[nylug-talk] I'm a Gentoo convert.

[Scott Robbins]

> On Fri, Mar 02, 2007 at 07:19:12PM -0600, Michael Bacarella wrote:
> > On Fri, Mar 02, 2007 at 08:05:49PM -0500, Ezra Taylor wrote:
> > > This Linux distro is kickass.  My only complaint is that it takes a
> > > long time to setup.  I will only use it for server builds.  A desktop
> > > build is way to much for me.  Not to many jobs out there for Gentoo
> > > guys though.  I guess this distro is a good tool to have in your
> > > pocket.
> > 
> > What's so kickass about it?

I've always thought the reason that Gentoo took off so well was as much
because of its documentation as anything eles. 

Daniel Robbins writes SUPERB docs.  When he first developed Gentoo, he
wrote an installation guide that made it simple, even for a Linux
newcomer, to build a system and feel like an ace. 

I think that those docs were one huge reason for its popularity.  
At the time, I believe that it was rarity.  

As that was several years ago, and I've learned a great deal since then,
it's difficult to judge other documentation against it.  

To make a very artificial example, it was like the difference in saying,
here's a patch to fix that problem and saying, take this file. It's
called a patch and it will compare file X and substitute things.  

Apply it this way.  

cd directoryY
patch X < patch.X

Now if you look at file X you'll see it has lines Z, A and B added to
it. 

The point being that a newcomer might not know what a patch is, not
realize how to apply it, not know what file to which it should be
applied and not even realize what it actually does.  Mr. Robbins (no
relation) would take the two minutes to write those extra lines to make
it clear to the newcomer what it was doing. 

Conversely, as more newcomers got into it, the docs had to become even
more detailed.  I vaguely remember how the install docs would have
something like create an fstab of 
/boot/hdX
/root/hdY

As the installation (at that time, there was no stage 3 install, you had
to use a stage 1) took a long time and it was usually late at night by
the time you got there, many of us would blindly type that--however,
we'd realize what we did and make fun of each other on the mailing list.
(There was only one list back then.)  Fun in the sense that we all
realized how tired we'd been when we typed it and we all knew that the
other person knew better. 

Also, during installation, there was no vi available, only nano.  Many
of us would go through the hours of building only to have the build die
because at the end of /etc/make.conf we'd have unconsciously typed in :x
or :wq.   (I was the first one to publicly admit it, and after that
there were about 10 "me too" posts.

Anyway, sorry for the nostalgic ramble.  Back to my original point, I
think that the excellent docs were a very important factor in Gentoo's
quick rise in popularity. 



-- 

Scott Robbins

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