From: "Capi" <capi@lugosys.com>
> The thing that I don't understand about systemd is how it managed to
> get
> *EVERY SINGLE DISTRIBUTION'S RELEASE MANAGER* on board in less than
> a year,
> given how thoroughly it violates the Unix philosophy, and how poorly
> documented it is
Not *every single* distribution...
I had meant to put an asterisk on that.
I'm glad to be using Gentoo Linux at home for the last 10 years...
They've adopted OpenRC, which is much less invasive, works with an
existing init (possibly sysv) and uses the friendly shell scripts
we're all used to.
Ok, but how does it handle providing initscripts? I gather any upstreams
which used to provide them aren't anymore...
Cheers,
-- jra
It's Gentoo: "You should write your own" is the most likely answer.
From: "Capi" <capi@lugosys.com>
Whoops, used the wrong alias to reply.
Not *every single* distribution...
I had meant to put an asterisk on that.
My remark was meant to be tongue-in-cheek 
Ok, but how does it handle providing initscripts? I gather any upstreams
which used to provide them aren't anymore...
The Gentoo devs take care of that. I presume they reuse what they can
from upstream... They do a lot of hard work (sometimes more work than
they have the manpower for, unfortunately). I remember, for example,
back in KDE 3.5 days they were already dividing the upstream KDE mega
packages (kde-games, kde-office) into individual packages, so you could
choose specific programs instead of 300 MB bundles.
Actually, not at all; although I realize that's a very common misconception.
Gentoo Linux is, unfortunately, often associated with the whole "gcc
-O9000 -msuperfast -fwtf" wow-look-at-me crowd.
It's true that some people who use Gentoo go on and rave about how many
nanoseconds they were able to shave off of their boot time, or how many
obscure undocumented GCC options they managed to squeeze in without a
compile error. I suppose the flexible nature of Gentoo is appealing to
those who like to "look cool" and show off how they can watch the
compiler do its thing. However, that's not at all what the distribution
is about.
Gentoo is about flexibility and choice. It's got a steepish learning
curve, yes, but the documentation is very good; sadly, much of it was
lost a few years ago, due to a bad mishap on the community Gentoo Wiki
server, apparently without any backups. Back in the day, if I wanted to
learn about Samba, I'd Google "howto linux samba" and Gentoo's Wiki
would usually be among the first 3 hits. Their devs take stability very
seriously; it's a rolling distro, but there is still a reasonable
stabilization period for each package as new versions come out, during
which any open bugs may hold up the package until they're fixed.
It's all about choice. In my view, Gentoo is no better or worse than
Debian, Red Hat, or Ubuntu. Different species, they all make for a
better ecosystem.
Israel G. Lugo wrote:
Ok, but how does it handle providing initscripts? I gather any upstreams
which used to provide them aren't anymore...
It's Gentoo: "You should write your own" is the most likely answer.
Actually, not at all; although I realize that's a very common misconception.
Gentoo Linux is, unfortunately, often associated with the whole "gcc
-O9000 -msuperfast -fwtf" wow-look-at-me crowd.
It's true that some people who use Gentoo go on and rave about how many
nanoseconds they were able to shave off of their boot time, or how many
obscure undocumented GCC options they managed to squeeze in without a
compile error. I suppose the flexible nature of Gentoo is appealing to
those who like to "look cool" and show off how they can watch the
compiler do its thing. However, that's not at all what the distribution
is about.
Gentoo is about flexibility and choice. It's got a steepish learning
curve, yes, but the documentation is very good; sadly, much of it was
lost a few years ago, due to a bad mishap on the community Gentoo Wiki
server, apparently without any backups. Back in the day, if I wanted to
learn about Samba, I'd Google "howto linux samba" and Gentoo's Wiki
would usually be among the first 3 hits. Their devs take stability very
seriously; it's a rolling distro, but there is still a reasonable
stabilization period for each package as new versions come out, during
which any open bugs may hold up the package until they're fixed.
It's all about choice. In my view, Gentoo is no better or worse than
Debian, Red Hat, or Ubuntu. Different species, they all make for a
better ecosystem.
Given the state of things, though, I'm more-and-more considering Linux from Scratch. I find that I install enough from upstream source that packaging systems (and out-of-date packages) are less and less useful. Probably easier to set up Chef or Puppet and Jenkins to just keep the overall system current - and the heck with all this distro nonsense.
Cheers,
Miles Fidelman
Gentoo is about flexibility and choice. It's got a steepish learning
curve, yes, but the documentation is very good; sadly, much of it was
lost a few years ago, due to a bad mishap on the community Gentoo Wiki
server, apparently without any backups. Back in the day, if I wanted to
learn about Samba, I'd Google "howto linux samba" and Gentoo's Wiki
would usually be among the first 3 hits. Their devs take stability very
seriously; it's a rolling distro, but there is still a reasonable
stabilization period for each package as new versions come out, during
which any open bugs may hold up the package until they're fixed.
I certainly remember this, and miss it. The Gentoo documentation, and
indeed the experience of compiling everything, was excellent. I still
miss some of the tools that Gentoo had in Debian/CentOS (and the stage3
live CD is still my goto 'system rescue tool' :))
But.. I don't use it any more for anything serious. It's too much
upkeep, and when the the included/maintained rc scripts for <some
do inevitably fail to catch a corner case -- far more likely if
you're using an overlay -- then you're left with little choice but to
start modifying/writing your own.
It's all about choice. In my view, Gentoo is no better or worse than
Debian, Red Hat, or Ubuntu. Different species, they all make for a
better ecosystem.
I was mildly unfair in the way my response was worded, but I do hold
that the Gentoo way of doing things is much simpler than that of other
distributions. This was, in my experience, a double-edged sword. YMMV, etc.
