Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Jeremy Blosser <jblosser-smgl AT firinn.org>]

Well, this is apparently getting a lot of commentary on IRC so I should
mention it here before I forget entirely.

A couple of weeks or so ago when I was working on mirror stuff and waiting
for things to download, we had another round of people showing up in
#sourcemage asking the ever-loved "how does source mage compare to gentoo"
question.  Typically these people get referred to the wiki pages that talk
about this, but I frankly hate the pages we have had up for the last couple
of years.  I don't think they do much service to answering the actual
question, and they're pretty impossible to keep current unless someone
actually cares to keep a point-by-counterpoint list of how we and they do
every little thing.  And I don't think we do (care).

So, I wrote up http://wiki.sourcemage.org/FAQ/Gentoo/Philosophical as an
alternate approach.  This basically asserts that yes, we're both
source-based, and that's about where the similarity ends.  It goes on to
assert the basic philosophical differences we have, because all the minor
stuff flows from these, and they're what's important.  This has gotten
really good feedback, so at some point I'll likely suggest we replace the
existing responses with this one and make it a unified response.

The doc is still a work in progress.  I've gotten several former and
current Gentoo users I know to take a look at this and incorporated their
feedback, and will continue to do so.  I also plan to morph parts of it
into a general SMGL philosophy doc at some point, including things like the
sample cast log for other parts of the distro (cleanse, etc.).  I'll
probably get to those once I cycle out of git/distribution stuff through
installer stuff into doc stuff.

In the meantime I'd ask you to run changes to this page through me before
you make them.  I want to keep it basic and will resist attempts to make it
exhaustive (or exhausting).  I'm very interested in this being something
even Gentoo fanbois can mostly see as objective, because I don't want to
waste my time or yours shutting up counter-FUD.  We all believe people
should use what they want; this doc is just there because the question is
there, and people may as well have it answered.

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