"hard core" linux

[Paul A Houle]

Rahul Sundaram wrote:

>
> If the "infrastructural" stuff is overarching dependencies we can 
> split them into sub packages. Lets be specific. What kind of changes 
> is being made. Got any ideas on improve those?
>
    Oh,  a lot of this is ancient history.  For instance,  an RH 9 
system that had to be upgraded to a 2.6 kernel and needed to update a 
lot of userspace stuff,  especially modutils.  We had a production RHEL 
3 server that we had to do the same thing -- I think that the 
distribution had a largely 2.6-ready userspace,  but modutils is 
critical for having a system that can boot,  and the last thing I need 
is getting it 'upgraded' to something that leaves the machine inoperable.

    The system that I hacked out xmms on is an FC3 system,  I haven't 
done this on my FC4 installs.  My two big beefs are apps that are 
dependent on media players (more than you might think) and apps that 
depend on a web browser (shades of "IE is integrated into the operating 
system") -- in both of these cases I might just want to give up on what 
comes with the OS and handle them myself in /usr/local.