grip being removed [Re: rawhide report: 20050120 changes]

[Tyler Larson]

Rodd Clarkson wrote:
> This is a hard call, but I'm all for seeing CORE made "really" small and
> (if possible) fitting onto a single CD.  If this means making the hard
> decisions about having to get a couple of my favorite apps from Extra to
> get a equivalent desktop setup instead of having to download four ISO's
> (soon, at this rate, to be five or six) then I'm all for dropping of the
> apps I use into Extras.
> 

Lets face it, if we're really interested in shrinking the size of the 
distro, cutting a few packages like XMMS isn't going to make a spit of 
difference. Not even eliminating unused packages is going to do much good.

If we want to make an appreciable difference in the size of FC, we've 
got to cut at least enough to remove a CD or two. If we just cut a few 
redundant packages, we piss some people off, but gain nearly nothing.

If we really want to cut the size of the distro by more than a few 
hundred meg, we've got to start removing functionality. Plain and 
simple. Something that lots of people *need* has to go. And you're not 
going to do it without making a whole lot of people really, really mad.

So, what gets the ax? Tough to say. There's only 15 packages in fc3 that 
are >= 20 Meg. And OOo accounts for almost 200M of that. But can we 
really ax OpenOffice? Heresy. KDE? Blasphemous.

Sure, we could move packages to Extras... if only we had some idea what 
Extras is. Whatever it is, though, I'm quite certain that the packages 
*I* use don't belong there, right? But if the Extras CDs are distributed 
with the core CDs, and if most people will need the Extras CDs to get 
those last three packages they're rather fond of, what really is the 
point dividing them up? Other than, of course, to inconvenience the 
user. I was all for it a few hours ago, but now it doesn't sound like 
we'll be helping anyone out.

The way I see it, we're left with two options:
A) Big distro. Deal with it.
B) Piss lots of people off because Fedora no longer includes the 
software they use. Sorry KDE and OOo users.

The third option, "remove the stuff people don't use", seems more like a 
pipe dream than a viable course of action. You can't remove enough fat 
to keep A from happening without bringing about B. Moving a substantial 
amount of stuff into an "Extras" category (or whatever it is) seems like 
a "worst of both worlds" solution. Not only has the total software base 
not shrunk, but it's now more difficult to find the package you want. 
What are the chances, really, that the average user *won't* want at 
least some of the software on the Extras CD(s)?

I don't know. The more I think about it, the less excited I get. Perhaps 
someone can share a more rosy picture of how moving packages to Fedora 
Extras is supposed to make the users' lives so much easier. Anyone care 
to bite?