Gentoo's Failure [overlays.gentoo.org]

Welcome to my blog. This is where I'm going to post about tech stuff, such as MPD and Gentoo. If you're looking for someone who puts a positive on Linux technology, this is not the place to look. I know what sucks and what doesn't; Linux sucks less than everything else at the moment, at least for me.

Because of the nature of my blogging, I'm not going to attach myself to any 'planets'. Enough said.

Now, I've been running Linux for about 7 years, it's been a really good 7 years. Some things still suck, but I've tried the alternative and they suck more.

I've been using Gentoo for about 4-5 years, everywhere. It sucks less than the other distributions at the moment. I would like to see it grow past what it is, but I am not crazy. I do realize it has a target audience, I know it will never get past. Now, onto my topic.

Gentoo's overlay feature is genius. It allows anyone to update their own packages, with minimal effort. It allows anyone to easily share their changes, by posting it wherever on the internet. And best yet, it encourages ebuild improvements.

My problem? Not with overlays, but with the site http://overlays.gentoo.org. Somebody at Gentoo had the idea to start a centralized place for Gentoo developers to host their overlays. It has so many problems, but I'm going to try to list them here, as I haven't seen it posted elsewhere.

1. Exclusivity - It would have been brilliant to find hosting (which wouldn't be that hard imho) and make a community overlay site. Ebuilds take up little to no room, and hosting would have not been hard to find. Of course, in this case you'd have to trust the source, but we all do that on a daily basis nonetheless. Gentoo developers already have an overlay, the main Gentoo repository, I don't know why it's such a bad thing about giving the rest of the people some free hosting for theirs.
   
2. Navigation? - Just take a look at the site. It is impossible to navigate. Impossible to find what you're searching for.
   
3. The RSS feed does not give good links.
4. Trac? - Now, I love trac. I have tried to talk some people into getting it to be the MPD default, it's a great software, but it is either not up for this monumental task they're trying to make happen with it, or they didn't correctly set it up. Seems to me there are better solutions they didn't try to find. It would have been better having a little more thought put into this.
   
5. Searching - Yes, it's a subsection of navigation, but it must be mentioned, no search engine?

Don't get me wrong, I found free hosting for my overlay long ago, and I wouldn't like the idea of changing it, but bringing other Gentoo users into the fold would have been good for everyone, the project especially.

I have never seen something so mismanaged, something that was such a great idea, that was implemented so horribly. It would be better having nothing than having overlays.gentoo.org.