[Sussex] Something for our Gentoo users

[Stephen Williams]

As a Gentoo user I was very interested. However, I have no idea who the
author of the article was or what he does. Mind you, I've never claimed
that Gentoo was more secure than other Linux distros, just that I prefer
it more. I'm so used to it by now that I wouldn't contemplate switching
to another distro.

The Gentoo install basically involves downloading a .zip package of a
basic system including GCC, unzipping it to hard disk, and then using
this basic system to fetch and compile a complete system. Normally this
is done in stages:

1 Up to date GCC and other basics
2 Base system
3 Kernel
4 Everything else

Weren't you paying attention during my presentation?

I think the major point about the article concerned trust, and in that
respect software design is no different to other human endeavours. How
do you trust airline pilots? surgeons? bank managers? In these cases you
trust to their experience and judgement, or you do not put your life or
livelihood in their hands. No one individual can encompass the sum of
human knowledge and so obviate the need for trust. One hopes that the
stigma and penalty for betrayal of trust is sufficient deterrent to
prevent such people from so doing. In the case of software programmers,
peer disapproval is hopefully a good deterrent, and criminal sanction
likewise.


On Wed, 2006-09-06 at 16:25 +0100, Colin Tuckley wrote:
> Steven Dobson wrote:
> > How are Gentoo users any better off than the rest of us binary
> > distrobution fokes?
> 
> I didn't say they were any better off. I was pointing out that they are not,
> in fact, any better off as they often claim.
> 
> regards,
> 
> Colin
> 
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