fedora-test-list Digest, Vol 23, Issue 79

Fri Jan 20 12:22:14 UTC 2006

> Message: 3
> Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 08:00:18 +0530
> From: Rahul Sundaram <sundaram at redhat.com>
> Subject: Re: FC5T2 ready for even a test release?
> To: For testers of Fedora Core development releases
>         <fedora-test-list at redhat.com>
> Message-ID: <43D04B3A.50909 at redhat.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> Linux Counter (li.counter.org) #386711 wrote:
>
> >I just ftp'd the 5 disks, and put it on my system. Firstly, the
> >installer sucks. Graphical only displays the top left corner of the
> >screen, showing none of the useful information. I had to use text,
> >which was completely garbled.
> >
> Nobody else has reported the problem so far. Which display card is
> this?. Can you provide more information of the system?
>
> >Then, I got to the package selection
> >screen. I know that they're still working on it, but come on! With no
> >'everything' option,I got very minimal packages.
> >
> Not this again. This is a feature not a bug :-)
>
> Everything installations are generally a bad idea.
>
> * Dependency issues -  One of the reasons behind doing a everything
> installation is avoid dealing with dependency issues. However that is
> largely not a problem now since yum install and yum groupinstall along
> with along programs like pirut. Refer to the yum guide available at
> http://fedora.redhat.com/docs
>
> * Discoverability - Fedora Core like you indicate a large number of
> useful programs but the installer divides these into several different
> types to target particular segment of use cases and avoid having to a
> everything installation. Custom group and package selection is available
> for those who would like to do a granular installation. Even if all the
> packages of Fedora Core is installed it doesnt grant users immediate
> access to all the packages since the ones in Fedora Extras repository is
> not available at installation time. Though the installer itself is
> getting support for additional repositories the aspect of making these
> packages more visible to users is better handled through the use of
> tools such as pirut rather than having users install everything which
> they cant now anyway since the installation is limited to Fedora Core
> packages.
>
> * Redundancy - While Fedora Core itself is slowing moving towards
> providing more packages as part of the Fedora Extras and possibly doing
> several different targets the current selection uses multiple programs
> that provide the same functionality, browsers or desktop environments
> for example and its better for users to use a graphical tool like pirut
> and install packages as necessary.
>
> * Security, manageability  and performance -  As more and more packages
> are installed on a system the amount of  updates and interactions
> between the packages that the user has to handle drastically increases.
> For users who are using Fedora as  a development system or using it just
> to learn Linux where the system serves no other purpose and a high
> amount of bandwidth is available this might make sense but for others
> users who use it deploy it at various levels the amount of updates and
> potential security issues that they have to deal with packages that they
> might not even use is a additional burden. Moreover the additional
> packages installed might need listen to network connections by default
> making the systems potentially more vulnerable by increasing the attack
> vector. Additional services enabled by default also affect performance.
>
> > I decided to use
> >add/remove packages. This crashed pretty much immediately.
> >
> What packages did you try to add or remove?. Did you get a traceback?.
> See if its already reported or file a bug report in
> http://bugzilla.redhat.com against pirut.
>
> > I'm stuck
> >with a pile of minimal non-working crud.
> >
> Yum and yum groupinstall can help you install rest of the packages required even if pirut is not working.
>
>
>
> --
> Rahul
>
> Fedora Bug Triaging - http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers

I can't give much information about the Pirut bug, just the it crashes
before it opens. I would use yum, but this linux system isn't on an
internet connection.

I personally like the "everything" option. I would easily install a
system, and it would have all the packages, instead of leaving me
guessing which order to install them on the cd's! Why include them if
they're not easily accessible.

As for the "move it all to extras", I personally  think that it is a
bad idea, even though it has perks. I think that everyone with
diall-up (had it before, not anymore!) should be mad at the extras,
because they are good programs that are pretty much unusable to them.
On the other hand, extras provides a good way to handle upgrade, but
there is "upgrades" for that.

The installation bug that I was talking about, is pretty much as I
said. no matter what "linux resolution=nnxnn" I use at the beginning,
I still get the top corner of the screen without scrolling enabled, i
e the "next", "release notes" and "back" buttons are inaccessable. In
text mode, there are weird patterns and non-understandable buttons. It
is possible to install, but ugly as sin!

poly-p man