The concept of source-based distributions, where all software is compiled from source code locally for maximum control and performance, took off with the introduction of Gentoo Linux and its wonderful package management called Portage.But Gentoo, popular as it may be, is not the only source-based distributions; in fact it is not even the oldest. ROCK Linux existed long before Gentoo and there are other independently developed projects. Andrew Fries has taken to the task of investigating the often overlooked source-based distributions – Sorcerer, Source Mage GNU/Linux, Lunar Linux and Onebase Linux. His conclusion: try Source Mage and be prepared to be pleasantly surprised.
Source Mage and Onebase Linux
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
It’s been a while I used sourcemage, but I found the package management system allot clearer and easier to modify than portage. It’s very easy for example, to completely hand modify the build process, but keep the automatic update features. Source mage was also allot easier to install.
Gentoo on the other hand has better documentation than source mage, and has more packages.
I donno why but I can never seem to figure out these source based distros. Iv tryed both gentoo and source mage and I simply cant figure out how to install them. I can install Debian and Slackware easily without any problems what so ever even though those two have been concidered by many to be extreamly difficult to install. Oh well guess Ill stick with them till they have it where a dunce like me can figure it out.
ummm gentoo.org has a large document on how to install it
“How did I end up with Source Mage then? Well, it just turned out to be the one I was able to install easily. Lunar Linux would go through the motions but somehow in three attempts I could not get a booting system, no doubt due to my own ignorance.”
Well okay this sounds like he really did his best.
“Sorcerer bailed out early: it just refused to create reiserfs on my root partition and I don’t know how I could be to blame for this one… Sure, I could’ve tried using ext3 instead, but I had my heart set on either reiserfs or xfs, and the way I see it there isn’t much point in installing a source-based distro if I still can’t have it the way I want it. So I moved on to Source Mage, and finally hit the jackpot. I hope to revisit Lunar and Sorcerer some other time on another machine, but for now, Source Mage it is.”
This is a plain ignorant excuse. He can just chose Ext2FS or Ext3FS and test out the distro. Not regarding performance between this distro and one running on ReiserFS or XFS. Performance between one distro running ReiserFS and one running XFS isn’t fair anyways because these 2 are both good on several different points (namely reading small files for ReiserFS and executing large binaries for XFS, among others).
He wants to test user friendliness, usability and such. Then the FS doesn’t matter. You can’t always have things the way your heart want, nor does that matter in this review, nor does the fact that you chose ReiserFS, XFS, Ext2FS, Ext3FS change the review in any way.
Unfair. Imo it doesn’t make the review useless. It does make it unfair for both offsprings of the project ‘Sorcerer’, especially since the reviewer found out that one of these offsprings named ‘SourceMage’ was according to him very good, it makes me wonder how the other 2 actually really are. And finally i see nothing about LFS or Gentoo. LFS isn’t even mentioned and Gentoo is dtched in the beginning. I think Gentoo is okay for beginners, too… i agree Gentoo has decent documentations on their website. Okay for beginners, not okay for lazy people (big difference. BIIIG difference).
“ummm gentoo.org has a large document on how to install it
”
Indeed it does. And when I tried it it failed on the building of Perl I believe. I spent about a week farting about (maybe 4 hours play time, rest build time
) trying to get it to work and eventually someone came out with a fix for the problem which fixed it (hooray) and I booted up to be… well distinctly underwhelmed.
I don’t see the point going for the source based install to be honest; the performance gains were… negligible and the hassle was not.
So let me get this straight. your saying even though a distro doesnt work like its supposed to and wont do what you want you should use something you dont want? To some people something as small as the file system is important. In my oppinion if it doesnt do what I want then its not worth useing. also I may be one of these “lazy” people your reffering to but I dont think its nessicary to have to read page after page of instructions to install a distro, of course not counting linux from scratch. I just think theres better ways to do it. Just because something is simple to install and use doesnt mean it isnt just as configureable as anything else. Its just a matter of sitting down and putting thought and time into your instalation soft to make it easy for the beginers and configurable for the experts.
With regards to source based distros, there can only be one king, gentoo. It’s installation can take about a week assuming a worst case scenario. Is it worth it? Yeap. If it took me one month to install gentoo, I’ll do it over using any other Linux distro. And it’s package management system, arguably the best in the Unix world. Enough said.
