vivianlee wrote:Ahh, so that's what it is. Maybe I'll give it another whirl sometime (despite being a Debian-user at heart, I find it entertaining to play around with different distros). Thanks!
This is a general statement, not pointed at anyone, just what i see with reviews. The follow is my own opinion not directed at anyone in paticularThis is why I find reviews useless as most of the time the reviewer doesn't know a thing about the distro. They don't understand the installer or how the package manager works. They compare a mini-dvd install to something like arch linux which doesn't even have that option cause you build it up from scratch. Reviewers can't do that sort of comparison.
We publish release notes for all of our releases and when the release says a gnome desktop or a KDE desktop, yes there is going to be a lot of packages cause we offer a full desktop environment in live mode and install mode. We've been complimented for this feature over and over, especially in areas where people have limited internet. They can order or download one disk and get practically everything they need and show it off to their friends.
We did get a lot of feedback from our users that they wanted a smaller minimal install and so we provided that option with the installer, but it was very time consuming as it had to do a full install and than do the package removing and this is a time consuming process, but can and does work. We than came out with the corecd to help with that issue. Corecd is something one could compare to an arch linux install but is easier as you don't necessarily have to be editing config files. Once CoreCD is loaded you are able to stick with binary or jump into portage for source and if you know what you are doing, you can mix and match. CoreCD is designed for the experience user in mind.
We try to provide and keep our users up to date with knowledge and any current issues through the forum and wiki. We are a bleeding edge distro and run from the ~ arch of gentoo so we expect issues. Issues we see most are Hardware like ATI and Networking and we have to wait for upstream to fix. Many users don't understand that. Many simply think, it don't work so it's our fault. Sometimes it is, no doubt about it and we will get a fix out to our users.
So for a reviewer to do a decent job of a review, they have to really do their homework. I can't give a review as I am biased. Anyone can stick in 100 linux livecds in their machine and say, well this one sucked, this one is best, but they have no idea how or why it is. If you know how and why, the distro that sucked might have a simple command to run and suddenly it's the best distro. How does one know all the options available without knowing the distro? Knowing the history helps a lot also, what is it based on and stuff like that.
Is a first impression important? sure it is and we try hard to provide that and with feedback, we change things for the better. It just kinda frustrating to see a bad review from a reviewer when it's so obvious they just don't know what they are doing. I guess everyone is entitle to say their peace, I just wish people would try more and not compare apples to grapes.
End of my general opinion not directed at anyone in paticular.
