A week of KDE4 usage

[Duncan]

Alex Schuster posted on Sat, 02 Jul 2011 14:21:45 +0200 as excerpted:

> I also gave Sabayon a try, it's like a binary Gentoo. But Gnome did not
> run, and again I did not bother to investigate. I also wasn't sure which
> parts of portage I could use safely. But the speed was nice, building a
> Gentoo system takes quite a while.

FWIW, Sabayon's a quite a good choice for those wanting a binary Gentoo.  
That didn't used to be the case, as there was some bad blood due to 
technical disagreements there for awhile, but the two sides ultimately 
came to understand why the other side did what it did. ...

One of the issues had to do with the way Gentoo handled KDE's i18n 
packages, IIRC, so it's somewhat topical.  There were not immediately 
visible issues having to do with from-source packaging that ran rather 
counter to what would have been most convenient for Sabayon.  After the 
Sabayon folks realized the issues with the from-source and the Gentoo 
folks the issues the Sabayon folks were dealing with trying to repackage 
the binaries, it became apparent that Sabayon would have to keep managing 
those rather independently of Gentoo, but there were other areas they 
could cooperate closer in.

Anyway, the bad blood has generally evaporated now, and one of the 
primary Sabayon devs is even a Gentoo dev, now, thus being a useful go-
between for devs on both sides when there are questions. =:^)

But more than that, it has been my believe for some time (and I'm not 
alone, tho the belief is definitely not held universally by Gentoo devs) 
that Gentoo has a unique niche as a from-source distribution, and that 
trying too hard to make it a good binary distribution as well simply 
won't work.  To do so will make it only one after all rather mediocre 
binary distribution among many that are specialized in the area and do it 
far better, while inevitably provoking technical compromises that take 
Gentoo out of its comfortable niche where it's widely known as being 
/the/ /reference/ scripted-from-source distribution.

So there's definitely areas where I believe Gentoo itself shouldn't go, 
in terms of becoming a binary distribution.  But there's absolutely 
nothing wrong with some OTHER gentoo-based distribution, Sabayon here, 
targeting binary distribution users.  And there's nothing wrong with 
close cooperation between them, or even dozens of developers working on 
both, if they're so interested.

So I'm very glad Sabayon's there, providing the "lets take gentoo binary" 
escape mechanism, so fewer devs have the urge to take Gentoo itself that 
way, something I strongly believe would have no good end, at least from 
the perspective of most current gentoo users and devs, as it would near-
to-certainty destroy gentoo in the niche it currently occupies, however 
successful it might be going binary (and I doubt it would be successful 
at all, tho it might limp along for some time, simply look at the number 
of competitors in the space to give you an idea of the odds!).

That's actually much the same way I look at Gnome vs KDE.  I want no part 
in the "our way or the highway, no config opts for you!" project that 
Gnome seems to be, but I'm **EXCEEDINGLY** glad they exist, because if 
they didn't, many of those SAME devs would be working on KDE, trying to 
take away the various config options that allow me to customize it to the 
level I do.

Only I have the idea that I might well use Sabayon at some point, while 
no such illusions exist for Gnome, at least as long as it continues down 
it's ONE TRUE WAY highway, which for sure I hope it does, because 
otherwise some of those devs would be trying to make that the KDE 
philosophy as well, and I **REALLY** don't want that!

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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