A whole week of compiling the source code? dear god! you are officially the first person iv ever seen admit they would willingly make their computer pretty much useless for a month to install a distro. to think i thought playing with gentoo for an hour trying to get it to work untill saying to hell with it was bad.
“So let me get this straight. your saying even though a distro doesnt work like its supposed to and wont do what you want you should use something you dont want?”
Not necesseraly. But in life in general as well as in computers you can’t just always ‘get the best’ and ‘expect the best’ and ‘reject anything less good then you expected’ or ‘reject anything which you didn’t expect’.
Also, i wrote my comment in the context of someone reviewing distro’s, smacking 2 which are very much alike another one. Someone who writes reviews shouldn’t be feeling down because it didn’t work as he expected. Heh, and what we’re talking about: the filesystem!
He/she should be open to suggestions, thinking about solutions, and not be putted down because of some tiny failure. And then stating ‘sure i could have chosen Ext3FS but i expected to run XFS or ReiserFS’. Oh and i haven’t heard him about XFS btw.
It’s not obselete to state he hasn’t got ReiserFS to work. But it would help if he continued after that thus reviewing the distro instead of putting it down as some crap because Mr. Perfectionist didn’t got what he wanted. Heck, if this is for newbies, then why on earth is it important wether a newbie choses for XFS, ReiserFS or Ext3FS. It’s gotta be journaling, which is is indeed good, but then again, it won’t matter hell of a lot.
“Just because something is simple to install and use doesnt mean it isnt just as configureable as anything else. Its just a matter of sitting down and putting thought and time into your instalation soft to make it easy for the beginers and configurable for the experts.”
First of all, your comment is posted from your user aspect. Which is a whole different approach then my comment which is posted as criticism of the reviewer’s methods of cracking a distro down.
Regarding your comment i think you’re just like the reviewer not the right person to investigate distro’s and write a review about it. I think you are the person who uses something simple (binaries is more simple -and faster- i think) without looking futher, never wondering why there are alternatives, wether they are good. Just the “as long as it runs (simple)”. Not much wrong with that, if that’s your way, fine with me. But then don’t write reviews please. Please just don’t. It’s not cognitive.
Afaik a Perceiving person does such a job better then a Judging one.
PS: i’m wondering if the reviewer has contacted the author(s) of the distro (Sorcerer) about his problem. Or done anything at all. I dunno, written to them he cracked the distro down as garbage? I wouldn’t have the guts to do so if i did it in such a way. A shame.
“If it took me one month to install gentoo, I’ll do it over using any other Linux distro”
You have time to lose…
Currently running Gentoo (have been for the last 6 months) and it’s far from being the King… I would say for 1 main reason: a lot of users and ebuilds for only a few developers. It’s difficult for the developers to keep up with the bugs and new developments. Stick with the stable arch and there’s a lot of ebuilds that are not accessible, go with the ~x86 arch and many ebuilds don’t compile…
Anyway I like it in many ways, it’s almost like a love/hate relationship
In a way I find classic distros like Mandrake, SuSE or Redhat a very good alternative. They have a set of packages being all tested together to produce a point release which very often makes your like easier to have a system setup in a couple of hours with loads of goodies.
As you rightly said, a week is about what you need with Gentoo before having a usable system with KDE or Gnome for example. Too long. Way too long, especially that the advantages are not that clear.
I agree Portage is nice though.
When I install gentoo, I do a stage 3 install, and then download precompiled packages for X, Gnome etc.
All upgrades after that, I compile myself. Stage 3 installs and precompiled packages have ok optimizations.
That way, I get my gentoo box up and running in maybe 45 minutes, which is quite ok. Precompiled packages exist to give people who dont want to spend a week compiling a chance to … not do so:=)
And personally, I find Gentoo very similar to Redhat once it is installed:=)
Im sorry you feel that I have a very narrow perspective and I think I didnt express my viewpoints as eloquently as I would have liked my bad you gotta remember its very early here in florida. Maybe ill do a better job this time. Your right it is just a file system but some people feel its a big deal. My point is that it was broke obveously. Your right you cant always have the best but if a distro doesnt work go to one that does and theres been plenty of distros that will work just like they are supposed to. One could very well dig in the source code for hours and tweak this and that untill they fix it. granted that could be a fantastic learning experience for someone thats interested in software programing but not everyone is. because linux reviews are almost always geared toward the new linux user why should the reviewer fight with it? If he has to fight with it he cant really expect a user that doesnt know a vast ammount about linux to fight with it. Some people such as yourself may think that Im a “noob” and dont care to expand my mind but I like to think Im an open minded person. I have used many operating systems over the years and linux one of my favorite. Iv used many linux distros and enjoy learning about it but im trying to think about the new user. Many linux lovers including myself would love to see the day when linux “rules the desktop” but this wont happen untill we lose the supiriority complex that many linux zealots seem to have. because one wants an easy to install and use operating system doesnt mean they are “lazy” or narrow minded it just means they want to get something done without needless hassle.
