FC5T2 ready for even a test release?

[Richard Hally]

Horst von Brand wrote:
> Nils Philippsen <nphilipp at redhat.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, 2006-01-22 at 20:03 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>>> No it doesnt. I made my argument with detailed rationale on why I 
>>> believe it is not useful in general cases. If you disagree with me, feel 
>>> free to do so but I would like to hear a detailed set of use cases that 
>>> make it a convincing enough argument for Anaconda to support it for end 
>>> users apart from Kickstart capability.
> 
>> What most people complain about here is AFAICS that we completely
>> removed (instead of just hid) an option they valued and that was a well
>> tested (by them), supposedly no-brainer sort of code path, very much
>> unlikely to give any problems down the road. Granted we have a new
>> package selector in anaconda now, but I guess adding back the Everything
>> checkbox and code, perhaps hidden behind an "offereverything" boot
>> loader option (so we don't scare away unsuspecting types) can't be that
>> much of an effort. I'd say it would be worth the trouble, because then
>> we could end this discussion.
> 
> Yet again: The code to do this is probably quite simple. The problem is the
> fallout in form of non-working systems with weird sympthoms, security
> problems caused by forgotten servers installed, performance problems due to
> unnecesary stuff running (or at least on disk), longer update times (and
> higher load on mirrors). The (missing) feature you see, it's fallout you
> don't.
It is a poor design decision to remove a useful feature because that 
feature uncovers other problems that should be fixed rather than covered 
up. For example, the security concern about unused services should be 
handled by making sure that the initial state of the service when 
installed is that it is NOT running. Thus it is not a problem for those 
that don't use it and those that use it know that they need to turn it 
on. Each and every one of the 'objections' to the feature has a better 
solution than removing the "everything" feature (in some form).
Carrying the "remove problematic (but useful) features when they are not 
the real problem" to any extent will lead to a "dumbdowned" feature set. 
Then we can call the distro "Fedora for Dummies".