FC5T2 ready for even a test release?

[Rahul Sundaram]

Linux Counter (li.counter.org) #386711 wrote:

>I just ftp'd the 5 disks, and put it on my system. Firstly, the
>installer sucks. Graphical only displays the top left corner of the
>screen, showing none of the useful information. I had to use text,
>which was completely garbled. 
>
Nobody else has reported the problem so far. Which display card is 
this?. Can you provide more information of the system?

>Then, I got to the package selection
>screen. I know that they're still working on it, but come on! With no
>'everything' option,I got very minimal packages.
>
Not this again. This is a feature not a bug :-)

Everything installations are generally a bad idea.

* Dependency issues -  One of the reasons behind doing a everything 
installation is avoid dealing with dependency issues. However that is 
largely not a problem now since yum install and yum groupinstall along 
with along programs like pirut. Refer to the yum guide available at 
http://fedora.redhat.com/docs

* Discoverability - Fedora Core like you indicate a large number of 
useful programs but the installer divides these into several different 
types to target particular segment of use cases and avoid having to a 
everything installation. Custom group and package selection is available 
for those who would like to do a granular installation. Even if all the 
packages of Fedora Core is installed it doesnt grant users immediate 
access to all the packages since the ones in Fedora Extras repository is 
not available at installation time. Though the installer itself is 
getting support for additional repositories the aspect of making these 
packages more visible to users is better handled through the use of 
tools such as pirut rather than having users install everything which 
they cant now anyway since the installation is limited to Fedora Core 
packages.

* Redundancy - While Fedora Core itself is slowing moving towards 
providing more packages as part of the Fedora Extras and possibly doing 
several different targets the current selection uses multiple programs 
that provide the same functionality, browsers or desktop environments 
for example and its better for users to use a graphical tool like pirut 
and install packages as necessary.

* Security, manageability  and performance -  As more and more packages 
are installed on a system the amount of  updates and interactions 
between the packages that the user has to handle drastically increases. 
For users who are using Fedora as  a development system or using it just 
to learn Linux where the system serves no other purpose and a high 
amount of bandwidth is available this might make sense but for others 
users who use it deploy it at various levels the amount of updates and 
potential security issues that they have to deal with packages that they 
might not even use is a additional burden. Moreover the additional 
packages installed might need listen to network connections by default 
making the systems potentially more vulnerable by increasing the attack 
vector. Additional services enabled by default also affect performance.

> I decided to use
>add/remove packages. This crashed pretty much immediately.
>
What packages did you try to add or remove?. Did you get a traceback?. 
See if its already reported or file a bug report in 
http://bugzilla.redhat.com against pirut.

> I'm stuck
>with a pile of minimal non-working crud. 
>
Yum and yum groupinstall can help you install rest of the packages required even if pirut is not working.



-- 
Rahul 

Fedora Bug Triaging - http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers