I have been thinking for awhile now and can’t convince myself of an answer.
Does the lack of yearly releases help or hurt Gentoo?
I enjoy Gentoo because I never have to re-install my host. The “rolling release” model is great, a model shared by nearly all(?) source-based distros. However, with our new automated weekly stages – which I think are a great idea, we lose a few things. In no particular order, we lose:
- PR – new ‘releases’ generate a buzz on the distro sites and blog-o-sphere around the world.
- Ability to say “we no longer support base installs before 20XX.Y” – repo changes, bash versions, portage upgrades, etc.
- The appearance of activity. (This point is debatable)
However, with that being said, I think that yearly releases are also pointless with the presence of weekly stages, because:
- ‘releases’ mean nothing to existing hosts – the only thing you have to do is update your make.profile symlink. There is no other direct benefit unless we tie features to a new profile.
- It is a metric ton of workload to get a stage out there that is guaranteed to work for a year.
- Missing man-power for the release schedule. As evident by the regular occurrence of releases slipping behind schedule.
- Obviously it is easy to script or automate. Good job release team on getting this done.
- By the end-of-life date of the stage (normally a year, sometimes longer), you have a ton of old packages to update. Meaning, weekly stages provide a much faster complete install.
So, how do I solve the above? Well I’m not exactly sure. One idea I have is to automatically create new profiles every 6 months. This would allow PR to continue. Individual arch teams can decide how long to keep old profiles – I’d recommend one year. However, updates to the profiles would only go into the latest profile – so it would be advantageous to update the profile asap for users. One particular downside about not creating new profiles is that they will never be eligible for EAPI upgrades, only new profiles are eligible. I don’t exactly see a downside to this idea besides it being some work every 6 months for someone.
Does anyone else have opinions on this subject? Or other ideas on how to gain back what we lose as presented above?
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38 Comments
Instead — a new LiveCD with each kernel release. Frequency ~2x/year, so you get the PR, and you have a point besides having something to call a release. You get new hardware support.
Donnie, Yea, via comments here I have learned how much of an impact LiveCDs have. I agree, however I would prefer a more strict timeline myself.
I think that automatically created new profiles every 6 months is a very good idea. These should be ‘marketed’ as official Gentoo releases. Off course it is then required that the weekly build will be no longer marked experimental. They also should replace the current 2008 stages. It is best to complement this with weekly announcements when new stages has been build.
How on earth are people supposed to install Gentoo in the first place? Reading the mailing lists, they need an Ubuntu CD to install Gentoo?
Seriously. Gentoo walks towards death right now.
Where exactly did you see this? There are minimal and Live CDs released as part of 2008.0. We are also doing weekly minimal CD builds with the stages.
Yes, Donnie Berkholz is right. Only LiveCDs seem to create buzz on the PR level and they can actually be useful, because of the hardware support.
Henrique, well yes, I sort of agree. We can create positive PR by being more communitative without saying that LiveCDs are the *only* way to create buzz.
I personally support the idea of having at least one release, even a minimal cd, yearly to complement the weekly stages. In this way, you are getting new users to the community. I am new to gentoo and i don’t know much about how the project functions, but i like the distro.
I started using gentoo after the 2007 dvd release and did a good job on my home pc, but when i bought a new laptop with new hardware then, i could not install 2007.0 and update later due to the fact that most of the hardware is not supported. i had to patiently wait for the 2008 release. i have noticed that the release of gentoo takes much time, but its infact beneficial in the end.
even if releases take time, without them: you will keep current users but the distro will not attract new users. this ll eventually retard the distro’s reputaion. I think you will agree with me if i say that if the distro does not attract users then it is not attracting developers.
everything is not as it seems…
@Nikos: I think it’s a good think. Show me any other distro, which installable by another distro’s LiveCD (excluded Gentoo and LFS of course)!