Is a LiveCD a la Knoppix but built from a source based distribution like Gentoo. I know Gentoo has a LiveCD but I want something that boots right up into either KDE or Gnome.
Then, with a script to copy the install to the HDD, and a single emerge to bring the system up to date and you’d be off and running.
I read the article and on a whim decided to give a source based LINUX a try. Now I have been a RedHat user for years and find RPM a no-brainer. RedHat v9 installs completely (LAN, Video, CDROM etc.) without error in under one hour.
I chose Gentoo v1.4. I downloaded the LIVE CD and the Anthlon-XP stage 3 CD. I made some space and created three partitions (boot, swap, root) using FDISK. I like the graphical RedHat partition software better.
Everything went well and the instructions where okay, but should be split for the different stages or GRP. It is like reading your way through a puzzle. The LIVE CD works fine, but you have to update “emerge” the system via the LAN and that takes awhile to download and compile the updated tarballs.
After successfully getting Gentoo to run I wanted to add KDE and it was on the second CD. I mounted that CD, but when I told it to “emerge -k kde” it went to the internet and downloaded it and compile it. A half day process! I never did find out how or why it did not go to the CDROM. The only thing I can figure out is I did not copy all the packages to the proper location on the HD. I should not have to waste HD space. It should use the CDROM. OH WELL.
It took two days off and on for me to get Gentoo the way I wanted it. I like the emerge “filename” to load a package, but if it is large like KDE, hold on to your hats. I believe the reason the two best LINUX distros are RPM based is the convience and time factor to get a distribution up and running regardless of the drawbacks to RPM.
I will admit it may have been me and my ignorance with a source based distro getting it to work, but it should be intuitive.
If anyone knows a LINUX distro that works the first time with MP3, MPEGs and all multimedia via the internet, let me know. LINUX needs to work flawlessly with multimedia internet connection or the younger generation will never want it.
A week to build Gentoo sounds like overkill to me, if you have fairly upto date hardware. Also Gentoo rarely needs to be installed, the day to day maintenance is far more relevant
My findings are not scientific, but what I found is that when I ran Mandrakre (I got upto about 8 from memory) everything was fine until I inevitably started to install unofficial rpm’s and tried unsupported projects eg getting my matrox marvel to work. I’d get to the point where the system would still be usable but there would be various self induced niggles. I’d then wait for the next release with all the latest packages and the cycle would repeat.
Under Gentoo, I seem to be able to stay upto date with much fewer problems. There is a great support community for when I do have problems. And to be honest I just like the idea of compiling from source. On my dual p3 most packages build fine in the background in a reasonable amount of time. The biggies (kde xfree) etc do take a while but it just runs in the background, so whats the problem? Watch tv go out etc/
I am all for choice though and its not for everyone.
Mark
Which is great, when it works. I’ve installed Gentoo multiple times, and the install document has only been accurate once. The last time I got stuck emerging stage 3 (it refused to emerge) after about 15 minutes of screwing with it I remembered why I keep going back to RedHat. Having been a Linux guy since the mid 90’s, and having the knowledge that I do it says a lot about Gentoo (I won’t waste a day on it again).
I’m not surprised not many red hat users have successfully installed Gentoo. I had 4 red hat users who just gave up. I had to help them install it on their boxes, of course, after seriously mocking them. The funny thing is that, I used the same manual they were using. *shrugs* I guess it’s just not for everyone like some said already.
“Gentoo is a popular choice for people reaching this point, but I wanted to explore some lesser known alternatives instead”
This was a review of alternatives to Gentoo thats why he doesn’t mention it. It wasn’t a comparison against Gentoo at all and all you Gentoo zealots who feel cheated should get a life.
As a Source Mage developer I have to say the reason I moved to a source based distro is because I want to control what gets installed,what services are run at boot and i want my system uptodate and secure. Instead of fighting with RPM dependencies I build it myself and configure it the way i want it. Optimized binaries are a secondary bonus, not the primary target.
