Multilib in FC7? Disable by default?

[Reuben Farrelly]

On 21/08/2006 5:43 a.m., Gilboa Davara wrote:
> On Sun, 2006-08-20 at 19:23 +0200, dragoran wrote:
>>>   
>> ok I got confused by your title "disable by default"
> 
> Bad subject on my side.
> Changed it to "Add option to disable multilib in Anaconda."
> 
>>>   
>> I have never tryed it but all apps should somehow depend on glibc that 
>> means removing it will remove all i386/686 apps.
>> yum supports execuldearch so you can force it not to install i386 packages.
>> but I don't see a point in removing them... a x86_64 capable box won't 
>> have a small hardisk(s) so the extra libs wont be that much of a problem.
> 
> Disk space aside, if you don't need multilib, the same 25% chase you
> until you delete all the i386 packages, read:
> +25% Internet bandwidth (especially now that extra and updates are
> integrated into Anaconda); +25% update time; +25% installation time;
> Even worse, once you've finally finished the installation (updates
> included), removing anything between 100 and 600 packages in no small
> task - It'll most likely render the machine useless for an extra hour or
> two.

Definitely +1 here.  I strongly agree.  I run my x86_64 server purely with 64
bit applications and have no need or desire to install i386 binaries as well.
Nothing I run or compile requires 32 bit libraries or anything 32 bit, and if
there was an application that I found I'd be filing bugs upstream to get it
fixed ASAP.  This is a general purpose Internet server with
BIND/Squid/Postfix/Apache/PHP etc and a variety of other little things which all
compile fine from source in a 64 bit environment, in fact I can't remember ever 
coming across any application which wouldn't build and run.

All it should take from and end user perspective, is an extra tick box,
currently defaulting to ticked (ie, multilib by default) somewhere in the
installer.  Being able to choose would save hours afterwards of looking through
packages and uninstalling various things, working out all the dependencies when
uninstalling etc

As the future lies more towards x86_64 than i386 this will become a bigger issue
in time.

Here in NZ we are still on quotas, and unlimited high speed bandwidth is but a
distant dream.  So running rawhide with even more download not only takes longer
but costs money as the traffic has to be downloaded from offshore.

If Fedora ever does start downloading updates as part of the install (like
Windows seems to), this will be an issue then as well.

I've now got yum excluding *.i386 and that works fine after the event, but it's
not applicable at install time.

[There are no NZ mirrors carrying rawhide, but that's another story, and less of
an issue for me soon as I move to Australia in 2 1/2 weeks.]

reuben