However I agree your opinion: new LiveCDs needed when kernel get a new drivers (especially storage or network driver). But the new LiveCD needs some more maintenance than typing the correspondent catalyst command line to prompt or press a button on some WebUI. It needs to test on some different machines, because catalyst always build the livecd to the current Portage tree, and until the kernel changes its version, any other things can do same. This process needs more human resource – and I think Gentoo project doesn’t have enough capacity for it.
There should be minimal install CDs produced either monthly or with each 2.6.x kernel release
As for LiveCDs they should be produced as often as we can to produce as much “buzz” around Gentoo as possible.
If there was a way of using tools like Metro and Catalyst to create LiveCD and LiveUSB sticks quickly (well as quickly as is possible when compiling from source) then this would be the best approach. Just imagine being able to “roll your own” with the DE of your choice making it as generic or as specific as you want to your hardware.
I’m continually frustrated by other distro’s LiveUSB offerings. (Try finding a KDE 4.2 installation with decent NetworkManager support)
In my frustration I set up my whole installation as a regular Gentoo install on the stick using Reiser4 compression
Mike
Every 2.6.x release? Not sure, I like every X months better vs every ‘variable amount of time dependant on Linux Kernel development”
As much as I like the rolling update thing, it does matter how often a livecd comes out. It’s no fun using a livecd from say 18 months back and find out that you don’t have the device drivers you need. Unfortunately, I doubt you could make this an automated thing, the livecd really does need a lot of testing to work well. And there have been noticeable differences between particular releases in the past.
Without a recent LiveCD with decent hardware support you might be unable to install Gentoo without using another distro to boot up your “brand new thing”. Although I did so because years ago using an onl 2004.0 LiveCD I was unable to boot my desktop I think this really will keep people away from the distro due to a really simple reason: As long as you are not familiar with the rolling update thing, you will think the distro supports the hardware the LiveCD supports. And of course no one tries a distro which fails on his hardware.
To all who mentioned the Minimal CD: the latest AMD64 one was released on 12-Feb-2009 (18-Feb for x86)
LiveCD: yep Gentoo should release one whenever it is justified, i.e. a very long time since the last one elapsed, if only to attract some attention, or a new kernel has been released and support for popular hardware has been added. That would vary according to arch. x86/amd64 should have a faster tempo then alpha or hppa.
I agree on the positve buzz around an official release. That is something the press can pickup. And with a new LiveCD, people have something to hold on.
But the rolling update is imho one big thing why people choose Gentoo. So this should not be changed.
So first of all we have to decide, what could be an official Gentoo release:
We have portage (sorry paludis users…) as heart of Gentoo. And there is of course the kernel. I like Donnie’s idea of calling everything with a new stable kernel a release. We could even do this on arch basis: even more releases
We could use any Minor/Major portage release as Major Release and any kernel update as Minor.
I think we can agree that an official release is accompanied with a new profile.
And defacto it will just be an new LiveCD release.
And what are the needs of a Gentoo LiveCD?
It should be as minimal as possible: A fairly resent kernel, some tiny DE, a lightweight browser to access the Gentoo Homepage, wget and chroot for network install, accompanied with the Handbook and the recent stage tarballs. (Well some admin tools are nice but optional. I always used GRML for a new install, since I have with anytime.) Especially there is no need for firefox, openoffice, Gnome and KDE on it. The KISS principle should be followed. A Gentoo LiveCD should not be about choice but about install.
And there is no need for a GUI Installer!
I have EeePC 1000H and 2008.0 doesn’t recognize my wired network card. Right now I’m in the middle of setting up Gentoo and I need 2.6.27 kernel (where is atl1e driver). So installation process is a bit more complicated, another machine and SD card helps a lot. I stick with Gentoo ‘just because’, but I can imagine that for new users can be frustrating.
The useful thing for me was the Live DVDs, since I had no
broadband connection. With a Live DVD commercial organisations
have something to sell, and I could build most of a Gentoo system
from the DVD and use a modem connection for any updates I wanted.