This takes some knowledge of the system, of the software and i know it isn’t suited to everyone, but if you don’t want to get your hands dirty or your skillset is lacking then use a binary distro. That is how binary distro’s make their money. By packaging linux for end-users who don’t want to have to manage their software.
Expecting newbies to be able to install a source based distro and start compiling software is hilarious, to do that we would have to take all control back from the user, which is in direct opposition to our ethos.
But on the bright side, no-one has actually been talking about Source Mage in these comments so what the reviewer said must be 100% true and undisputable. 🙂
A distro that has all the packages pre-compiled, installs and then uses unused cpu power to optimize it’s own packages in the background.
And also, upgrades it’s packages in the background in the same way.
I’ve been a hard core linux user for 7 years, it’s not that I couldn’t make it work. It’s more like what’s the point in having to screw with it when there are other distro’s that are just as good. If you want to mock me go ahead, I’ll put your skills up against mine any day. 😛
1 MONTH to install Gentoo? Wow! Either you have an very very slow computer or an slow internet connection or very low memory or you installed every package available in the portage or …. I don’t know! But 1 month for installing Gentoo is way to much!
Installing Gentoo normaly takes less then 1 day (I am only talking about the base system)! Then, depending on your CPU, memory, internet speed, knowledge, etc… it can take serval day’s to compile KDE, Gnome, Mozilla, OpenOffice.org, KOffice, Gimp, etc…
But 1 month? With all the good documentation at http://www.gentoo.org and the forum at http://forums.gentoo.org?
Anyway… you are the first person I hear to have spend that much time to install Gentoo! Somehow you deserve my respect!
cheers
SteveB
Yes, just as Hamish said, compiling with optimizations yeilds minimal improvements (except in some dramatic cases like -mcpu=i368 vs. -mcpu=pentium4 -O3…. ) anyway, the _point_ to hopefully all source based distros (which I can’t speak for since I’m a gentoo developer and haven’t used the others) is choice. Choice is exactly why I stopped using Slackware and went to gentoo. When i had to rebuild apps like php for security updates, and I had literally a dozen optional modules built in, all with their own dependancies (like libgd and it’s spanning tree of deps) I would get frustrated by the amount of time I’d have to spend just upgrading a security bug. No binary php packages worked for me because of the diverse needs of my organization. When I found gentoo and discovered that i could do USE=”gd mysql ldap snmp odbc” emerge mod_php and it would *magically* compile php JUST the way i wanted it, and handle all the dependancies *magically* i fell in love, and it’s been a great relationship since then.
My first Gentoo install took 3 weeks (on a PII 400) to compile all of the software I needed to be functional. In edition to that I was compiling daily to update broken software (I was using an RC mind you).
“A week to build Gentoo sounds like overkill to me, if you have fairly upto date hardware.”
Bad assumption, because not everyone has recent hardware. Sure, my AthlonXP 2500+ could compile a Gentoo Linux system damned fast, but my P166MMX laptop is going to be choking. I’ve been told you can have another computer do compilation, but frankly, this seems like a hassle to me.
AFAIK, there’s nothing stopping anyone from writing a source-based distribution that uses source RPMs or DEBs. In a way, I think this would make an elegant alternative to Gentoo. RedHat 9 from source – it’d have potential if there was any evidence that optimizing against a particular platform actually did something useful. The only benchmarks I’ve seen indicate that gains are, at best, minimal.
I just re-built my Gentoo system because I wanted to use LVM. I started Saturday around 2p.m. from stage1 and now at 10a.m Sunday, I have Gnome, fluxbox, Mozilla, gftp, xmms, xchat, gaim, bibletime, xawtv, et & vmware installed. Pretty much a very functional Linux system in under 24 hours. That’s also with Nivida & ALSA. I don’t get were a week or month come into play unless you have a really slow system and internet connection.
Athlon-XP 1800
768 DDR
GeForce TI_4200 128
SbLive
ATI TV ALL-N-wonder
Not that fast compared to systems around now. With all that, I got my system they way I want it.
/boot ext3
/ reiserFS
swap
& the following using reiserFS under LVM
/usr
/var
/tmp
/opt
/home
I have about 40GB free space to play with resizeing the LVM slices when I need more space. Portage ROCKS!
😉
If you want a source-based “distro” that uses DEB, check out:
debtoo.org
its a very cool project, coming along nicely. It allows you to recompile your whole Debian system during installation or later.
