心开天籁

收件箱 gentoo
Aron Griffis
致 gentoo-dev
更多选项 7:55 (7小时前)
This is kinda bloggish, because it’s basically a transcription of an
IRC monologue. My apologies if it’s hard to follow… Nonetheless,
I’m interested in how other developers feel on the topics I bring up
below.
There have been some really interesting points brought up recently
about “where is Gentoo going?” I have been wondering that myself.
Some people seem to think that Gentoo has the potential to be an
enterprise player. I have not responded directly to those people, but
I wonder if they know what they mean. I have worked in the enterprise
UNIX market for 6 years. My code is running in places like NASA
mission control, 9-1-1 call centers, and most of the telephone
carriers. I’ve produced patches on weekends to close $800m deals.
I now work in hp’s Open Source and Linux Organization, mostly on RHEL
and SLES, so I have a good idea of what it takes to be an enterprise
player.
In my humble opinion, Gentoo is missing too many points to be an
enterprise Linux. We commit to a live tree. We don’t have true QA,
testing or tinderbox. We don’t have paid staff, alpha/beta/rc cycles.
We don’t really have product lifecycles, since we don’t generally
backport fixes to older versions, requiring instead for people to
update to a more recent release. We don’t have, and probably will
never be able to offer, support contracts. We support as wide a range
of hardware as the upstream kernel, plus hardware that requires
external drivers; we don’t have access to a great deal of the hardware
for which we provide drivers. We understand when real life gets in
the way of bug-fixing, because all our developers are volunteers.
I think that attempting to take Gentoo in the “enterprise” direction
is a mistake. I think that we are a hobbyist distribution. This
doesn’t mean that we should not strive to meet some of the enterprise
goals. Those things can be important to hobbyists too. But I don’t
think we should be aiming for corporate America.
I don’t even understand why that goal appeals to people. Let other
distros go there! I want Gentoo to run in people’s homes, in student
dorm rooms, etc. Places where people want a fun distribution that
they can tailor and work on easily.
I like the idea of Gentoo on alternative arches and in embedded
environments. Not because I want Sony to start using Gentoo on
walkmans, but purely because the idea of running Linux on a PDA is
cool. I’d like Gentoo to be a place where neat things are developed.
If RH or SuSE (or another for-profit Linux vendor) wants to take some
of those developments and use them to make a profit, that’s fine with
me. We’re over here having fun.
Also I find it amusing when people say that Gentoo exists for the
users. I think that is wrong. Gentoo exists for the *developers*.
It’s our playground, and it’s the reason we use a live tree rather
than switching to an actually sane approach. The users are cool
because they point out bugs, help solve problems on bugzilla, suggest
enhancements, provide patches, and notify us of package updates.
Sometimes they become developers. But the truth is that Gentoo sees
improvement and maintenance in the areas that appeal to the
developers. And that is why Gentoo exists for the developers first,
the users second.
Regards,
Aron
–
Aron Griffis
Gentoo Linux Developer

Unknown Species
Darsh Ranjan ‘05
Department of Mathematics
This fractal is obtained by iteratively applying the transformation z <- (z*z + r*z*c + c*c)/(z*z + s*z*c + c*c), beginning with z = c and fixing r and s as two conjugate points on the unit circle. The colors are determined by the average value of the iterates as the number of iterations approaches infinity as c is varied over the complex plane. Although the rule used to generate the image is so mathematically simple, the shape is strangely organic and even suggestive of some sort of creature possessing a large head and a barbed tail.

Nokia to launch phone that stores 3,000 songs
Published: April 27, 2005, 11:00 AM PDT
By Dinesh C. Sharma
Special to CNET News.com
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Nokia on Wednesday announced a trio of new phones, including one that can store up to 3,000 songs.
The N91 has an integrated 4GB hard disk and supports digital music formats including MP3, M4A, AAC and WMA, Nokia said.
Additionally, the handset comes with a stereo headset with remote control. The N91, expected to ship by the end of the year, will also feature a 2-megapixel camera, e-mail support, a Web-browser and video-sharing capabilities, the device maker said.
The phone supports WCDMA, wireless local area networking and Bluetooth, and subscribers can shop at online music stores directly from the device, the company said. Users can synchronize the device with their computers via USB 2.0 and create and manage playlists that, in turn, can be shared with others via Bluetooth, e-mail or multimedia messaging.
Another new WCDMA handset from Nokia is the N70, a smart phone featuring a 2-megapixel camera, a flash and “front camera” for video calling, stereo FM radio, a digital music player, visual radio and 3D games. The camera has a “slide and shoot” design, in which the slide automatically activates the camera.
The handset’s camera has an integrated flash, 20x zoom capability and other options. Video and photo from the camera can be transferred on to a PC; organized in a slideshow or album on the camera; or printed using a USB cable, Bluetooth or reduced-size dual voltage multimedia card. The device is expected to be available in the third quarter.
Lastly, the Finnish phone maker announced the N90, which features a 2-megapixel camera with autofocus and 20x digital zoom, an integrated flash, video capture with editing functions and Carl Zeiss optics, Nokia said. Carl Zeiss optics, named for the pioneering German optician, are used for projection and illumination.
The handset’s rotating camera barrel is designed to let users shoot video, as well as pictures. When the main display is unfolded and twisted, the N90 can be used to shoot video in MP4 format.
The N90 also features different options for storing, sharing and printing photos and video clips, and it supports 3G functions such as two-way video calling, video streaming and Net surfing. It is a triband phone for GSM 900/1800/1900, EDGE and WCDMA networks.