I can’t see the Live DVD coming back, and so I don’t know quite
what to do about updating, but if someone could find an automated
way to build a DVD it would be a real life-saver.
Will
“a new LiveCD with each kernel release. Frequency ~2x/year, so you get the PR, and you have a point besides having something to call a release. You get new hardware support.”
+1
as for me, i never use gentoo livecd/livedvd/install cd disks. i go straight for stages, and i install them from knoppix or other popular livecd distros. from that point of view, i don’t see the reason for duplication of effort, if there are already quite decent livecd distributions around.
but on the other hand, i think it’s a custom that distribution should come with its own set of install media. gentoo, however doesn’t need to necessarily follow it.
btw there could be a note in the install docs about that. everybody thinks you must have gentoo livecd/install cd to install gentoo, which is not quite true.
there should be at least one stage per year for stable installations. if not, there should be a roadmap for every new release with a deadline that will not be missed.
for a regular user, weekly stage is good enough.
As a long-time gentoo user who recently wanted to install a Gentoo VM to try to help more with testing, &c., not having a Gentoo Live CD – even just the most minimal thing to help me get the stages going – would have put me off for another few weeks. :/
Get PR buzz through feature/subsystem stabilizations, not releases. Other distros get regular press through “F10 is *going to have* MumbleFoo support” or “Compiz-NG++ is slated for release in Cute Capybara.” It’s more compelling to say “PulseAudio is now available”, “Gnome 2.24 available now”, &c. One per stabilization is probably too noisy, but collect up all the major changes every month/quarter and announce it as a new “release”. Get it aligned with the LiveCD ideas mentioned above, and you’re good to go. The point of such PR is not necessarily to keep your existing users (who are presumably already reaping the benefits through regular world updates), but to make Gentoo interesting to outside parties to attract new/lapsed users, and generally improve the perception of Gentoo in the world.
Thinking about it a bit, do the more time-consuming livecd creation 2x/yr, and do the “releases” 4-6x/yr with verbiage to the effect “because Gentoo is unique and awesome, this [historical] LiveCD will work just fine for new installations, and existing installations doing regularly updates are already upgraded!”
I have to commit to the very same problem of the author above. I’m using Gentoo right now for more than 4 years and the rolling release perfectly suits me.
But recently my old machine crashed so I bought a new one. The new hardware was not supported by the latest Gentoo 2008.0 (both SATA and LAN were missing) so I had to took another distro (openSuSE; I needed a 2.6.28 kernel).
It was pretty annoying. I can image a lot of people been frustrated by this fact which keeps them apart from the “Gentoo feeling”.
I highly appreciate a 2x/year Minimal-CD which lets you install Gentoo directly without the need of any other distro. Doesn’t need any WM. Stage3. Stage1 is fine for me as well, but I need a working (Gentoo-)Kernel to start with.
Ok everyone…
There is a minimal install cd built with the weekly stages! The only time it is not there is when it fails for some reason. At which point, it should work during the next week. For example:
http://distfiles.gentoo.org/experimental/amd64/autobuilds/20090212/install-amd64-minimal-20090212.iso
Why this is not stated on the download page?
http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/where.xml
BTW: totally unintuitive page name…
Since so many seem not to be able just to take the next available LiveCD and are in desperate need of a official Gentoo LiveCD: give it to them. There seems to be the irrational need for a branded CD…
(I have always a LiveCD at hand, which can boot my PC and gets the network going, just in case.)
I totally agree with you
Exactly, everyone seems to forget that the weekly builds contain livecd’s which can be used to install Gentoo. What we don’t have right now is an up-to-date profile. That’s why I think Jeremy’s idea is very good.
I agree with the profile idea as well. Personally though, I think that the livecd experimental idea needs more press, especially on the download page near the top. I wasn’t able to install on my new i7 because the last build was too old (used a sabayon disc to pull the stages instead).
