PPCNUX hat nachgefragt bei Pieter Van den Abeele von Gentoo.

Q: Pieter Van den Abeele sounds like, for german ears, that you are
"based" at the netherlands or belgium ? Could you introduce you by yourself ?
How old are you ? Whats your profession, things like that ....

A: I'm 22 years old and recently started my last year as a computer
science student at the Free University of Brussels. I joined the Gentoo
project on Daniel Robbins request after founding the gentoo/ppc project
about a year and a half ago, I'm currently leading the PowerPC project
and quite heavily involved as operational and/or technical manager in
other parts of the project such as gentoo-alt (Gentoo on alternative
platforms such as OS X, Cygwin, BSD, Darwin ...), the Gentoo tools
(keychain, eperl, ...) and Portage (package manager technology)
research.

Q: since when you are using Linux ? Had you started with a PowerPC ?

A: I've been quite fanatic when it comes to Operating Systems, alternative
platforms and alternative architectures. My first computer was an Atari
ST 1024 which ran dos (using a hardware 286 emulator) and TOS/GEM. I
switched to the x86 architecture using DOS && the Windows 3.1 graphical
environment. After trying several other operating systems, I eventually
ended up using Linux. My first Linux install was a SuSe (must be about
a year or 7 ago, can't remember exactly), I switched to Solaris after
trying some other distros, but eventually ended up using Slackware and
a Linux From Scratch. About a year or 3 ago I started using Gentoo,
because it offered some exceptional benefits compared to other
distributions: no need to reinstall from scratch once gentoo is
installed (continuously upgrade your installation and stay up to date,
even for exotic stuff), everything is compiled and records of installed
files are kept (allows for easy upgrading, de-installations etc.).

When I started looking into the Gentoo package manager from another
(higher level) perspective, I was quite impressed: all information
needed to install a Gentoo Linux system was available as simple
user-readable system-executable scripts in the portage tree. This
allowed for easy porting of Gentoo to other architectures (or even
other platforms). I bought a PowerBook, started the port using the
expertise of Bryon Roche, an excellent ppc developer, which is still
around (kain@gentoo.org) and maintains the ppc kernels. Daniel invited
me to join the Gentoo Team, and since that day I have been pushing
Gentoo as a port/subproject friendly distribution. I believe that
allowing our users to install the bleeding edge stuff is not enough:
easy migrating to and from other platforms/architectures should be
allowed. Combined with stuff such as GRP (being able to build your own
prebuilt packages), distributed compilation, cross compilation and
eventually out of the box distributed cross (architecture/platform)
compilation, clustering... Gentoo (or open source in general) could
play an important role in the future as the platform of choice for
ambient Intelligence applications.

Q: What do you think, why Linux on a Mac make sense ?
Could you imagine why the US-Navy uses Linux on the Xserv instead
of OSX ?

A: Nowadays Linux can be found everywhere, from cheap gaming consoles to
high-end industrial hardware to refrigerators. There is no reason why
Linux shouldn't be available on the Mac. (note that I'm referring to
Linux as the Operating system, not the kernel: I'm not into politics;
to me the Linux kernel is one of many kernels, each kernel having its
own benefits and drawbacks. I believe that a user should be free in
choosing his/her kernel (or platform) according to his/her
needs/liking. Same goes for filesystem layouts, editors or graphical
environments.) Gentoo is available on a number of architectures and is
starting to become available on several other platforms. Gentoo allows
for an easy migration from every platform (half open source, half
proprietary) to the Gentoo Linux (completely open source) environment.
I cannot speak for the US-Navy, but it is my believe that one of the
reasons they might have chosen Linux instead of OS X because parts of
OS X are not completely open source, thus cannot be easily audited.
PowerPC is ideal for embedded applications due to heat and power
requirements, which makes it desireable for aviation and other military
purposes. Also altivec enabled powerpc cpu's might be an ideal choice when one
wants to perform very cpu intensive task such as realtime image
processing. An Xserve cluster was probably the perfect hardware
solution to the problem. Also the fact that Linux can be entirely
customized to ones needs while OS X provides the user with an
all-in-one solution might have been a factor for choosing Linux instead
of OS X.

Q: I guess, pls. correct me if I'm wrong, at the time when the liveCD
for PPC/Mac arrives, gentoo had a hard time as there we rumours in the
scene,that gentoo will be splitted, or to use another word, will have a
fork. Had that "fork/splitt" any effects to the PowerPC Port ? Or do you
expect some implications for the future ?

A: To be honest, the fork took Gentoo quite by surprise. We knew there
were some frustrations, but we thought we could be open and mature
enough to discuss these issues and come to a consensus that would
please anyone, sadly enough it turned out not everyone had this
impression and had enough patience to wait and discuss these things.
Some former developers signed an NDA agreeing not to disclose the
pending fork to anyone working on the Gentoo team, to ensure maximum
press coverage. Combine maximum press coverage with the reasons for the
fork, quite easily summarized as: 'zynot thinks Gentoo management has
done a really bad job the last year', it should be clear to everyone
that a few Gentoo developers that had volunteered to work full-time to
make Gentoo better over the last year were now burned out or at least
quite disappointed. Gentoo/PPC wasn't affected so badly after all. One developer decided to
join them but also kept working for Gentoo. 3 former ppc developers,
some of them who left months ago because not having any time at all
left for Gentoo development, now joined them. We still have quite a
number of excellent developers left, and the number of x86 devs that
also buy a ppc machine seems to be increasing every day. In fact, we
now have somebody from the Gentoo/hardened working on a PPC SELinux
machine (running a 2.6 kernel). A livecd (also running kernel 2.6) to
showcase this technology will be available soon.
The new bugfixed Gentoo/PPC livecd with kde, gnome, Koffice and
OpenOffice (all on one livecd) was released a little later than
scheduled because of the fork. I forsee no further implications for the
future.

