[Klug-general] Shiny New Laptop

[Alex A. Smith MCP]

Karl Lattimer wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-04-21 at 16:05 +0100, Stuart Buckland wrote:
>> On Fri, 2006-04-21 at 14:53 +0100, Karl Lattimer wrote:
>> <snip>
>>> Before you make sweeping statements about something you don't know much
>>> about followed by a "Duhhhhhhh", make sure you're correct of your facts.
>>> Fedora probably the most stable and well managed distribution out there.
>> On the flip side you also have to accept FC and more specifically RH
>> have their flaws.  Unfortunately all the testing, packaging and
>> bastardisation that makes RH a sensible choice for servers also leads to
>> incompatibilities with non-RH supplied software.
> 
> This is true, but to go away from software which has been built and
> tested through the process is to introduce instability into the system
> which cannot always be replicated by others. Thus breaking the model. 
> 
> Of course, with fedora extras and rpmforge I doubt there is anything
> which hasn't been built already, or at least anything useful that hasn't
> been built!
> 

In case you forgot, Gentoo does have a testing system - ~x86 ~ppc 
~x86_64 etc. if you want bleeding edge/beta/new versions/to help out the 
release cycle of apps then you tend to run ~ versions. Once they have 
been tested, tested and re-tested in many cases they are marked stable 
and unleashed on the general user.

To quote WIkipedia

"Masking

Masking is how Gentoo determines which packages are suitable for a 
system. Ebuilds designed for different architectures or experimental 
software are usually masked in a way that will not allow a stable system 
to install them without proper user intervention.

Packages that generally just require some testing but will often work 
fine are said to be keyword masked (i.e. they are available for systems 
with an ACCEPT_KEYWORDS make.conf entry starting with the character ~, 
such as ~x86, ~amd64, ~ppc). The standard way to unmask an individual 
keyword masked package is by adding an entry to 
/etc/portage/package.keywords.

Packages with known problems or not considered mature enough to be 
candidates for stable are hard masked by one of the various package.mask 
files in /usr/portage/profiles, and such entries are generally 
accompanied by a comment from developers explaining the reason for the 
mask. The standard way to unmask a hard masked package is to add an 
entry to /etc/portage/package.unmask. This should be done entirely at 
one's own risk."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentoo_Linux

To imply that gentoo does not have a testing system is incorrect. Alot 
of community members spend alot of time testing.

Remember, im not saying gentoo is better than Distro X, Y or Z, i'm just 
making sure that what you implyed about no testing is cleared up :)

Hope that sets that one right :) (My second and mostlikely, last post on 
this topic).

Have a good evening all,

Alex