Call for a real Minimal install, remove the bloat!

[Edwards, Scott (MED, Kelly IT Resouces)]

I agree I have wanted a bare minimum install for years.  But I encountered
one problem several times that is really irritating: dependencies on X.
Several times when I had a text only install, I tried to install some
package (that really doesn't require X), some package it needs has a
dependency on X.  For example just last week, I wanted to recompile the
kernel (on a text only machine).  I can't remember which package it was now
that failed because there was no X.  This is a major pain.

-Scott


-----Original Message-----
From: fedora-test-list-bounces at redhat.com
[mailto:fedora-test-list-bounces at redhat.com]On Behalf Of Hans Eric
Sandström
Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2004 2:12 PM
To: For testers of Fedora Core development releases
Subject: Call for a real Minimal install, remove the bloat!


These are the packages I removed after doing a minimal install:

# rpm -e apmd aspell aspell-en attr autofs comps dump gnupg hotplug
isdn4k-utils jfsutils kudzu lftp libwvstreams lrzsz minicom nano parted
pcmcia-cs rdate system-config-mouse system-config-network-tui setserial
sendmail specspo star statserial up2date usbutils wireless-tools wget wvdial
yp-tools ypbind yum irda-utils

I could argue for keeping yum/up2date but I really would like to have
apt-rpm
instead. One of the package managers (up2date/you or apt-get) is needed to
make it easy to add/update packages later.

I've been a RedHat user since RedHat 4 or something and vith every new
version
more bloat gets added. I remember the days when one could install SLS from a
couple of diskettes. Lets try to break this trend with Fedora.

Here are my suggestions:

1. Create a real Minimal Install option in the Text Based Installation.
2. Remove the above packages and probably a bunch more. A minimal install
should be..., right minimal!
3. Break out /usr/share/doc from the packages and make xxx-docs packages of
them.

Take a look in /usr/share doc:
# du -s * | sort -nr | head -4
4184    bash-2.05b
2752    pam-0.77
2560    gawk-3.1.3
1496    glibc-common-2.3.3

Just having a bash-docs package saves 4Mb from a minimal install. Another
option would be to install with rpm --excludedocs if minimal install is
choosen. But I think I want to keep the man pages hmmm...

There are probably lots of other things to do, but we need to start
somewhere.

Hans Eric Sandström, MailCore AB







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