Q: What do you think is the main difference between the debian
community compared to the gentoo community ? Is there a difference ? What is
special at the gentoo comunity ?

A: I've never used Debian, so I can't comment on the Debian community. All
Debian developers/users I've spoken to are very nice people.

Q: What about Apple ? Has gentoo a good contact to Apple ? Does Apple,
for example, donates maschines, answers questions ? How would you, as an
active developer and projectlead for the gentoo PPC port, describe the
relation to Apple as Apple is more and more seen on events like the "LinuxTag" ?
Could Apple improve the relations ?

A: With the MetaPkg project I helped to found as representative for the
Gentoo project, I had an opportunity to speak with several key people
from the Darwinports and Fink teams. Some of these people are currently
employed by Apple. From our conversations I learned that Apple does not
mind the fact that Gentoo also has a ppc port which can be installed
instead of Apple's operating Systems.

Apple is quite open to allowing open source (such as Gentoo/OSX) to be
installed on its own operating system. I could understand if Apple
chooses to take a more passive stance when it comes to other operating
systems (Linux/Darwin) on its machines. Apple is proud of the hardware
it builds, and according to what I 've read so far they seem to
generate most of their revenue using that hardware. I surely wouldn't
mind if they improved support by for example releasing good video
drivers for linux-ppc, but whoami to decide what Apple should do
marketing wise :-)

Q: Many Linux PPC Users in germany had used the SuSE Linux 7.3 PPC
Edition or still using it (as it is now very old and outdated), could you
describe in short for these users, what the main difference is between SuSE, or
lets say Mandrake or YellowDog in contrast to gentoo ? Why take a look and give
a try to gentoo ?

A: I'd suggest to download the gentoo-ppc kde/gnome livecd, and try it
out. Distro choice is a quite subjective; To me the biggest advantage
to using gentoo is that it gives you more control over the software you
want to install, how you want to install and how optimized the install
should be. Forget reinstalls every time the distro makes a new release.
You'll also be able to use the same interface (the emerge command) on
non-linux operating systems if you want to. Also, no need to wait until
ppc developers build ppc packages, the same stuff is available on all
architectures and platforms at the same time. (read: time it is
released).

Q: Do you have contact to other PPC using companies or do you use
boxes from them ? To be more concrete, do you have contact to Eyetech or Genesi
as both companies offers PPC based systems ? Also, Genesi (PegasosPPC) claims
or give the impression, that gentoo runs on the pegasos, what do you know
about that ?

A: I haven't contacted Eyetech yet, but I have been talking to Genesi,
since they claim that Gentoo is already supported, while I know it
isn't (yet). We will try to support these systems, but unfortunately no
current ppc developer has machines of either company to test. Anyone
who owns these kind of machines is free to contact me and help us out
testing/porting as a Gentoo developer.

Q: And what about IBM ?

A: A gentoo user has gentoo running on an rs/6000 (there is a thread in
our forum about it). Again, no ppc developers have access to ibm
(ppc64) machines, so if a port/subproject is created now, it would be
very difficult to test/maintain stuff. Again feel free to contact us if
you want to work on these kind of things.

Q: How to make Linux more attractive for PPC-Users (Apple a.s.o) ?
[not sure what a.s.o stands for, I assume you mean non-linux PPC-users]

A: Debunk the 'linux is an operating system by and for x86 people'-myth
Gentoo tries to do this by using only one portage tree: the same
software is available on arch/platform X the minute it is on
arch/platform Y. We also offer a stable profile (filters out all the
unstable/untested stuff) and an unstable profile (filters out the
untested stuff).

Q: And, of couse, got gentoo a Apple G5 or would you get one ?

A: Gentoo has currently got no G5 machine yet. Retailers have offered to
deliver a machine on the 15th of august, but we're lacking funds.
Several people have already stated that their pre-ordered machine can
be used for testing once it gets delivered. I'll probably buy one
myself sooner or later for gentoo development when my financial
situation improves.

Q: Also, I read on the Gentoo-PPC Forum, that gentoo searchs for users
with old-world macs ? Is Gentoo still searching ?

A: yep we are, We're basically looking for users that own machines that
aren't supported yet. Our goal is to have a livecd that boots *all*
powerpc machines.

Q: Gentoo had quite a few release candidates, and the 1.4 was announced
a few times, what took you guys so long?

A: I've heard this question over and over on irc, some people even
suggested that we were deliberately not releasing 1.4 and had even
planned on not releasing it ever... This question has been partially
answered in the GWN newsletter
http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/20030623-newsletter.xml. I would like
to add that in about one year an exceptional amount of sub-projects
(ports) were created. Along with these came a huge amount of bugs and
feature requests, and an enourmeous increase in email volume on most
lists. It took us a while, but we got there eventually. Keep in mind
that the best things about gentoo are still to come.

thx for this nice Interview

Das Interview führte Frank.