On Fri, Jul 24, 2015, at 07:56 AM, James wrote:
> Rich Freeman <rich0 <at> gentoo.org> writes:
>
> > Just be practical. From my experience showing up at a LUG and telling 20
> > people how something worked well for you gets you a lot further than
> > handing out free T-shirts and hats at a booth.
>
>
> Rich, I'll be practical. Gentoo needs an installer program, like most
> other distros if you want your rank_n_file users to entice new users.
> I just installed the default opensuse 13.2: BTRFS right out the shoot
> including the boot partition. Very slick, some would even say 'sexy'.
Agreed and the discussion for Project:Installer[1] has some very great
ideas. I absolutely think that an installer is necessary to attract
newcomers and keep them. The Handbook is great, don't get me wrong, and
following it is almost a rite of passage. But at the same time, it is
quite daunting for someone coming from a binary distro that does
everything for you. So why not offer both? An installer for newcomers
(and any who want automation) and the traditional CLI method? Now, the
implementation is what needs to be defined and needs to be done right
for it to take off (if an installer is decided as the way to go).
> Embedded twist::
> How about the new installer working on a rasp. pi or some common arm
> board,
> right out the shoot so folks can play with a mini_project (also very
> sexy).
Linux Mint partnered to produce the mintBox [2], Debian partnered with
Beaglone [3], Arch Linux ARM [4] is sponsored and provided hardware for
testing (would love to see a Gentoo push to embedded systems...but needs
testing), so it is not out of the question to pursue increased embedded
system support. What would be ideal, in my opinion, is do what Debian
did with the Beaglebone images and have SD cards already installed with
the OS (but that's probably a pipe dream...)
> So what do you say? Do you really want to put Gentoo atop the
> distro-watch
> lists; again? (clustering and embedded are sexy;imho::ymmv).
Agreed. Offering something different definitely could attract more
people to Gentoo. However, there needs to be the constant outreach to
the Linux community through social media, LUGs, conferences, etc.
[1] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Installer
[2] http://www.linuxmint.com/store_mintbox.php
[3] http://beagleboard.org/project/debian/
[4] http://archlinuxarm.org/
