Talk:Gentoo Linux/Archive 1

message: I have some objection to the Gentoo is Rice link, I dont like the site in general, the guy has taken some sample quotes from new or inexperienced users and presented them as representative of our community.
But this is not the basis for my objection, the site is "critical" of gentoo users, not the Gentoo Linux project or software, I dont think we should link to it from an article about gentoo software. I feel that linking to his site is an example of Guilt by Association, where he is attempting to discredit gentoo linux by presenting some quotes from gentoo users, "These people use gentoo, so imagine how poor gentoo must be". --taviso
:I've added the "dubious" tag after the link, please remove it if the consensus is that the link is appropriate.
::Check out the changes I made today - let me know if they make the link more appropriate. I was orginially thinking to remove it, but now that I've placed it in some context, perhaps it should remain for NPOV? --NightMonkey 22:16, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)
:::OK, the article has been significantly changed to reduce POV (still working to make it better) - can we remove the "dubious" tag from the link, unless the author above has a continued request for removal? If there are no objections in the next day or so, I'm announcing my intention for removal of the tag.  --NightMonkey 15:39, Aug 3, 2004 (UTC)
::::I just removed it.  If someone thinks it expresses valid, objective criticisms, then I invite them to add to the article, not just tag an external link.  I may do it myself, just not right now. :p ¦ Reisio 09:36, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Wikipedia often has "x in popular culture" headings or comments in various articles.  This "ricer" site is known by all Gentoo users and many people who never use Gentoo...I think it's part of popular culture and should be included for this reason.  After all, wikipedia has an article on goatse, so it should acknowledge this more legitimate and less controversial part of popular culture!  BUT, all this said, I think that any link should acknowledge that this is not a legitimate review or criticism of gentoo, but rather, just a goofy parody that has become rather widely recognized. Cazort 01:37, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  
Gentoo Ricer Link
 

message: Why was this page protected by RickK? If those anons were causing a problem, block them, don't protect the article just for a couple of vandalism incidents. --Johnleemk | Talk 12:27, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Protection? 

message: :Gentoo's Portage system works similarly to Debian's APT.
OK. I've not used Debian very much, beyond some test installations. Is this true that Portage works similarly to Apt, but not similarly to, say, RPM? Is what this sentence trying to say something like this: "Gentoo's Portage is a package management system, similar in function to Debian's APT and Red Hat's RPM and (insert other package management system here)". Of course, worded like so, it now appears that this statement is not really true, as Portage has other functions more related to FreeBSD's Ports system, from what I've heard from FreeBSD users (and Gentoo's docs).
So, should this sentence be removed, reworded, or ? --NightMonkey 21:47, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)
:Well no, as I don't think it should, as it functions similarly to Debian's APT. With APT, you run 'apt-get <package>' to download, configure, and install a package (leaving out only compilation compared to 'emerge <package> as it is a binary distro) whereas 'rpm -i <filename>.rpm' requires you to already have the RPM downloaded, and have manually installed all of its dependencies. Therefore, portage/APT set themselves apart from RPM and other traditional package managers. --Brother Dysk 01:08, Dec 22, 2004 (UTC)
::Huh. Well, the sentence leaves out a lot of important information, then. As it is, it implies that Portage is a workalike to APT. What about Red Hat's up2date? And, while I haven't used it in a while, I seem to remember that RPM can use a URI to locate RPM files (e.g. "RPM -Uvh http://freshrpms.net/somerpm-01.rpm"). All I'm saying is this seems too pat and narrow a statement. I seem to recall a program named "gnorpm" which would automate a lot of the dependency matching as well as download from repositories. And there's Ximian's Installer... So, can this still say that APT the only software which does download/dependency recurse/install? --NightMonkey 01:27, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)
:::First of all, I completely agree against the criticism section. If this is okay to put a criticism section on Windows and Mac; then I'll happy to write all my complaints about those idiots. (For Windows users, I can even write much more about those spamming, virus-addict .....bags) 
:::Comparing apt-get & portage are quite different as well. The main difference between any "non source based" distro and a "source based" distro (Such as Gentoo, Linux From Scratch, Source Mage etc.); is the freaking "source". If you would like to compare Gentoo with any distro; then first think about Source Mage, LFS, Rock Linux etc. If you would like to compare specifically apt-get versus portage ; then they ressemble to each other but they are quite different. A Bugatti Veyron and a Saturn are both cars; but they are different. So while describing Bugatti Veyron, telling that "Bugatti is a car similar to Saturn" is an insult to Bugatti. I have prepared the article of Gentoo and Debian in Turkish here on Wikipedia; (Debian 1st hd, Gentoo 2nd HD) and to tell the truth I enjoy both. I think it isn't quite correct to compare portage with apt-get. There are huge differences on repesitories, insallation times, up-to-date programs, the capacity of controlling the installation etc. I believe it is quite sufficent to just say it's a package management system. --Nerval 19:19, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Informing users that Gentoo's Portage is similar to APT/RPM is blatantly wrong. It is completely different: internally (scripting versus compiled tool), feature-wise (optional dependencies, ...), functional (source-building vs prebuilt), etc. -- SwifT 14:41, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  apt-get vs. RPM vs. Portage vs. ... 

