Comments on: Too many programs?

By: Dale

Dale — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 16:26:15 +0000

I search http://packages.gentoo.org/ for packages. Dosen’t that make sense? Then you see most of the programs that are available, and then you can go to the homepages to see screenshots or try them out and then pick one.

By: David Love

David Love — Thu, 20 Oct 2005 17:15:49 +0000

I’m glad I’m not the only one! I’ve been sorely tempted to switch to Ubuntu lately and for one reason: Good Defaults.

Now, I’m a control freak, so one of the things I love about Gentoo is that nothing gets installed unless I tell it to (dependencies don’t count). However, the big downside is that:

1. I find a way to perform a task.
2. There exists a tool that is far easier to use (e.g. module-rebuild).
3. I have no way of knowing such a tool exists BECAUSE I can already perform my task (hence, no need to google).

A “cool apps” page would be useful. Even more useful would be a “if we were like a traditional distribution, what we would install by default” page. The handbook already reads like this (i.e. if you don’t know / care, install this), but that only gets you a working base system.

By: Dan

Dan — Thu, 20 Oct 2005 02:48:42 +0000

Well, enter portage-utils and qsearch… speedups will not happen in the 2.x line of portage development, as it would take well… a rewrite, which is what the dev’s are working on anyways, come to think of it!

By: Nico

Nico — Thu, 20 Oct 2005 01:29:17 +0000

Slow searches aren’t the only problem. I use eix but many packages don’t have a proper (useful) homepage URL.

ie. kdewebdev http://www.kde.org/, portage-utils http://www.gentoo.org/, codebreaker (http://packages.debian.org/codebreaker).

If there isn’t a website for the package, it would be nice to have a link to a README file or the text version of the man page as the homepage.

By: jj

jj — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 23:49:05 +0000

and when its included, like, not copied along, but the same kind of fast search included, who cares of maintainer? it will have to work when you update code is it is the code you update.. heh
also, anything 2 times slower than eix would be da bomb.
actually, 4x times slower should even be nice ;p
portage is probably 200 times slower for big searches and about 6 times slower for name search (which is quite fast, for portage, id say useable)

By: Daniel

Daniel — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 21:32:33 +0000

Well, eix itself doesn’t have to be included, but eix-like functionality (fast searches) is vital.

By: Dan

Dan — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 19:49:03 +0000

The simple reason eix isn’t included? The code is messy (according to ferringb).. the rewrite incorporates all sorts of useful fixes, and when we considder the cache change possibly headed for 2.0.54, (huge speedup!) and how that breaks eix, which has no current maintainer… walaa, we have problems!

Extropolate this to portage/savior, and you see why its not such a good idea.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 19:03:59 +0000

Yes, and I have my own versions of the eix-sync script, because I use CVS rather than rsync (being a developer). That’s not the point though. The point is that eix should be what’s used when a user does emerge -s, because they’re much more likely to do it if it’s fast. They shouldn’t need to find out about eix, and emerge it, and switch to eix-sync instead of emerge sync.

By: tim

tim — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 18:28:42 +0000

For the portage incorporation – you know about eix-sync, don’t you? It’s included with eix.

By: Avuton Olrich

Avuton Olrich — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 17:55:11 +0000

I think it’s a problem that there’s not one centralized program that runs as a frontend to these wonderful programs. For instance it’d be great if there was one gui(?) that used the best programs made for portage in a YAST style. I don’t personally use ‘eix’ but find qsearch in portage-utils to be the b0mb.