fc5: install everything?

[Michael A. Peters]

On Tue, 2006-05-09 at 07:09 +0200, Eugen Leitl wrote:
> On Mon, May 08, 2006 at 09:54:07PM -0700, Michael A. Peters wrote:
> 
> > Sorry - but "installing everything" is just plain silly in most cases.
> 
> I don't know which packages and libraries I'm going to need tomorrow.

You never need to explicitly ask for libraries unless you are a
developer. yum will find them.

As far as what you will need tomorrow - when you need it, it is just a
yum away.

> I don't have time to work for my computer. My computer should work for me.

It is far more likely _not_ to work for you if you install everything
under the sun. Particularly when update time comes.

> 
> > Even with gobs of hard drive space and gigabit straight from a backbone
> > to your home.
> 
> I manage with 0.5/6 MBit ADSL, but FC does have an unstable
> feel around it.

FC is close to bleeding edge. If you want stable - try RHEL (or one of
the free clones, like Cent OS - just the other day, I saw a Linux
magazine at the grocery store that came with Cent OS - so you may not
even need to DL it)

>  
> > menus become cluttered, for one thing.
> 
> Then the menus are designed wrong. I don't expect most packages
> to show up in the menus.

Most do not - but if you install everything, you get all the apps that
_do_ show up in the menus.


> 
> Bzzt. I have no idea what I'm going to use next. Some documents
> can be only read in AbiWord, and some in OO. You don't know which
> is going to cut the mustard. 

OK - confession here.
I purchased CrossOver Office. If AbiWord doesn't handle it, I use Word
Document Viewer from within wine, installed in CrossOver Office (I also
have the powerpoint and excel viewers, though with gnumeric - I've never
needed the excel viewer. I also have Google Picasa, which works
exceptionally well in CXO.

>  
> > Why have kmail and balsa and sylpheed cluttering up your menus when you
> > are going to use evolution?
> 
> I'm using mutt, and it doesn't show up in the menus. I use locate
> instead of menus most of the time.

But if you install everything, you will have all those things in the
menus. If you don't mind that - whatever, but it is counter to usability
to have menus stuffed with everything.

>  
> > It also is a lot more likely that you will run into problems when
> > upgrading if you have everything under the sun installed.
> 
> Upgrades Just Don't Work in FC. Tried it, always wind up with
> reinstalling. If you want smooth upgrades, try Debian.

Maybe because you tried it after an everything install ? ;)

I usually do a clean install as well, but I also have yum updated
several systems - and yes, I have to do a little cleanup and work
through some issues - but it does work. If I had everything installed,
it would be a LOT more difficult.

-=-

The only time I ever have done an "install everything" was when I worked
for a software company and we packaged our product in RPM (and slack
packages ...)

We did a few everything install in QA to see what broke.

Other than that - it is pretty pointless IMHO.

A bigger thing to gripe about IMHO is the removal (not separate
packaging, complete removal) of static libraries from packages ... :p