The profiles to remove should be things like desktop/plasma or desktop/gnome they don't make any sense to really be used over desktop and manually adding the useflags this removes alot of lines in `eselect profile list` which will help mainly new users not get overwhelmed by the amount of profiles. How to run these desktops should then be added to the install guide to mitigate these profiles. Profiles to add should be more customization this is of course more complex. The biggest issue with Gentoo is it's not Linux From Scratch (LFS) it's better than binary based distros that prevent touching the system at all, however unlike LFS you can't really modify this system without modifying profiles. I'd like to propose the idea to make more system profiles in this case that basically allow for similar system level customization as LFS. These can be profiles for running toybox or busybox in place of coreutils as well as mdev profiles replacing udev, this is just a start of course and would probably be used in limited use cases but would help bridge the gap between LFS and Gentoo.
But they do make sense? They add quite a few options on top of the base desktop ones. I guess I'd prefer to not have them and just use 'desktop' *but* the status quo means that 'desktop' can be used by people even using a minimal desktop environment.
(In reply to Sam James from comment #1) > But they do make sense? They add quite a few options on top of the base > desktop ones. > > I guess I'd prefer to not have them and just use 'desktop' *but* the status > quo means that 'desktop' can be used by people even using a minimal desktop > environment. Desktop doesn't honestly it's not even really needed this is meant a more customization based distro. In my opinion I think it just makes more sense to explain use flags right off the bat and show common use flags that those profiles use and let the user decide what they need or not.
(In reply to Dante Robinson from comment #2) > (In reply to Sam James from comment #1) > > But they do make sense? They add quite a few options on top of the base > > desktop ones. > > > > I guess I'd prefer to not have them and just use 'desktop' *but* the status > > quo means that 'desktop' can be used by people even using a minimal desktop > > environment. > > Desktop doesn't honestly it's not even really needed this is meant a more > customization based distro. In my opinion I think it just makes more sense > to explain use flags right off the bat and show common use flags that those > profiles use and let the user decide what they need or not. Well, there's plenty of users who do need it, as there's various flags which aren't obvious but end up being needed for proper font rendering and such.
(In reply to Sam James from comment #3) > (In reply to Dante Robinson from comment #2) > > (In reply to Sam James from comment #1) > > > But they do make sense? They add quite a few options on top of the base > > > desktop ones. > > > > > > I guess I'd prefer to not have them and just use 'desktop' *but* the status > > > quo means that 'desktop' can be used by people even using a minimal desktop > > > environment. > > > > Desktop doesn't honestly it's not even really needed this is meant a more > > customization based distro. In my opinion I think it just makes more sense > > to explain use flags right off the bat and show common use flags that those > > profiles use and let the user decide what they need or not. > > Well, there's plenty of users who do need it, as there's various flags which > aren't obvious but end up being needed for proper font rendering and such. Right so what's wrong with stating that in the installation guide as a section?
desktop subprofiles will remain as long as developers are willing to support them.
(In reply to Andreas Sturmlechner from comment #5) > desktop subprofiles will remain as long as developers are willing to support > them. This makes sense, I guess I would rather have profiles directed to vastly different system sets than the same thing with some use flag changes. At the end of the day it's your guys call.
The point of them is to provide optimal USE flags for the target desktops, ease of REQUIRED_USE friction caused by these necessary defaults, and follow up with changes over time. You can not expect users to re-read the handbook every few months.
(In reply to Andreas Sturmlechner from comment #7) > The point of them is to provide optimal USE flags for the target desktops, > ease of REQUIRED_USE friction caused by these necessary defaults, and follow > up with changes over time. You can not expect users to re-read the handbook > every few months. Any changed use flags would be talked about on the forums and not to mention isn't that what the news feature is for in portage?
People neither have a required forums subscription nor would they read the news anymore. You're asking everyone to do more work without any gain.
(In reply to Andreas Sturmlechner from comment #9) > People neither have a required forums subscription nor would they read the > news anymore. You're asking everyone to do more work without any gain. Then we can remove the news section from portage as it's just bloat. I'm asking for people to maintain their system which is the whole point of running this distro.
Gentoo isn't LFS. I think this discussion is pointless.
(In reply to Andreas Sturmlechner from comment #11) > Gentoo isn't LFS. I think this discussion is pointless. Gentoo is LFS with swappable system sets basically in my view. If it's pointless we can just mark this as resolved.
I think you have a very specific view of what Gentoo is, which is fine, but you're not seeing how others use it. Writing news items for every single USE flag change would be noisy. The desktop profiles serve a purpose (go try use GNOME or KDE Plasma on the base profile and look at how many package.use changed you have to make). While more profiles for exotic setups might be good, this bug isn't actually suggesting any specific, and amounts to an aesthetic complaint about use cases which aren't your own. The nature of Gentoo is a lot of folks use it for different things. Avoiding gratuitously breaking those workflows is a basic principle of our work.
(In reply to Sam James from comment #13) > I think you have a very specific view of what Gentoo is, which is fine, but > you're not seeing how others use it. Possibly. I see Gentoo as a nice LFS replacement with less work packages and patches are done by a group of devs than yourself this saves everyone time. Why should multiple people waste time to achieve the same result? LFS allows full control of the system where gentoo has swappable system sets like musl and glibc for example in stage 3's I would just like to see more options in terms of system sets. Removing these other (minor to me) profiles and adding more system set based profiles in their place just keeps things more clean. I do understand people who just want to run a simple setup but compiling everything from scratch but I would say this is a minor use case no? Isn't that what Funtoo or Sabayon is for? As a personal view I would prefer the software to be small enough that nearly anyone can compile it in a reasonable time, this idea seems to be fading more and more by the day however making distros like Gentoo very niche to people who want to compile. > Writing news items for every single USE flag change would be noisy. The > desktop profiles serve a purpose (go try use GNOME or KDE Plasma on the base > profile and look at how many package.use changed you have to make). I would just set these globally, plus it's good for the user to do to see how much garbage they actually want as well as constant changes will cause users to want to move away from those huge desktops over the long term. For those wanting to use these desktops they can just run global use flags and not really worry about much unless GNOME/KDE add something new which portage will complain about on update anyway. > While more profiles for exotic setups might be good, this bug isn't actually > suggesting any specific, and amounts to an aesthetic complaint about use > cases which aren't your own. I did suggest specifics read the original description. > The nature of Gentoo is a lot of folks use it > for different things. Avoiding gratuitously breaking those workflows is a > basic principle of our work. Understandable nothing is being broken changing to a desktop profile would be something that would be stated months in advanced before axing the profile. With preferably a guide for those users to migrate on the forums. I don't want anyone's system to break but I do think people on this distro are more likely to understand tweaking things vs Ubuntu or something.
