PROPOSAL: Core size reduction "bug day"

[David Nielsen]

First off, could you guys PLEASE stop shooting the messenger, KDE was
brought as target for moving by other people than me, along with lots of
other things, yet the argument centers around KDE, not moving KDE
doesn't mean we shouldn't examine all of the packages and evaluate if
they really need to be in Core, I was just the one who propose debating
what to move - it's rather annoying to get IRC logs of developers
wanting my head on a plate displayed to me. I'm just the messenger.


Now on to the scheduled program

> KDE is essential.

Maybe for some people, I understand your concern, it would be really bad
if KDE users were forced to strain themselves to get KDE on Fedora - the
system needs to be designed in a way that allows for easy access to KDE
if you want it, it would be nasty if we only allowed ftp/http access to
the Extras KDE, if that was the case I would agree that we should keep
it in Core, if we could get an Extras iso containing KDE as supplement
to the Core install cds it would be nicer. I dunno what the exact plan
for Extras is. I'm thinking it might work kinda like the way Mandrake's
installer works, if you say you have a certain few cds then the packages
on those are added to the task selection.

> * octave (do you know anyone who uses it?)  If anything, it should be replaced 
> with R, which is larger, unfortunately.  I haven't had octave installed in a 
> very long time.  Definite extras material.  This one I mentioned to Michael 
> the other day.

I use octave as it resembles tools I use at school, but I would have no
problem moving the entire Math tool section to Extras - I could just yum
them from Extras.

> * Gnucash (72MB).  Extras, not Core.  I have this one installed, but it still 
> is not Core functionality.

GnuCash is a nice program, but I think someone is developing a program
called MyBudget which seems to replace it (I dunno about functionality,
I'm betting GnuCash is still superior at this point). Either way it
doesn't strike me as an essential program.

> * kdeedu (46MB) Extras, not Core.  kdeedu-devel too.

This would be the kids games and stuff right? I think if we keep KDE in
Core, we should keep it all, it would only be fair.

> * MySQL. (:-P)  Red Hat shipped PostgreSQL first, but any RDBMS might easily 
> be considered Extras material.  Along goes tora.

This would mean removing at least some of the server options in terms of
task selection, considering that most Linux installs are still Server
installs it might be unwise to do this, also what is Core's use-cases in
this area?

> * koffice. While I think KDE proper should be in (and not necessarily all KDE 
> modules) Core, OOo is pretty much the standard office, even though I 
> personally use koffice much more heavily, as it is not as bloated.  But 
> koffice not being the default it might should be Extras material.

Agreed and let's move GNOME office as well, we have OpenOffice which is
possibly one of the best Office suites available to mankind, and with
the Native Widget Framework patch in the Rawhide OOo it no longer looks
as out of place as it once did.

> * The X.org 100DPI fonts, unless and until a GUI config utility can be had to 
> easily switch between the 75DPI fonts and these. (and those that might say 
> that I just need a higher resolution to appreciate them, well, I have one 
> reply: I'm at 1400x1050 now; want me to go higher? :-))  Just how many fonts 
> need to be Core material?

Agreed, X does seem to ship an awful lot of fonts, most of which I have
never used.

> * The double compilers.  If we're going gcc3.4, let's get there and lose the 
> other versions.  The second compiler set costs lots of space. Looking at 
> RawHide I see that it is just as bad, since we now have real gcc-3.4.1, but 
> we duplicate to gcc35-3.5.0.  The source RPM is 25MB; I can imagine how 
> bloated the binaries are... :-(

Not to mention that 3.5 hasn't seen a release yet, experimental
compilers just aren't a good thing(tm).

> * Does anyone use the GNU Ada compiler?
> (Again, I'm talking about tossing out of Core into Extras, not about throwing 
> it out altogether).  But splitting subpackages into separate repositories 
> might prove technically challenging.

Is it technically possible to move a subpackage like this to Extras
without causing havoc? 

> * Mozilla.  Go to Firefox instead.  The Mozilla mail client and the other 
> things of Mozilla, except the browser itself, are not the default 
> applications.

This has been debated before, Firefox isn't deemed ready yet. 

> * SELinux.  Yes, I know, this sounds wrong, and I know it is core technology 
> for RHEL, or at least will be at some point.  But when the sample policy 
> package masses 22MB, something is wrong.  How many FC users have SElinux 
> disabled?  If it can be made more compact then by all means include away.  
> But 22MB is too large, IMHO.

Security comes first and foremost, and it seems now with FC3 test1 and
above SELinux works quite nicely on a general setup. First time I have
ever been able to run my day to day system with it enabled.  

- David