message: From the article, ``While Gentoo has been proven to be faster in some situations because of Prelink and the minimalism one can achieve through very selective software installation (which may prove difficult with some binary distributions)' '.  First, I notice there's no citation for this.  (I can recall benchmarks where Gentoo was compared to other systems with no noticable performance differences.)  Second, prelink is not unique to Gentoo.  It is available at least on Debian and Ubuntu and presumably other distributions as well.  129.110.241.254 20:54, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Prelink and benchmarking 

message: Not sure what the guy was smoking that wrote that Fink is chroot.  Fink isn't chroot... it's just a bunch of files under /sw,  just like darwinports uses /opt/local, and so on.  Needs research to verify that, and if so, rewrite that paragraph. --Randal L. Schwartz 02:19, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  fink is not chroot! 

message: I expanded and reworded the history section as I read Making the Distribution.  I'm a bit disappointed in the lack of dates.  I found a page that claims to have enoch-0.75 source (http://public.planetmirror.com/pub/enoch/enoch-0.75/?fl=e), but it appears to be quite broken.  It suggests it was released in December 1999, but I was hoping for something firmer before adding dates to the article. JohnWhitlock 09:59, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: John - I think the gcc stuff you've just added leaves the impression that Gentoo was widely known for it's speed at that time and that this was spread to the rest of Linux. Nothing wrong with your facts - just the impression they leave. I'd rv that whole addition frankly. It just doesn't add anything relevant - imho :-)  Snori 11:13, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

text: I've just done a fairly bold revision, which I'm pretty happy with. I'd like to see some other items in here tho' - dates of the "firsts" Power970 etc. I won't be doing that, so feel free...--Snori 02:49, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  History 

message: Needs someone who understands what's going on (or not) with "Gentoo for Mac OS X", Gentoo/ALT, Gentoo/FreeBSDGentoo/NetBSD, Gentoo/OpenBSD Hurd etc to reword and update.  --Snori 05:39, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Portability

message: In the Installation section, it says:
:More advanced users will note that the new installer also brings back the stage 1 installation as a common installation method.
I tried to find an adequate description of the three different stages in the current documentation (to link to for context/explanation) but was unsuccessful. (Boy, when they remove doc support for something, they remove doc support for it!) I would try a brief explanation myself, but I'm not sure I would get it right. Can someone else do this? Even though the sentence is prefaced by "More experienced users", it would be nice to explain to others — especially non-users — what this sentence is referring to. - dcljr (talk) 18:53, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, damn... there it is right in the section I was referring to! Okay, I just added "(see below)" after the words "Stage 1 installation". I really should read the article before "complaining" about it! <g> - dcljr (talk) 18:57, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

text: There's no point in stage 1 anyways (unless you hate yourself more than regular Gentoo users do). After a few weeks, you've already rebuilt all of the base system anyways. Kurt 12:45, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stage 1? 

message: Unofficial mascots include Larry the cow (ironically, not a penguin, since Linux kernel itself uses a penguin, Tux, as its mascot)
I can't say I see the irony in this. I can't say I even find Tux relevant enough to be mentioned.
:Look at the disambiguation page and you'll get the point behind this remoark 62.221.215.214 20:33, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Irony? 

message: "Quality assurance. Gentoo allows fast access to the widest range of the latest available software from upstream developers, so packages may get into “~ masked” (Testing), and even be unmasked (Stable), with less testing than in other distributions."
I removed the above statement as it has no basis that I know of. Packages stay in masked and unstable until the flow of bugs on the Gentoo Bugzilla slow down, or until multiple people from architectures report the release as stable. How is that any less worthy than the other systems? If there are multiple verifiable references for this it could warrant a place on the article. Ansell 11:10, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quality Assurance criticism 

message: I will not involve myself in the quagmire-cum-debate that is the Gentoo Linux - Gentoo GNU/Linux debate.  However, until (or if ever) Gentoo begins calling itself GNU/Linux, it is highly inappropriate for the Wikipedia entry on it to refer to it as something it vehemently claims to not be.  Falcon 06:10, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  GNU/Linux