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Gentoo Linux 2008.0

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  • #71
    Originally posted by deanjo View Post
    There is no way you can convince me that disabling compiz is harder then installing and configuring Gentoo. Rightclick on applet and disable. Done.
    He's not trying to. He's saying that enabling compiz silently by default with the binary driver is a bad idea. That is "TOO much" automagic. As an experienced user, it took him 30 seconds to work out what was wrong, but would a completely new linux user be able to?

    A better idea would be to pop-up a little box saying the "We notice you have a 3D accelated graphics card, would you like to try compiz?" would be a MUCH better idea. Especially as you can than add a note to the effect that performance problems might be related to the enabling of compiz, and how to disable it in the case that compiz causes problems.

    He isn't attacking auto-magic, or Ubuntu, he's just saying that completely automagic systems which don't tell you everything they are doing are, in general, a bad idea.

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    • #72
      Originally posted by RobbieAB View Post
      He's not trying to. He's saying that enabling compiz silently by default with the binary driver is a bad idea. That is "TOO much" automagic. As an experienced user, it took him 30 seconds to work out what was wrong, but would a completely new linux user be able to?

      A better idea would be to pop-up a little box saying the "We notice you have a 3D accelated graphics card, would you like to try compiz?" would be a MUCH better idea. Especially as you can than add a note to the effect that performance problems might be related to the enabling of compiz, and how to disable it in the case that compiz causes problems.

      He isn't attacking auto-magic, or Ubuntu, he's just saying that completely automagic systems which don't tell you everything they are doing are, in general, a bad idea.
      I do believe it is mentioned in the feature list AND in the release notes.

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      • #73
        And we all now how much your average user reads the documentation...

        Now I'm going to point out that this was an example of TOO MUCH automagic, changing one thing causing other things to change silently. No one is claiming automagic is bad, no one is claiming Gentoo is perfect. All we are saying is that automagic needs to take into account, in it's design, that it might get it wrong and to give warnings where common problems occur. From the sounds of this, the "Install 3D capable drivers" dialogue made no mention of enabling compiz, this is TOO MUCH auto-magic. A better display would offer three options: don't install, install + no compiz, and install + compiz.

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        • #74
          Originally posted by RobbieAB View Post
          And we all now how much your average user reads the documentation...

          Now I'm going to point out that this was an example of TOO MUCH automagic, changing one thing causing other things to change silently. No one is claiming automagic is bad, no one is claiming Gentoo is perfect. All we are saying is that automagic needs to take into account, in it's design, that it might get it wrong and to give warnings where common problems occur. From the sounds of this, the "Install 3D capable drivers" dialogue made no mention of enabling compiz, this is TOO MUCH auto-magic. A better display would offer three options: don't install, install + no compiz, and install + compiz.

          Still reading a readme or release notes is far less involved then reading the gentoo howto install.

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          • #75
            Originally posted by deanjo View Post
            Still reading a readme or release notes is far less involved then reading the gentoo howto install.
            And where have either of us claimed otherwise?

            All either of us have claimed is that Gentoo is not for everyone, but that does not make it elitist, and that too much automagic is bad.

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            • #76
              Originally posted by RobbieAB View Post
              And where have either of us claimed otherwise?

              All either of us have claimed is that Gentoo is not for everyone, but that does not make it elitist, and that too much automagic is bad.
              Poorly implemented automagic is bad, not the amount.

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              • #77
                There have been some comments in this thread about Gentoo documentation not being updated or complete, and I have to strongly disagree. I use Ubuntu almost entirely unless on work servers (all RHEL), and the majority of the time I use Ubuntu documentation. But when I have a problem that I can't find a solution for anywhere else I can usually find something about it on the Gentoo wiki.

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                • #78
                  Originally posted by joshuapurcell View Post
                  There have been some comments in this thread about Gentoo documentation not being updated or complete, and I have to strongly disagree. I use Ubuntu almost entirely unless on work servers (all RHEL), and the majority of the time I use Ubuntu documentation. But when I have a problem that I can't find a solution for anywhere else I can usually find something about it on the Gentoo wiki.
                  Heh, I recall seeing an IBM posting to that effect...

                  It basically ran that Gentoo was the only community distro from Debian, Fedora, and OpenSUSE to have noted certain of the speciallised requirements for one of their big machines. As RHEL and SLES were certified to run on it, this came as a slight surprise.

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                  • #79
                    Gentoo?

                    I suspect the critique is that it is only suited for advanced users or intermediate users (but not beginners). Also, constant compiling is involved. If you are compiling, say, KDE, how long does it take? Not everyone has a fast computer. I was wondering how long it might take to compile the largest packages such as KDE - on a Quad Core (Core 2 Quad 6600) computer.

                    I knew/know of someone who is a Gentoo fan and even had it installed on one of my computers (was sold). It probably wasn't the best candidate for Gentoo as it was an AMD64 4200+ cpu machine. I now use a Quad Core but I'm not very familiar with Linux especially manually configuring or using the command line extensively. I am sure Gentoo is great for advanced users but probably would be a struggle for me at this stage.

                    I also can say that I know of some advanced Linux users who are, at the moment, not committed to jumping into Gentoo because of previous issues/problems or perceiving that the 'Gentoo community' has (had?) such issues as decribed in the phoronix article. I'm neutral on this and know nothing of it so I'm just mentioning.

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                    • #80
                      Originally posted by Panix View Post
                      I suspect the critique is that it is only suited for advanced users or intermediate users (but not beginners). Also, constant compiling is involved. If you are compiling, say, KDE, how long does it take? Not everyone has a fast computer. I was wondering how long it might take to compile the largest packages such as KDE - on a Quad Core (Core 2 Quad 6600) computer.

                      I knew/know of someone who is a Gentoo fan and even had it installed on one of my computers (was sold). It probably wasn't the best candidate for Gentoo as it was an AMD64 4200+ cpu machine. I now use a Quad Core but I'm not very familiar with Linux especially manually configuring or using the command line extensively. I am sure Gentoo is great for advanced users but probably would be a struggle for me at this stage.

                      I also can say that I know of some advanced Linux users who are, at the moment, not committed to jumping into Gentoo because of previous issues/problems or perceiving that the 'Gentoo community' has (had?) such issues as decribed in the phoronix article. I'm neutral on this and know nothing of it so I'm just mentioning.
                      Yeah, I heard the same as far as the community issues, I don't know much about them though. Gentoo doesn't require a fast machine, but the faster machine you have, the less pain it will be in compiling the system. Gentoo is recommended for advanced users, because in my opinion, is a project of its own, but it has its own benefits as well.

                      I just want to state that what I said previously was not to pit Gentoo against Ubuntu or other distributions but the whole point was to show that there are advantages and disadvantages to doing things the long way. I've used Fedora, OpenSuSE, Debian, Ubuntu, Vector, Slackware, Gentoo and many others and I can say they all have their advantages over one another. Although I have to say the newest OpenSuSE (11.0) is pretty nice.

                      I've had frustrations of my own with Gentoo as well as any other distribution, they all have their own problems that well, you just gotta deal with. Some have more problems than others though. As far as my personal experience, the two least painful distributions I've used is OpenSuSE and Debian. The most rewarding in the end is probably Gentoo.

                      If you want to try experimenting with Gentoo with no risk you could just use something like Virtualbox or some other virtual machine software and experiment with it.
                      Last edited by Malikith; 12 July 2008, 02:05 PM.

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