Yep it’s very important that every freshly build stage (and thus livecd) gets announced on the frontpage.
I disagree, weekly announcements are pointless. Not to mention that every arch is a different day. So, a daily announcement? Sounds silly to me.
All -
I would hazard to guess that this post swayed the release team to “flick the switch” on autobuilds. You can know find autobuilds in the release/ dir
ex:
http://distfiles.gentoo.org/releases/amd64/autobuilds/
Maybe, every stabilized major 2.6.x release?
I think that’s a great idea. Roll new LiveCDs and call them “releases”. The uninitiated get the PR and appearance of activity, the LiveCDs don’t go stale, the stages get updated on their own schedule.
(I was replying to Donnie’s comment)
PR is a pleasant and workable solution, much more adapted to Gentoo’s reality.
But it has a huge dowside, that you mentioned: The lack of publicity, marketing. Gentoo needs more contribution, more developers and this comes out of more users using it. An increase in users is catalyzed by the news/articles about the yearly releases, and we need that.
I’m firmly in the “meh” crowd – I haven’t used an official Gentoo CD to install Gentoo in years.
Having said that, an automated build system sounds like a great idea, for PR and QA. Instead of having a situation like before where there was so much breakage the .1 release was cancelled, you can just do a build every few days and on release day throw out the last good version.
I don’t think it matters wether Gentoo has liveCD/DVD releases or not. They do generate publicity, get interviews about Gentoo and onto Linux magazines as cover mounts, which is all good.
We do need a positive decision one way or the other. Many new users come to the forums saying that the Gentoo CD won’t boot, be it 2008.0 live or minimal.
Its always because the hardware is too new for the kernel.
We should not allow the documentation and provided media to mislead users in that fashion. They come to the forums asking what to do and the reccomendation is always a stage 3 install using another boot medium. Thats not a good start to the Gentoo world.
I’m slightly in favour of regular liveCDs but only for the publicity. Its more important new users have a good first impression of Gentoo, which they don’t get right now with the 2008.0 media and install guides being allowed to wither to the point where they are rarely useful.
Try SystemRescueCD: http://www.sysresccd.org/
Based on Gentoo and up to date.
Hi Dear,
I think that a live CD is a good idea. New people reads of it on distro’s site…Internet distro site. If Internet doesn’t speak about gentoo less people will use it.
1 new official release over a year could be good with new schedule profiles every six months.
Bye
Zioalex
For most things, installing with an old install medium works well enough, because most of your system is determined by the stage tarballs you download during install. The only thing that you need the install media to do is:
1. Partition the hard drives
2. Format the partition that gentoo will be installed to
3. Obtain a stage3 from the interwebz
4. Chroot into the extracted stage3 environment
However, I think the 2008.0 minimal install CD is “too old” in that it doesn’t do part 2 as well as it used to. Specifically, you cannot use the Gentoo 2008.0 minimal install CD if you want to use the ext4 file system (at least not in a direct manner).
Having said that, you can install gentoo given “any” install medium that complies with the four points I mentioned. There are a ton of liveCDs that provide an acceptable environment ([k,x]ubuntu, lfs, knoppix, etc.).
One possible solution would be to change the official docs to instruct people to use one of the “more maintained” liveCDs from elsewhere instead of the venerable 2008.0 media. That way new users can learn straight from the docs how to do it, and gentoo need not provide new media (just updated docs as needed based on the changes to the popular liveCDs).
I can make a example for that: Bought my brand new i7 system… only to find out the motherboard is not supported on the latest live cd and minimal. And although i dont mind that installing gentoo takes some time, I really dont feel any temptation to use a ubuntu (that does support this motherboard) to install gentoo on this system. As for the weekly minimal CD’s: sounds great. I’ll see if i can find those: must have been blind when i when i was searching for a newer gentoo release then 2008.