Since I moved two systems now to Gentoo 2004.0 the situation becomes more and more peculiar. Usually emerge -u world would just update the system. A very sexy way of keeping your system up to date. I am a Gentoo-isto since version 1.1 RC1 came out and loved to pieces. Now, there is not much left. Both systems become more an more clunky - filled with proprietary rubbish like genkernel and bloated interfaces like the new /usr/portage/ setting files. It is far from a user experience away it becomes more and more PITA. Mostly there is a lack of quality checks for the ebuilds. Back in the 1.2 era an emerge xyz would not break anything. Now, just updating GNOME (without touching ACCEPT_KEYWORDS) becomes a hurdle course. Even explicitly just updating little parts of the system sometimes update the whole dependency-palooza to the latest and gratest and break in the meantime 10 other packages. For a production system Gentoo is out of the race - I need currently a production system rather than one stuffed with everything and the kitchensink.

Update: and if that is not yet enough the forums are down