so will gentoox development end?

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detroit
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so will gentoox development end?

Post by detroit »

just curious, if it ended would the donated xbox's and laptop etc be sent to the gentoo developers? god, I just hope someone can figure out how to make an external usb hdd work consistently. .. but anyhoo, it seems like the two projects could coexist, just like ed's distro is already out there. and i think mandrake sort of runs on xbox. it's actually good to see more people interested in deveopment i think. just my 2cent.
Trogdor
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Post by Trogdor »

Forks are rarely sucessful, unless there is something severly wrong with the original. The Gentoo developers who want to make an "official" port to the xbox are behind, and, frankly, their goals don't seem to be too defined. I think that Gentoo's "official" xbox port would be essentially the same, assuming that they build off the xbox-linux project. It would be less user-friendly, however, unless they used magic. In which case, it might be nice to have several developers (ShALLaX inc.) to work on Gentoox. I'm not saying that that's the right way, I'm just thinking.
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winterborne
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Post by winterborne »

Probably not best to start this in the Q&A Forum... but I hate to make another thread.

I can understand that Gentoo wants to keep things standard in their distribution, but... well I don't know. It seems retarded that they would drop Shallax from the project. He's put so much work into this already... I would think that some form of magic should be kept around (as a package in the portage tree, maybe), just because it is so user friendly, and I hate to see good work go to waste. I also think they should be apologising to Shallax and asking him to join the development team. I'm not sure how the Gentoo bureaucracy works, or how I'd be able to sway their opinion myself... Maybe we should start a petition eh? Provided the man himself still feels like working on the project.

-----------------------------------------
Dear Gentoo Developers,
I would just like to express my feelings on an Xbox port of Gentoo:
Shallax! Shallax! He's our man! If he can't do it, no one can!
- Winterborne

(add your names people :))
scoobydu
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Post by scoobydu »

Indeed ShaLLaX has done some great work .. and its not good that he's dumped while doing his exams, but my feelings are that using magic may be easier for some, its damn frustrating for me.

Not wanting openmosix and installing my own kernel is possible, but then running magic means all your individual work is undone.

Gentoo is based on portage and ebuilds, not magic. I don't see any reason why the changes magic makes to an install of X can't be done in an ebuild. All these changes could be done in an xbox overlay, that is downloaded from the site. This would mean putting these into mainstream gentoo, would be very easy.

Changing the pro version of gentoox to ebuild based patches would be better, imho.

Also using an xbox USE flag to install the xbox specific versions of the applications.

Just my 2c
Last edited by scoobydu on Thu May 27, 2004 10:14 am, edited 1 time in total.
Lilmuckers
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Post by Lilmuckers »

well i'd agree there

i'm a gentoo user all over the shop, except for on my gaming pc.
windows i'm afraid to say.

gentoox is indeed very nice.
however, i do feel it would benefit from a larger developer base, but it should still have shallax as the top dude.

development of a linux distro is, i've been told, a lot of work for one dude.
so keeping it up to date, with kernel patches, specific code for the system in some ebuilds, and so forth.

GentooX as a fork is, however good the distro is, probably not the best way forward.

but yeah, shallax should definitely head up the team
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what?
oh THIS match..
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BoricAcid
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Post by BoricAcid »

It looks like magic was created mostly because Shallax couldnt contribute xbox stuff to portage. My guess is that it would not have been the way to go for him had he been allowed to use portage to add xbox-specific stuff. I blame the gentoo team for that.
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scoobydu
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Post by scoobydu »

BoricAcid wrote:It looks like magic was created mostly because Shallax couldnt contribute xbox stuff to portage. My guess is that it would not have been the way to go for him had he been allowed to use portage to add xbox-specific stuff. I blame the gentoo team for that.
I've responded in part, in the gentoo forum.

Not being allowed is no reason to create a new set of scripts.

Ebuilds can still be created to keep as close to gentoo as possible.

Shallax should be allowed to do this himself as a dev and get them added.

If he doesn't want to do that, then surely others should be allowed to?

I'm not saying his treatment has been good, but open source is there so that others can contribute, and make it better for all.

Saying others have stollen his project is imho childish. Letting the distro do the talking, with updates, ebuilds, new choice of kernels, boot to shell livecd etc, would force the others to deliver even more ...! (after the exams of course!! ;) )

You can hardly blame the dev team for wanting to check out the legality of gentoo on the xbox. Things have changed since then and that appears to me to be the reason why views have changed .....

Edit: Just seen the news on the homepage ... glad to hear you are carrying on with gentoox. You're doing some good work, and it would be a shame to see that disappear! Lets face it Gentoox Home is getting more users from Windows onto Linux! That has to be a good thing ;)
Bucko
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Post by Bucko »

WAaaaaaaaaaaaa you read the homepage, that mike is a fucking wanker. :lol:
ShALLaX
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Post by ShALLaX »

Gentoox has largely been a learning experience for me. I started out by jjust puting a string of commands in a .txt file on my webserver for people to copy and paste into a terminal to install certain software so that the first release was of at least some use. Then when I got made into an "official" developer, I was immediately told I wasnt allowed to make it into an official project. Wanting to keep development going at a good pace, I turned these strings of commands into simple .sh scripts for people to download and execute. People started complaining about it being too hard so I eventually made a wrapper that would automatically download the scripts and run them... and magic grew from there. Magic wasnt just something I thought of doing from the outset, it was something that evolved to meet people's needs.

I have learned a lot from making magic, while I know some of it is poorly coded, I'm happy with the end result. I didnt know any BASH when I started it, so I find it pretty impressive that I got this far and that its fully backwards compatible with older version of Gentoox. I also realise that the way Gentoox works may not please everyone, but its not possible to keep everyone happy.

Gentoox development will not end as I'm sure there is still a niche for this software. After all, not everyone wants to have to wait 60 hours to emerge kde... although there may be official Xbox binary packages in the future. I feel that Gentoox provides users with a comfortable environment... most work is done for the user (e.g. when you change resolutions, the onscreen keyboard is automatically resized and repositioned), this just makes it feel well polished, in my opinion.
The original Xbox adaptation of Gentoo
Drunkn_Munky
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Post by Drunkn_Munky »

:O The ppl at Gentoo are tw*ts. They should make Gentoox the official Xbobx-Linux version of gentoo. Its great! its the most popular linux distro for xbox, its regulaly updated, its easy to use, but still have a version for coders and pros! I think they should let Shallax carry on, perhaps give him a bit of support!

The best thing about gentooX is magic! it makes it easy to get updates, fix stuff, download stuff etc. I used to use debian but after changing to gentoox its made it a hell of alot easier. Plus most of the software you will need is already installed!

if they still don't like it, you should rename it :P
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