure it now works with a push of a button for most distros - back in early 2004 I was already able to get suspend working using the how-tos provided by the Gentoo community. How many other distros have a community like that? I would say that this is still the strongest side of Gentoo masses - if you need something cutting-edge and need to get it to work, the Gentoo community is one of the best places to get the answer.

With constructive criticism like yours how could it miss?

Crisis ? where ?

Like in all distributions (and all OS), users can be blissfully unaware of internals dissensions, and this is perfectly fine.

This might be true in the short term, but if the problems between the developers are as bad as this article claims they are, then it won't be long before the cracks start to show in the final product.

And that is not perfectly fine.

Debian's equivalent to emerge sync is apt-get update and that only takes couple of seconds at the most.

I am and have been a Debian user for several years, and this is simply not true.

The time "update" needs depends on the response time of the repository servers one has listed in sources.list, the number of changes since the last update and the bandwidth of one's connection when downloading those changes.

In other words: apt-get update can also take several minutes

1. Paludis syncs fast. It syncs overlays as well automatically. In fact, the portage tree is just like any other repo to it. (Portage syncs fast as well, it's just the metadata regeneration at the end that takes forever.)

2. Gentoo is not built on that assumption. I quite appreciate the ability to simply build debugging symbols as needed by appending -ggdb to my CFLAGS. The installer sets sensible defaults. The handbook offers sensible defaults. If you don't RTFM, Gentoo most certainly is not for you.

3. Hot air until bugzilla links are supplied.

4. FUD about the Gentoo dev process. Nice theory, sadly just a regurgitation of folklore circulating the web.

There seems to be a misconception floating about what Gentoo is supposed to be. Meta-distribution means just that: a souped up LFS. If that's not your cup of tea, why on earth would you choose Gentoo? And then flame it for being exactly that?

After reading the entire thread its amazing how people in that thread and this one inject more into it.

You mentioned that Daniel gets upset and demanded things. Sure didn't sound like that to me. He was quite polite and asked for clarifications on several issues and McCreesh kept taking it personal and saying it was a personal witch hunt and to stop.

Seemed the point Daniel was making was not picked up. He said if certain "guideline/rules" exist they should be followed. Several of the responses were in the vain, developer X is productive so lets not do anything, or this "rule" is being broken here too, so why does it matter. No one ever said, these guidelines no longer exist, they said they have been ignored, or sidestepped, which is completely different.

Any project without clear goals/rules/guideline tends to ultimately fail. It's too late for me, after several years of being quite active within the gentoo community I have moved on.

I disagree. A failure of such a fine distro as Gentoo would be a great loss for linux.

This is the distro that set the gold standard for customisation and documentation. They may be in Ubuntu's shadow now, but a lot of users will be saddened to see the project fail.

Disclaimer: I'm nothing to do with the Gentoo project, don't even use it, just recognise quality when I see it.

"""
This is the distro that set the gold standard for customisation and documentation.
"""

While I can agree that Gentoo's "be your own beta tester" philosophy probably gets it the crown for most customizable (a dubious prize IMO), Suse set the standard for documentation, not Gentoo.

A pile of user-provided howtos does not constitute solid documentation, and is, in fact, a symptom of poor documentation.

The "Gentoo has great docs" myth is an artifact of Gentoo propaganda.