files/gentoo-philosophy

gentoo-philosophy (text/plain), 4.67 KB, created by Octavio Ruiz (Ta^3) on 2005-06-23 17:43:10 UTC

The Philosophy of Gentoo

I created Gentoo because I couldn't find a Linux distribution that I liked. The
one predominant thing that I experienced with Linux distributions is that the
"distro tools" that managed the entire system -- the tools that were supposed to
make everything easier to use -- really seemed to want a lot of attention and
really got in the way of what I wanted to do. I wanted to tell them what I
wanted to do, but they seemed more interested in telling me what they wanted me
to do.

So, I created Gentoo Linux, and designed Portage to be a more perfect tool than
what had existed before it. To do this, I made it very flexible in allowing me
to do what I wanted to do, and also tried to make it flexible to allow others to
do what I thought they might want to do.

If others wanted to see how a package got built, they could look at a
relatively easy-to-understand ebuild file and learn from it. If they wanted to
tweak how it got built, they took advantage of USE variables. If they wanted
to add a package, they created a new ebuild for the tree. If they wanted to
use a package, they simply emerged it and dependencies were automatically
resolved.

People liked the Portage concept, and Gentoo Linux grew rapidly. We have
become known as a "from source" distribution, but the heart of the Gentoo
concept is not "from source." "From source" is an important and key aspect of
Gentoo, and something that was and will continue to be necessary for Gentoo,
but it is not the only issue or most fundamental issue. The most fundamental
issue is designing a technology that allows us and others to do what they want
to do, without restriction.

To summarize the heart of Gentoo, imagine a user sitting in front of a Linux
system. What does he or she want to do? The Gentoo philosophy is to allow this
user to do what he or she wants to do, without getting in the way.

At around the time Gentoo was born, the thing that got in the way was the lack
of an easy way to build packages from source, to a user's specifications.
Currently, we've done that very well, but what we haven't done very well is
support pre-built packages, even though Portage has supported building binary
packages almost since its inception. So we are doing that now.

It's important that our tools support binary packages, because binary packages
are widely used and widely in demand in the Linux community. If our tools
don't support binary packages, then we can't claim that our tools are designed
to allow a user to do anything he or she might want to do. If we purposely
choose to exclude binary support, then we are attempting to interfere with how
users might choose to approach particular problems, by instead imposing our
own will or view of how they should approach a problem. And if we do not build
binary packages, then we are not taking any steps to ensure that our tools
actually work well with binary packages, nor are we taking steps to ensure
that others can build binary packages, nor are we able to *demonstrate* that
our tools work well with binary packages. Besides these philosophical reasons,
there are many practical reasons to create binary packages.

The Gentoo philosophy, in a paragraph, is this. Every user has work they need
to do. The goal of Gentoo is to design tools and systems that allow a user to
do their work pleasantly and efficiently as possible, as they see fit. Our
tools should be a joy to use, and should help the user to appreciate the
richness of the Linux and free software community, and the flexibility of
free software. This is only possible when the tool is designed to reflect
and transmit the will of the user, and leave the possibilities open as to
the final form of the raw materials (the source code.) If the tool forces
the user to do things a particular way, then the tool is working against,
rather than for, the user. We have all experienced situations where tools
seem to be imposing their respective wills on us. This is backwards, and
contrary to the Gentoo philosophy.

Put another way, the Gentoo philosophy is to create better tools. When a
tool is doing its job perfectly, you might not even be very aware of its
presence, because it does not interfere and make its presence known, nor
does it force you to interact with it when you don't want it to. The tool
serves the user rather than the user serving the tool.

The future goal of Gentoo is to continue to strive to create near-ideal
tools. Tools that can accomodate the needs of many different users (all with
divergent goals) with ease are extremely powerful. Don't you love it when
you find a tool that does exactly what you want to do? Doesn't it feel
great? Our mission is to give that sensation to as many people as possible.

Daniel Robbins
Previous Chief Architect