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