lostin8

We currently have a problem -- there is way too much happening with Funtoo Linux.
So we have WAY TOO MANY *MAJOR* announcements. Let's try to get through all of them!
Funtoo Linux has its own LiveCD/LiveUSB! Many thanks to @coffnix and @pnoecker for making this happen! The official install docs have been updated to reference this LiveCD, and it will be perpetually downloadable from https://build.funtoo.org/livecd/. What's the big deal, you ask? Well, it's running our official debian-sources kernel, so it will recognize the hardware supported by Funtoo. It's in sync with Funtoo stage3's. Yay. It also has NetworkManager available so the "nmtui" command can be used to set up your network. That's a convenience, but not really that impressive. What IS impressive is that included on the LiveCD is our innovative fchroot tool, which allows you to "chroot" into arm-64bit, arm-32bit and riscv-64bit filesystems thanks to the power of QEMU! This makes it an ultra-powerful rescue image. Other cool and amazing things are on the LiveCD. You can eventually learn about everything LiveCD here as we get this page done: https://www.funtoo.org/Funtoo:New_Install_Experience/LiveCD
There's MORE:
Ryzen "Zen 3" stages now available, running next-release! https://www.funtoo.org/Amd64-zen3  SiFive Freedom U740 RISC-V stages, running next-release! https://www.funtoo.org/SiFive_Freedom_U740 -- thanks @calrama 64-bit Raspberry Pi 4/400 stages, running next-release! With GNOME and lxqt support! https://www.funtoo.org/Raspberry_Pi_4! Raspberry Pi 4 will be moving to an "A" support level in Funtoo momentarily and will be part of our official install docs soon. Also, in case you didn't notice above, lxqt stages are available for amd64-zen3 and raspi4, and will be appearing gradually for all other subarches! And also if you did not notice, the updated next-release builds  are starting to appear for download! (RISC-V, Raspberry Pi 4 and AMD Ryzen "Zen 3" will only be available for next-release.)
OK, that's all the announcements we have for now. Please return to whatever you were doing before you read this announcement.
Thanks to the Funtoo user community who helped to make this all happen. Besides these announcements, there are many other improvements and fixes that have been incorporated into Funtoo. If you have helped, thank you from me as well as the others who will enjoy your improvements. Let's keep pushing forward to build on these amazing successes.
Best Regards,
Daniel Robbins, BDFL.
 

@dutch-master I totally agree. Ironically, I started Enoch (which became Gentoo) when I got frustrated by dpkg in Debian 1.3. Portage has since 'evolved' into something that has a lot of problems that dpkg originally had -- of being very good at telling you why it can't do something but not very good at resolving the problem it's complaining about, or providing a coherent error message when there is a problem.
Software tends to evolve this way -- it becomes more rigid over time. The cause is that most engineers will try to make the software more 'correct' and eliminate problems, but they often do this without advancing the architecture and just adding more internal checks. This actually can significantly reduce the usability of the software. This approach becomes much worse when the error messages displayed are not comprehensible by mortals.
Despite Portage's strengths, it does suffer from this way more than I'd like. We do have some technical work in progress that should offer some relief for this to some degree.

I'm not sure this is within the realms of the Funtoo dev's, but better conflict resolution for emerge would be a great start. One of the things putting me off Funtoo (and straight back to Devuan) was the issue that portage drops out the moment it encounters a conflict (like multiple packages for a slot, etc). For all its flaws, perceived or otherwise, apt has really good conflict and dependency resolution mechanisms build in. Now, I'm aware there's a different design philosophy behind emerge/portage against apt, but dropping a user back to the cli with a cryptic error message stating a conflict has occurred and masking a package may resolve it and effectively leaving a system in limbo while updating/upgrading is not a great way to experience Funtoo for less experienced users.
 
FYI: I've been using Linux as my daily OS since 2005 and experienced the "Dependency Hell" with Red Hat 8+9 and Suse (pre-Novell days), then I found Debian (Woody) and apt was such a relief. Stuck with Debian until systemd made it impossible (really-old Stable, IIRC Jessie) then eventually switched to Funtoo (2015) before finding Devuan a few years later (2018). Tried Funtoo again earlier this year, but still got issues with emerge/portage so now running Devuan once more. Thing is, I'm not smart enough to be a coder. If I were, I'd be a Funtoo dev for years. But as it is, my contributions are (severely) restricted to signalling something went wrong and that's pretty much it.
 
HTH!

Thank you @drobbins. It's really great to be back to my roots and working with you again! I'm having a really fun time and looking forward to getting to know everyone in the Funtoo user community.

Everyone, Seemant is going to be helping to build community efforts within Funtoo. I am so very glad to be working together with him again! If you are a long-time Gentoo user you will know that Seemant was my second-in-command, basically running the people, community and development coordination aspect of Gentoo during its golden era, and much of Gentoo's tremendous growth and success during this time was attributable to his insight and involvement in steering the project as it grew.
I've asked Seemant to specifically engage with our user community and help to collect feedback and build a roadmap for the project. So please know that Seemant is here to collect your ideas and feedback about what you are hoping to see in Funtoo. Please do not hesitate to reach out to him, either here in the forums or by chatting with him on Discord or Telegram.
Seemant will be collecting the ideas and working with me to incorporate them with my technical plans so we can have a public roadmap for the project, to help others get a sense for what is coming and also provide ways for others to get involved and influence the future.
Seemant, thanks for joining us and welcome 🙂

Hey everyone,
I'm pleased to announce that Funtoo Linux and Sabayon (https://www.sabayon.org) are joining forces!
Now to explain what this means and how it came about.
Sabayon is one of the great Open Source projects and has an amazing reputation for delivering an easy-to-use Linux desktop that is built using Gentoo. For quite a while, Funtoo has been supporting the Sabayon effort because we believe in what they do.
Over the past several months, in chatting with the Sabayon team, it became really clear that we had a shared vision for creating a friendly and innovative community. We also were working on several next-generation technologies that were a good complement to one another. We decided it would be more powerful -- and fun -- to combine our efforts into one larger effort. So that is what we are doing.
What this means is that while each project will maintain its own personality, projects and management, we will be logically combining into a larger effort and there will be a tremendous amount of cross-project collaboration. This collaboration immediately multiplies our capabilities for delivering some next generation technologies that we have been working on and are excited to share with you.
The most immediate result of this collaboration is that moving forward, Sabayon OS efforts will be built on Funtoo. This, however, is just the first step. What I can say is that there will be much sharing of technology which will benefit both projects, and many new things.
For existing users of Sabayon and Funtoo, the communities you know and love will have new strength, support and ability to tackle a new phase of Linux Open Source innovation. I am really excited about this collaboration.
Welcome, Sabayon team!
Best,
Daniel Robbins

Hey Everyone,
I want to officially announce 'fchroot', Funtoo's new QEMU-based chroot tool which allows you to chroot into ARM stage3's and live systems using your 64-bit PC. It is pretty neat stuff. Check out this video for a demo:
Enjoy ?
-Daniel