And of course: archlinux.org , its got a PORTS (portage) like system along with a binary system.
You can if you wish do a complete source rebuild of your
RedHat distro, after it is installed.
That is what the SRC rpm build CD is for you know.
I have never personally rebuilt an entire RedHat machine, for various reasons….(i.e. who cares if ls is now using Pentium 4 HT optimization instructions for example.)
I do, and have rebuilt my i386 kernel binary that comes with the basic install, and that does yield performance gains that are measureable. Same of course, for the http://www.kernel.org releases.
Any packages I have to rebuild from source, I normally do so, except for very specialized cases, such as Apache, or Tomcat. I need the source to do patches, and I build user accounts to manage the source compiles, process execution, etc.
The only other packages, I can think of that I would rebuild with P4 extensions would be MySQL/PostGRES for example.
Oh, and X Windows, if I didn’t have DRM/DRI capable video card. Lets face it, if you have a porky card without DRM/DRI, you need all the speed you can get.
🙂
-gc
But you still end up with the embedded dependencies from the specfile? Try rebuilding uptodate kde or gnome packages from SRPMs and see how many extra packages it wants you to download. I used to use the SRPMs but was always modifying specfiles so they install the bits i wantd and so it didn’t fail if i refused to update my version X.X.X-1 to X.X.X-3 (stupid dependencies)
My first Gentoo install took 3 weeks (on a PII 400) to compile all of the software I needed to be functional. In edition to that I was compiling daily to update broken software (I was using an RC mind you).
hey Aitvo! I belive you, that it took you 3 weeks to install Gentoo and this is okay with me. Heck! I once waited 14.9 day’s for an old Compaq Proliant 2500 with an Pentium Pro 200Mhz and 186MB memory to install XFree86 and FluxBox in Gentoo (only this 2 packages! Everything else was already installed!). But today I mostly install Gentoo in an very short time period. I use up to 11 CPU’s to compile (with distcc) and eaven the biggest packages/ebuilds are compiled in very quick time.
Anyway… I like the feedom of compiling the packages from source. And eaven if it takes time… if I need the package, then I wait for it.
cheers
SteveB
I can definately respect that. 🙂 This box is 50% compiled, 50% rpm lol. I just updated to dosbox and xfree’s latest cvs versions today actually. 😉
I wrote that article, and in fact I made a deliberate effort to avoid mentioning Gentoo as much as possible. This was totally intentional – Gentoo gets enough publicity thanks to its zealouos community and while it’s wonderful its users love Gentoo so much, I do wish they’d pipe down. Not everything in life is about Gentoo, and my article was specifically NOT about Gentoo – but they just can’t get that through their heads, can they?
Honestly, the main reason I intend to stay away from Gentoo has little to do with any technical shortcomings – it’s just that behaviour of its fans turns me off.
On another note, I realise this was not an in-depth article. That’s why it was subtitled “Beginners adventures in the land of source-based distros”, and not “Expert takes detailed look at Source Mage”.
Finally, regarding Lunar and Sorcerer: true I didn’t give them much of a chance. I didn’t feel obliged to, because they were not the topic of this article either. I mentioned them only in passing explaining how I ended up with Source Mage. They were giving me trouble, so I moved on – sue me. In fact, that’s exactly what many beginners will do and when there are over a hundred of distributions to chose from, why shouldn’t they?
Andrew ,
I agree with you
if you look back you will see I already defended you by quoting your intro in my post “From the original Review.”
“Gentoo is a popular choice for people reaching this point, but I wanted to explore some lesser known alternatives instead”
unfortunately this forum seems to have been overrun by gentoo zealots and your article seems to no longer be the major topic for discussion.
Thank you for your review though, I am an active (very) Source Mage developer and was very pleased with your article and very glad it all worked for you.
Thankyou from all SMGL
just curious, how do “fans” of gentoo turn you off?
“just curious, how do “fans” of gentoo turn you off?”
I don’t know this man, he don’t know me but I turn him off? What a nice man he must be.
The problem with gentoo is one of perception i think.
This was originally an article about alternatives to gentoo. Unfortunately many gentoo users couldn’t understand someone deciding not to review their product and the result is a forum NOT related to gentoo filled with gentoo users backscratching each other.
This leads to a perception that gentoo users are narrow-minded bigots that are unable to accept peoples right to a different opinion. So it appears that a few bad apples are spoiling the whole barrel.
