Gentoo 2008.0 beta delayed [LWN.net]

There have been some questions on the Gentoo lists about the unexplained delay in the 2008.0 beta release. What's going on is that two of the key developers involved have suffered a severe personal loss and are not currently able to work on that release. They ask for sympathy and understanding from the developer and user communities, and one hopes they get it.

Gentoo 2008.0 beta delayed

Posted Mar 24, 2008 16:46 UTC (Mon) by pmcnr (subscriber, #4002) [Link]

They have my sympathy and complete understanding.

Gentoo 2008.0 beta delayed

Posted Mar 24, 2008 17:11 UTC (Mon) by pr1268 (guest, #24648) [Link] (4 responses)

Even though I'm not a Gentoo user, I do wish them the best of luck going forward. I'm impressed at how quickly the Gentoo project got itself back on track after a near-meltdown, and my heart goes out to those developers suffering personal loss.

Gentoo 2008.0 beta delayed

Posted Mar 24, 2008 22:10 UTC (Mon) by bangert (subscriber, #28342) [Link] (3 responses)

> I'm impressed at how quickly the Gentoo project got itself back 
> on track after a near-meltdown,

or perhaps, it was not even close to a melt-down at all...

Not close to melt-down

Posted Mar 25, 2008 2:52 UTC (Tue) by pr1268 (guest, #24648) [Link] (2 responses)

I dunno... I saw terms like "Crisis", "revocation of ... corporate license", "Gentoo collapsing", and "internal furor" on that page, and the first word that came to my mind was "meltdown."

Granted, I tend to over-dramatize and exaggerate things I read, so yes, I'll concede that perhaps "meltdown" was/is too harsh (and too inaccurate) a term here. Again, best of luck and wishes to the Gentoo team.

Not close to melt-down

Posted Mar 25, 2008 9:03 UTC (Tue) by sylware (guest, #35259) [Link]

A collective tried to take over gentoo control. But it seems they failed (where they clearly
succeeded with gnome).
You have to keep in mind that source based distros provide a flexibility that cannot be match
by binary distros. And of course it's way out of the league for proprietary software. Since
gentoo is the most popular source based distro, some collectives which cannot match its
flexibility have interest in sabotaging it in order to make it look bad. As far as I'm
concerned, gentoo intensity did not flick a second.

No melt-down on my 4 Gentoo systems...

Posted Mar 26, 2008 20:43 UTC (Wed) by Sycamore (guest, #50934) [Link]

First of all, my sympathies to those devs. There's more important things in Life than
computers and its always horrible if those things go wrong.. If you're reading this, just take
your time. We do miss the updates but we'll get along.

As for Gentoo, there was and is no meltdown. There was (and might still be) a PR meltdown. But
PR is a load of (insert long series of cursewords here) anyways. Under the scratched skin the
beast Gentoo is alive and well, with new kernels, new toolchains, new packages, new Portage
versions etc. I would've never even noticed this so-called meltdown if I hadn't been reading
the Gentoo Newsletter.

There have been disturbances, but name any democratic open source project of Gentoo's size
that doesn't "suffer" from the occasional flamewar... So what if we lost our registration with
some illegitimate government - who cares? It's not like we got confiscated by the government
like a certain major UK bank.

So in short: Yes, you are exaggerating :)

Gentoo 2008.0 beta delayed

Posted Mar 25, 2008 0:46 UTC (Tue) by larryn (guest, #3457) [Link]

Sorry to hear about the lost.

Gentoo will always be on my server (email gateway and web). Somehow I always have a special
place for Gentoo. I found its wiki and Documentation on the Gentoo site mostly always fulfill
my need.

With that said, I also use Ubuntu and openSUSE for other workstations.

Gentoo 2008.0 beta delayed

Posted Mar 25, 2008 6:01 UTC (Tue) by afalko (guest, #37028) [Link]

Sorry to hear the developers' loss. I wish them the best.

Gentoo 2008.0 beta delayed

Posted Mar 25, 2008 12:48 UTC (Tue) by waltercool (guest, #51256) [Link] (2 responses)

Im a Gentoo lover, and in IRC we're not too sorry, because portage and kernel updates are up
date :)

Gentoo need back to live CD selling, the latest is Gentoo 2006 :(


The developers history is a tragedy, but is not the end for Gentoo developers and users ;)

Gentoo 2008.0 beta delayed

Posted Mar 26, 2008 6:18 UTC (Wed) by dberkholz (guest, #23346) [Link] (1 responses)

Hardly anybody buys from the Gentoo store. It's a lot of work for not much return.

Gentoo 2008.0 beta delayed

Posted Mar 26, 2008 12:51 UTC (Wed) by marduk (guest, #3831) [Link]

> Hardly anybody buys from the Gentoo store. It's a lot of work for not much return.

I bought a couple of items from the Gentoo Store a few years ago.  Just looking again, I see
that it's pretty much the same items.  I don't know if it's Cafe Press or Gentoo, but it seems
like maybe a little more variety might spark some interest.

Gentoo 2008.0 beta delayed

Posted Mar 26, 2008 12:12 UTC (Wed) by cjl7 (guest, #26116) [Link]

I don't know what to say, but I do want to give my support.

Hope I did that now.

//jonas