kde in extras - the devel discussion

[David Fletcher]

At 03:51 08/06/2006, you wrote:

>On 6/7/06, Tim <ignored_mailbox at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>>
>>Arthur PembertonL
>> > Of course it is different:
>> > 1) Buy a CD from a vendor:
>> > http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Distribution/LocalVendors
>> > 2) A current FC user passes on the already burnt CDs to a newbie friend
>>
>>I don't think that with Fedora you're going to get a one CD installation
>>of a useful computer system.  A one DVD installation, perhaps.  But
>>getting a disc is a different kettle of fish than downloading.
>>
>> >> Just make the first disc small, so those wanting a real core-only system
>> >> can have it.  Then you can build up from other discs, downloaded files,
>> >> or whatever...
>>
>> > Just out of curiousity, what do you consider to be a core-only system,
>> > or is there an objective definition so that I can better understand
>> > what you mean when you say that.
>>
>>That's going to be a matter of opinion.  But to me, a really bare bones
>>core isn't going to install X (or parts of it), a plethora of graphics
>>manipulation libraries, etc.  As the last minimal installation I tried
>>of either FC3 or FC4 did.
>>
>>I'd say that a really bare bones system just boots and gives you a
>>command shell where you can add anything, and everything, else that you
>>want.

A while back there was a long, long....... thread that went on and on 
with arguments about having a button to install absolutely 
everything, I think. Wasn't it something similar that started up 
again last week but stopped with my remark about the bowl of petunias?

Anyway, the idea just occurred to me to have a button to do the 
opposite. When I installed FC4 to run as a headless subversion 
server, I installed the absolute minimum. I think I probably only 
ticked to install apache and set the firewall to open up to ssh, and 
got away with only using the first installation CD. The rest of it 
was set up by logging in by ssh and using yum install to get 
subversion, apcupsd etc installed.

So, how about, for those of us who like me don't claim to be experts 
but do at least know a little bit about what we're doing, having a 
"Minimum Install" button that does just that - sets up and formats 
the disk partitions, installs the kernel, yum, iptables and other 
absolute bare essentials? All of these would be on disk 1, so anybody 
doing minimum installs of bare bones systems would never need to 
download the ISO files of disks 2-x. Everybody else who needs to set 
up office desktop systems would carry on getting all of the ISO files 
as we do now.

BTW I prefer KDE.

Dave Fletcher