Re: the best Linux for me

From: Svein Ove Aas (svein.ove_at_aas.no)
Date: 01/02/05 

Date: Sun, 02 Jan 2005 12:30:53 +0100

start quoting Christopher C. Stacy :

> Trent Buck <geragohpx@tznvy.pbz> writes:
>
> I did not enjoy the fact that the installation procedure
> was very buggy, such as...
>
> * after it knew I was in English, occasionally asking me critial
> questions (of the sort, "shall I format this disk partition?")
> in languages so foreign that I could not even recognize them,
> and could only wildly guess from context what the question was,
> and just hoping that "yes" was the button to the left of "no"
>
Huh?
Gento never asks you any questions at all, and certainly not in a foreign
language. In fact, I've yet to succeed in making it use any other language
than English. (Well, C, actually, but...)

I wonder just what you wandered into.

> * selecting download mirrors based on some obviously bogus test,
> such that it mostly picked ones which did not work (always
> giving 403 Forbidden, Network Unreachable, and other errors);
> not remembering that these didn't work, so trying them over
> and over for every single file; having no way to switch to
> a known working mirror, etc.
>
Shouldn't do that. The mirrorselect script attempts to download a moderately
small file, timing that, and obviously won't get a positive result if it
can't get the file. That said, I tend to enter (ok, copy) the mirror line
manually.

There are issues with files that can't be in the main Gentoo archive (due to
licencing issues, etc.), yes, but having a dozen fallbacks there is just a
way of avoiding other's ineptitude. In any case, such files should in no
way be needed while bootstrapping. (Except perhaps for Java.)

> * making me manually zillions of stupid commands, and even entire
> scripts and config files, which could have all been totally
> automated
>
There are reasons for that, mostly along the lines of "educating the luser".
Not that I agree with them, but I haven't found it to be much of a problem.

> ...and after about 9 hours of this kind of torture,
> and having carefully followed all their directions:
> Gentoo simply did not work. It crashed while booting,
> just froze up about halfway through.
>
Uh huh.
Now, depending on what "crashed" and "froze" means, this could indicate that
you used an experimental kernel, wrongly configured your own, or otherwise
broke the system. I have a theory, but try genkernel next time, or maybe
just try disabling acpi.

> I've been using (system programming, administering, etc.)
> Unix-based systems since the late 1970s, and so would classify
> myself as an experienced user.
>
It has been a problem in the past that people who believe themselves to be
experienced don't follow the installation guide step by step, which is
generally only safe if you've actually installed Gentoo (successfully)
before. I'd have to suggest you try it again.

> My considered opinion is that this Gentoo thing is a pile of dog shit
> that I would wish on my worst enemy.

Wishing Gentoo on anyone is a horrible thought. Having them pick it out
themselves somehow works, though.

> YMMV
>
> Maybe it will get better someday.

ASS, AHS, and Gentoo is merely the best of many bad choices for me.

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