Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Arwed von Merkatz <v.merkatz AT gmx.net>]

On Mon, Apr 26, 2004 at 01:34:05AM +0200, Jaanus Heeringson wrote:
> So I'm at it again, burning the midnight oil.
> 
> I have recently read a lot of different articles about Linux in general 
> to try and get a grip on the "feel" out there, and this is some things i 
> found out:
> 
> 1. There is a confusion about choise of distro. At least more than there 
> was a few years ago, mostly due to the big ones starting to charge for 
> updates etc. People change distros often and simply can't make up their 
> minds. This is good for us, and we should take advantage of it.
> 2. Gentoo is big. It is almost allways mentioned alongside the other 
> large commercial distros. This is good since more people are interested 
> in sourcebased distros, and bad because we have a lot of work to do if 
> we want to make ourselves heard next to them.
> 3. A lot of the intermediate users are very tired of choise. They simply 
> don't want to research at every corner to install the appropriate stuff 
> (which MTA, DNS etc) and are asking for a "preferred setup". This maby 
> don't concern us yet, but it might in the future.

I'm not sure we _ever_ want a "preferred setup". I mean a preffered
setup is nice, but Source Mage is, has been, and as far is I am
concerned will forever be about choice. That's what got me into the
distro back in the Sorcerer days, and has kept me with it all the time.
I think we could use more profiles that can get people started, although
imo we need a different way to do that than the current meta-spell way.

About the rest of your mail I can't tell much, all I know about gentoo
is based on what i read on the gentoo website and what i read from the
gentoo users (you can't really get around them recently ;).
I think sorcery is more powerful than emerge, but that opinion isn't
based on experience, just on what former gentoo users who switched told
me.

> I'm a bit interested in gentoo and how it differentiates from SMGL. I 
> have read in on it a bit, but don't currently have time to install it 
> now. What I have found so far does not seem very impressive, at least 
> not when it comes to the base system. This of cause is not enough, so I 
> need more input reguarding this issue. I'm sure there are a lot of you 
> out there that try Gentoo now and then, so could you please describe 
> your view of the differences between Gentoo and SMGL? What's good & bad? 
> What are the major differences?
> 
> My gut feeling is that in order to get some attention we will have to 
> compete with Gentoo to get it, and since they actually are a for profit 
> company, it will be quite a task. In my opinion we need to find a couple 
> of point on how we differentiate us from Gentoo in a good way.
> 
> -- 
> MVH
> 
> Jaanus Heeringson
> 
> Underwerks Design
> Ålegådsgatan 424
> 43150 Mölndal
> Sweden
> 
> Mobile: +46 709 492609
> Phone: +46 31 402980
> 
> http://www.underwerks.com
> mail: jaanus AT heeringson.com
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
Arwed v. Merkatz                              Source Mage GNU/Linux developer
                                                    http://www.sourcemage.org