maintaining minimal

Felix Miata mrmazda at earthlink.net
Sun Sep 29 05:50:44 UTC 2013


On 2013-09-28 20:28 (GMT-0700) Samuel Sieb composed:

> Felix Miata wrote:

>> That statement in conjunction with behavior I've observed seems to
>> indicate hard dependencies have been created for what on other distros
>> would be suggests. e.g., 'yum install konsole' results in 1 package plus
>> 190 dependent packages to be installed, among them:

>> yum install kcalc isn't quite so bad, 1 + 125, and yet it's ka ka that a
>> simple calculator needs qtwebkit, desktop search, firewire and sound
>> support installed.

> If you're installing a KDE application, but don't have KDE installed,
> then why is it surprising that it's going to pull in a large part of KDE
> and its dependencies?  I expect you would get a very similar result if
> you tried installing gnome-terminal.  If you don't want that, then
> install something like xterm or one of the other terminal application
> that isn't tied to a large desktop environment.

At the root of my OP is these two circumstances:

1-string "minimal" appears only once in output of yum grouplist, not in 
conjunction with any of the available DEs

2-a minimal DE is available by installing group "Basic Desktop", but it's 
suitable only for those who want Gnome, which I don't. If chosen now on my 3 
week old F20 "minimal" installation that is currently consuming 1299555 1K 
blocks, 379 packages would be added, names of which only 17 include string x11.

In between installation and starting this thread, I installed other things I 
knew I would need anyway that had managed to escape inclusion in the minimal 
installation: qt, qt-x11, qt-settings, xorg-x11-xinit, xorg-x11-xauth, 
xorg-x11-server-utils, libXft, pango, cairo, and whatever they depend on.

In trying to find a way to reach a state similar to #2 using KDE instead of 
Gnome, I had tried installing several KDE apps individually to see what 
didn't seem to be required, since if trying to install all the apps I wanted 
at once I would have no chance of discerning what might be responsible for 
particular items of bloat. What I'd actually like is no more than is 
technically required by the DE to run what I need: Konsole, Konqueror, 
Ksnapshot, Kcalc and Mozilla-built binaries. It seems before writing here I 
should have tried such after adding the above listed intermediates, as the 
dep count plummeted.

At this point, 'yum install kdm konsole kcalc konqueror ksnapshot kcm-gtk' 
only wants to install 198 packages, with konq apparently a part of 
kde-baseapps instead of separate. Almost close enough for gummint work. 
Kde-workspace wasn't pulled. Another 32 packages required, of which one x11 
(and including the useless but upstream-required pim libs). Done. Only 36.5% 
increase in / space consumed not counting 14 needed scalable font packages. 
Thread moot, except to maybe plant a seed of easier minimal install of other 
DEs than Gnome. I'm not interested any time soon in spending the time it 
would take to do what Adam suggested.
-- 
"The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant
words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation)

  Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/


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