What's on my system...

Tim ignored_mailbox at yahoo.com.au
Mon Feb 16 22:42:38 UTC 2009


On Mon, 2009-02-16 at 15:14 +0100, DB wrote:
> Hi all (today is my day for getting several ideas off my chest!!!!)
> 
> Having used "shhhh, you know what"  for many years, with its "add/remove 
> programs" which tells when I last used a program; and its subset 
> "add/remove windoze elements",  I'm wondering how I can do the same in FC9.

Also having used other OSs that names start with "sh.." I can't really
recall such useful functionality.  There are all sorts of unused things
on those systems that aren't listed, nor made to be uninstallable in any
way, at all.  Not to mention things that should have been uninstallable,
because they're on the list, but the uninstall fouled up terribly.

But the idea of such a thing is moderately simple:  It's a database.
One that stores what's installed, and various information about it.
And, rather obviously, it knows nothing about anything that wasn't put
into the database.  

All the OSs can have software run on them that aren't installed through
a system that adds them to such a database, so it lets you down in that
area, straight away.  

To have a database that includes information about what's used, would
require YOUR user interface (menus, desktop icon launches, links between
programs, etc.) to also add data to the database.  It's do-able, but not
done here.  

I'm not sure that I'd want to, either.  How do you distinguish between:
Important to be kept, but only used once or twice, so it doesn't look
like it's important to be kept; looked at something a few times, but
don't actually use it (don't need it, can't figure it out, people just
had a look to see what it was, etc.); the user does actually make use of
it; the thing gets run, but nobody actually uses it.

> Since I want to migrate toward FC10, I'd like to find me a list of the 
> things which I use, so as to have a more targeted installation, without 
> all the bells, whistles, pots & pans that "someone" has decided I ought 
> to have

That shouldn't be too hard.  What do you use from day to day?  Surely
you remember that, unless you do use masses of things.  And anything
else that you need to use, later on, can be added when needed.

> (and not to forget one of those essential "it only works if....."
> thingies).

Not really something to be concerned about.  If something *needs*
something else to work, that something else would have been installed as
a dependency, automatically.

e.g. If I install a program that needs some Gnome libraries to run, then
they're automatically included as part of the install.

> It'd also be "very nice" if it were possible to "reverse engineer" the
> installations I've made so as to produce my own installation script.

Your initial installation left a file in /root that can be used to
install another system with the same choices.

The list of currently installed packages (the initial installations,
plus all the changes) can be used to do the same thing (preload a new
system install with your choices).

Look into anaconda and kickstart files.

> And... how can I tell if a package is "mission critical" to the life
> of Fedora??

Well, then (a) you wouldn't be able to uninstall it, or (b) the process
of trying to uninstall it would prompt you about uninstalling so many
other obviously important things that you'd abort, and (c) it'd
automatically be included in any new installation, no matter what you
did.

> Dave in freezing Austria (currently -5C)

Tim, in warm Australia (26 now, 34 later, more 30+ this week, horribly
over 40 the beginning of this month, probably more of the same to come
later in the month - degrees Celsius, that is).

-- 
[tim at localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.27.12-78.2.8.fc9.i686

Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored.  I
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