Hope this clears it up for you
i was asking andrew how was gentoo fans behaviour turning him off which led him to avoid mentioning gentoo in his article. this forums/comments dont have anything to do with that.
just curious, how do “fans” of gentoo turn you off?
Take a look at this thread:
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=81020
The page they refer to contains brief descriptions of the 10 major Linux distributions, including some pros and cons of each. The article was discussed on various forums and not everybody agrees with the descriptions (especially the con part of one’s favourite distro), but the Gentoo forums was the only one with comments like “distrowatch is full of shit” or “he must be smoking crack and shooting meth”. How many of those posters emailed me with explanations and supporting facts? Not one.
So yes, I have to agree with Andrew about existence of a particularly vocal and zealous group among Gentoo users, which can be a big turn-off. I think I’ve just found another Gentoo “con”…
Since you seem to need even more clarification: Gentoo zealots turn me off primarily by butting in with their Gentoo comments into threads that have nothing to do with Gentoo. While this thread is one example of this behaviour, I’ve already had plenty of opportunities to observe it on other forums. Take for example Arch forum created on linuxquestions.org, where annoying buzzing of some Gentoo “evangelist” drove off an actual Arch developer, making the whole forum a lot less valuable than it could be. Thus, “contribution” of that person actually went beyond annoying into downright counter-productive. To put it simply, it pissed me off.
I hope that answers your question because I’m not going to contribute to this discussion any further.
Since you seem to need even more clarification: Gentoo zealots turn me off primarily by butting in with their Gentoo comments into threads that have nothing to do with Gentoo.
I’ve been using Gentoo for less than a week, and been a Linux user for approximately 2 months. Even at this stage I can see how a Gentoo user (note: not “zealot”) would probably be on the defensive from your attitude.
Remember that thousands of people across the world use any distro, and they often have nothing more in common than that. So easy up on the anti-Gentooism. Your not going to defeat fanatics by becoming one.
Sorry to post off-topic..
About the supposed (real or not) Gentoo Users Zealotry..
I am myself a Gentoo user, coming from an old redhat 7.0
heavily customized (read, really difficult to update and to keep consistent), and compared to my previous predicament,
I feel myself now in a better shape.
Gentoo is not the panacea, but from what I understand,
people find it like heaven compared to their
previous distros.
Now, you are maybe inebriated by your new freedom, and
you would like to convert others, thinking to have
their best interest at heart.
It is possible that this behavior is excessive, but I
see it like somebody leaving jail for, ho! so long time,
and beig euphoric about the recovered freedom.
Gentoo, is young, and most of its user (in its respect) too.
Please, bear with us, we will mature and we will become
(hopefully) great contributors of open source movement.
On a last note, about the source based distribution in general, I tend to see them as the natural evolution for
a GNU/Linux user who is willing to change, and to learn new things, until, maybe, creating his own distribution.
Rongten
“If anyone knows a LINUX distro that works the first time with MP3, MPEGs and all multimedia via the internet, let me know. LINUX needs to work flawlessly with multimedia internet connection or the younger generation will never want it.”
Younger generation? How about the older generation that doesn’t want to learn anything new :-p heh heh
Anyways take a look at Knoppix. Thats what I’ve been using.
I think you should take a long look at all the comments and reread the article. This was never a review of gentoo. But it did became a gentoo forum for the exact reasons Andrew and Ladislav have described, and like i said in my previous post a few “immature” “zealots” are ruining the distro’s reputation.
Rock-linux which was also not reviewed for other reasons hasn’t hijacked the forum nor has Lunar or Sorcerer. If a Source Mage user (for which I am a developer) did the same thing as has happened here and in the forum link that was posted I would be ashamed to show my face. Let alone try to debate something that has been “proven”… In fact I would be very apologetic to the two people who’s time and efforts have been criticised due to their “objective” appraisal of a cancer in Gentoo.
gentoo zealots are nothing compared to rebol’s.. but if you go on both places (gentoo.org, rebol.com) and try to see why there is a hype and who is fuzzing that, you will see that those two projects are found mostly by quite experienced techie guys who just have enough time to explore new things.. they make lazy pragmatics crazy… that is quite funny imo.
i have problems with my girlfriend coz i like to spend lot of my free time exploring gentoo
in meantime i’m quite busy… the only thing why i’m not more into rebol is coz it is not GNU GPLed.. that is the way how i select which technology worths some spare time… i don’t think everyone in the world should be selective that way… i respect BSDish selection also 