Comments on: What do you think of the Gentoo website?

By: rada

rada — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 01:02:11 +0000

Recent improvements are great. I very seldom visit gentoo front page, but do read related blogs, and find current content very nice, and better than not so supported weekly^Wmonthly^W news.

Mostly I use the forums, documentation, bugzilla, and gentoo wiki in that order (frequency ~ 80%, 10%, 5%, 5%) So the lack of forum search within thread, or even good google results for the forums is a constant small frustration in my life.

Style doesn’t at all match what gentoo is for me, but I live with it, and at least it mostly stays out of my way. (I do switch to user style sheets sometimes when I get sick of the purple, though.)

So re: prioritizing efforts into website improvements, my vote is for better searchability. Of course easier, and perhaps would attract more talent to help, would be to modernize style.

p.s. package search doesn’t matter much to me, but I’m probably in a minority here. eix roxx0rz.

By: just a Gentoo user from .de

just a Gentoo user from .de — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 11:22:00 +0000

I kinda like the page as it is. There’s overview for everything you need, links to manpages/install., the mirrors, forum and recently the improved news on it. Fine for me and I don’t need too much stuff or messed up design. Just some issues on Seamonkey (long ago and sometimes still now) when viewing the install man in one page (I got lots of strange grey bars over the text) but otherwise I can hardly complain.
And I guess the news addition might come out well since it’s a sign of life for those who aren’t developers or just on developer mailing lists.

By: Rainer

Rainer — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 04:48:13 +0000

For me, I like it -> good. And no need to get much better – we like Gentoo for what it is, not for the looks of it.

But what is most important – it shows that Gentoo is alive and kicking. With the weekly and then monthly newsletters not coming in regularly, and all the bad press recently, it’s great to see daily activity. It was there anyway but having a central access point is simply better.

And I join the crowd that suggests a search function for the package database!

By: Tor

Tor — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 22:02:41 +0000

Gentoo website is about as nice as is needed, IMHO.
The site could do with a package search function but most important a _regular_ newsletter or maybe an “official blogg”.
Don’t overdo site design as I believe Gentoo is about package mgmnt, the superb documentation and the equally great community (and in these areas Gentoo is super).

Keep up the splendid work!

By: Donnie Berkholz

Donnie Berkholz — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 18:21:06 +0000

@superbrain666:

The bugfixes. From the point of view of site completeness, they’re the last 10%, but they may well take 50% of the overall effort.

By: Ben

Ben — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 14:57:41 +0000

I, for one, like the more basic nature of the main page. It loads quickly and reliably, and looks the same no matter what you’re browsing with (except lynx/links in text mode, but that’s an exception). I like the first comment- “no need to pimp the site…” It’s nice to not have to wait for some scripting (either server side or client side) to complete for the page to display, or have the page display but when you go to click on something it re-organizes itself because something just changed the layout a bit. Navigation could be improved some, and while it’s nice to show more info on the page from, ie, planet,gentoo.org, I’ve noticed these aren’t showing up in my rss feed.
I do miss the old pacages site. Ever since it came back, it just looks like a mess. I only use it when I’m looking for the most up-to-date information, which is atypical since I mostly use stable.

By: superbrain666

superbrain666 — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 17:28:01 +0000

Donnie,
I really like the idea of a complete redesign.
Can you explain what in the last 10% ?? table render on IE6 cannot take 10% of the design process. Browserbugs are everywhere and will probably never go away. A good designer knows that and will take cake about that.

Thats my opinion.
What are the real blockers for a lets call it:
“emerge -N @system @world”

By: Donnie Berkholz

Donnie Berkholz — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 16:58:20 +0000

David,

It is equally frustrating to everyone in Gentoo that the website redesign didn’t get finished. One of our developers put it best in saying that the last 10% is the part that kills every redesign effort. (Do tables render properly in IE6, etc.)

By: Marco

Marco — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 14:43:45 +0000

Thanks for the good work Donnie!

Even though I highly appreciate Mike’s work setting up and running the wiki and portage-db sites I would recommend to make it part of the core activities of gentoo.org!
These documentation project are currently relying on Mike only… so what happens in case of technical probs or/and illness.

BTW: The layout of the site is, well, not so fancy but this is not so important for me personally…

By: smk

smk — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 13:02:27 +0000

it looks old