Starting point for package list for Fedora 7 Desktop spin

Gian Paolo Mureddu gmureddu at prodigy.net.mx
Fri Jan 12 05:35:12 UTC 2007


Jesse Keating escribió:
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/FeatureFedoraDesktop
>
> This is a first rough draft at what packages to include in the Desktop spin.  
> Please note that for the most part we're trying to list top level packages as 
> the compose tool can depresolve from there.  Many of the packages listed I 
> don't necessarily know what they do, especially those in <core> and <base> so 
> I'd be happy to get some thought on those.
>
> There is no marking what is default/manditory/optional, nor any real ideas as 
> to what Categories exists and just some guesses at group names.  Also we'll 
> need the language groups too.
>
> I may have an iso set composed from this package list at some point soon to 
> share, not sure about getting it external yet.
>
> I also have this in comps format, which is going to be how we manage this for 
> the composes, so I'm going to put up a file somewhere that more people can 
> gain access to and munge there rather than me having to translate from 
> email/wiki comments into comps languages.  But for now, here is a flatish 
> list.  (Note, without translations, we're about 1.5CDs big with this list)
>   

Just to add my opinion. Thus far the selection of packages seem very 
good, however may I suggest Beryl instead of Compiz? The reason why I 
ask this is simple: performance. Beryl seems to be (quite a bit) faster 
than Compiz. The way I see this is simple: Trying to build anything on 
my current system will render the desktop quite unresponsive when CPU % 
use reaches near to 80%. Window animations are choppy and slow. Beryl on 
the other hand handles this much better (at least on my current setup, 
and I'm not sure why that is exactly). Granted, Beryl has some problems 
of its own, however these seem to have been mostly addressed in version 
0.1.4 (latests from updates), not only it offers a lot more options, but 
if the manager is loaded, the user still can decide which WM to use, on 
the fly... Similar to the "Desktop Effects" dialog, but in my opinion 
more convenient.

Another program that I'd rather use and I 100% agree with its inclusion 
is Banshee over Rhythmbox. Not that I don't like Rhythmbox, but rather 
that Banshee uses Mono instead of Python, and in my (albeit personal) 
tests, I've found that Mono is less of a resource hog than Python both 
in memory fingerprint and CPU time, at least on x86_64, where in x86 
they both are pretty much the same (seems the memory fingerprint of 
python on x86_64 is exaggerated quite a bit in regards to its i386 
version, more than twice the memory print... Maybe a leak?). Also 
(though I can't confirm this) Banshee has support for MTP devices 
(pretty much all the newer portable mp3 devices and phones use this new 
protocol, instead of MSC [UMS]), through gphoto2. I've been unable to 
make Banshee "see" my iriver Clix player, while Amarok and Gnomad2 do 
(but then again, these two use libmtp, not necessarily gphoto2).

As far as the office debate goes, I'd rather stick to the true and tried 
OpenOffice.org. I don't like much that it is somewhat of a disk space 
hog, only of the packages listed on 
http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/6/i386/os/Fedora/RPMS/, 
and only looking at the sizes of the packages listed (are those package 
size of the rpm file or installed size?) they amount to about 651.229 
Mib. This is confirmed by inspecting the size of all the OO.o components 
on the i386 FC6 DVD. Needless to say this is quite a bit. I guess one 
way to work around this issue is by fetching from the repos any extra 
language pack set to be installed from Anaconda... Leaving out all the 
langpacks OOo still amounts to about 105Mib (on the DVD).

It may only be me, but of the system-config* utilities, wouldn't it also 
make sense to include system-config-display? Speaking of the 
system-config utilities, how about these:

system-config-boot
system-config-rootpassword
system-config-language
system-config-samba
?

Maybe these other system-configs are a bit too much for some, but 
talking about desktop configurations, at least Samba should be there to 
allow file sharing with Windows computers (and Macs), so even if samba 
is a "server" component, it would still make sense to include it for a 
desktop computer, especially since it is way too common to deploy Linux 
boxes into already existing Windows networks, even desktop Linux. Let us 
not forget that even though English has become the "lingua franca" of 
the Internet, Fedora is deployed in a wide range of languages, leaving 
out system-config-language, is like denying this to the non-English 
speaking audience. I'm a bit hesitant about system-config-rootpassowrd 
and boot, but since then again these are desktop machines, at least 
having a "nice" way to change root's (administrator [Yuck!]) password is 
a necessity, especially if the system will be (as intended) used by 
non-"geek" users... This might also be seen as a security issue, so, I 
understand if it is not included. However system-config-boot gives the 
users the possibility to change their currently booting kernel if (for 
instance) they use special kernel modules that are not available for the 
latest official kernel. Booting the latest kernel with this lacking 
module will render their system "unusable" to a certain degree... For 
instance in the case of graphics drivers or other modules, the users 
then can easily revert to a previous "working" kernel.

I think it's all the suggestions I have for now. Looking nice, and keep 
up the good work!




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