Fedora Core 2 Distribution Size - The separated OS

David T Hollis dhollis at davehollis.com
Mon Jan 5 16:57:56 UTC 2004


On Mon, 2004-01-05 at 10:49, Chip Piller wrote:
> Alan Cox wrote:
> > There are good reasons for trying to get a base setup down to 1 or 2 
> > CD's (and for
> > workstation with basic languages it is btw in FC1). Firstly if you have 
> > a really dodgy
> > CD drive then doing a minimal install of CD then using yum to pull the 
> > rest off another
> > box is a lifesaver. Secondly for plenty of people 3 CD's is a lot of 
> > date, and a great
> > way to exceed broadband limits in many places if they have broadband. 
> 
> Reasons for making GNOME the Fedora Core desktop include:
> 1) Fedora, installer, config tools require python, GTK, Gnome
> 2) GNOME is supported by RedHat, Ximian, Sun, etc.
> 3) Userlinux.com (Bruce Perens) has decided to go with a single desktop 
> and chose to go with GNOME instead of KDE primarily because of the license
> 4) Keep it simple, make it "just work" philosophy
> 
> Maurice Piller
IMHO, a lot of points are being raised about slimming down the distro,
though they all seem to be corner cases and really don't state a valid
problem across the board.  Dropping KDE would slim down the distro by a
significant amount, but at the cost of loosing a useful desktop AND all
of the apps.  A lot of folks may use Gnome as their desktop of choice
(myself included) but use some KDE apps because they are the best for
the purpose/only ones available/whatever other option.  I think one of
the greatest benefits of the Linux/"billions and billions" of distro's
phenomenon is that there doesn't have to be a one-size-fits-all
approach.  If you want a super-tiny install, find the distro that fits
that purpose.  If you want a general purpose desktop distro, Fedora is
good choice.  Trying to mold Fedora into a distro that can suit every
purpose on the planet would force it to always work at the least common
denominator which would be a net loss for everybody.





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