The vision for the Fedora Workstation

[Stephen Gallagher]

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On 02/10/2014 12:40 PM, Paul W. Frields wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 09:48:08AM -0500, Christian Schaller
> wrote:
>> 4. Will I be able to install/de-install whatever I want? Yes and 
>> No. The system has a default package set which is meant to be 
>> installed at any time for it to still be considered the 
>> Workstation. This is part of the API we are offering to 3rd
>> party devs. The UI tools we provide will not offer the option of
>> removing any of these core packages. However the command line
>> tools we have now are of course all still there, and using them
>> you can of course change your system to your hearts content, but
>> of course this is a option for the especially interested and just
>> like you can't go to Volkswagen and complain about how the old 79
>> Beetle that you put a Porsche 911 engine into is a danger to
>> drive, you can't come to Fedora and complain that your custom
>> system has problems.
> 
> Would we want some sort of validation tool that helps users tell 
> whether a system has been mangled?  This could be important for BZ
> as well as community members that help others solve problems.
> Probably a detail, but could be a useful one to include in
> discussion.

One approach we've been floating in the Fedora Server would be to
simply have a specialized meta-package (fedora-server-release) that
explicitly Requires: all of the features necessary to be considered
Fedora Server. Someone with a custom system who decides to remove a
mandatory package would then be removing this release metapackage at
the same time. So just checking for the presence or absence of that
package would be enough to tell if it was in compliance with the
Server (or Workstation) platform.

The nice part of this approach is that it requires zero new
functionality to implement.
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