Herbie compiled and assembled new emul-linux-x86-*-packages. emul-linux-x86-gtklibs-2.0 now includes gtk-engines so that 32bit-apps, especially firefox-bin, are usable again: The color-scheme is as expected. Since we also needed newer -baselibs and -xlibs we thought it’d be best to update all packages at the same time.
Have fun with flash and co 😉
Frank Schmitt asked me to include Andres Salomon’s kernel patches in portage, so here they are. Currently there is only =sys-kernel/as-sources-2.6.10-r7, marked testing for x86 and amd64. If you use the as patches anyway, please help me testing them, especially on other arches. As I’m not in the kernel team, please assign bugs directly to me.
Happy kernel baking!
A few days ago I received a copy of a mail from an unsatisfied user who couldn’t install Gentoo/AMD64 on his box:
I recently purchased Gentoo Linux 2005.0 for Amd 64, and i’m having a real
hard time just installing it. To me it seems to be impossible to install,
just using an text-based environment, even though i’ve been doing computers
for about 12 years.
He told us that he feels cheated because the copy he purchased is too cheap to send it back. I feel sorry for him. The only, cold comfort is that he didn’t loose much money.
Then followed a little rant that made me pretty thoughtful the last days:
The real reason why people don’t use these kind of operating-systems is
that it’s impossible to install without a phd. And there is no support to
help you, what so ever. I have tried many linux versions, but they are all
the same. So from now on, i will probably never try anything that isn’t
made by microsoft. And that is a shame. Cause we all know how horriffic
windows is.
I really wish you could have made Gentoo for people that does’nt have 2
years to learn how to install it before they can use it.
Too bad.
Is Linux still in an experimental stage? What about the support? How could we improve?
Looking at our handbooks, mailing lists, irc channels, forums, wikis, bugzilla etc. I think you get much more support with a Linux system than with a commercial one, at least as end user. Gentoo currently has about 312 more or less active developers, and I don’t like the thought that only one had to sit on a hotline ($3.12 per minute/first 10min free), but that’s what some people obviously call support. We have lots of great users that spend a lot of their free and rare time to help other users. Why don’t they get credit? Just because they are users and not developers? They help us making Gentoo a better distribution.
In this spirit I’d like to thank all the users who help us every day even when I break the tree 😉
I really wish you could have made Gentoo for people that does’nt have 2
years to learn how to install it before they can use it.
This probably will change in future, when GLI will be out.
I really like the GLI project and the idea of automate another step. Nevertheless I feel queasy whenever I think of such users that ask for “support”. Will they support other users afterwards? Will they help fixing bugs? Or will they just prevent developers from fixing bugs for those who provide support?