How does one get a clean installation of Fedora?

[Martin Skjöldebrand]

On Sunday 28 July 2013 23.45.40 lee wrote:
> Sam Varshavchik <mrsam at courier-mta.com> writes:
> > lee writes:
> >> Hi,
> >> 
> >> how does one get a clean installation of Fedora?  "Clean" means that
> >> only those packages are installed that are actually needed and only
> >> those services are running that are actually needed.
> > 
> > Very easy:
> > 
> > Step 1: figure out what packages and services you need.
> > Step 2: install just those packages and services that you need.
> 
> Unfortunately, the broken dependencies seem to prevent step 2 ---
> otherwise I could simply remove unneeded packages.
> 
> > Unfortunately, noone's yet written an app that can telepathetically
> > determine what someone needs. Everyone needs different things, so
> > there is no one shoe that fits all.
> 
> Yes, and I always wondered why the installer doesn't give any choice at
> all.
> 
> > The different spins are a good start. If you decide that you want
> > Gnome or XFCE, installing the appropriate spin would be a good
> > start.
> 
> Well, I don't need any of these.
> 
> > And going forward, you'll just have to figure out what you have
> > installed, and don't need, or don't have installed, but you need, and
> > make the appropriate adjustments.
> 
> That's like step 2 again, prevented by broken dependencies ...

I believe this kind of situation is why the Gentoo, and later, Arch 
distributions were created. There you seriously micro manage your distribution 
and install only what you want and in exactly the way you want.

I used to be a (Documentation) dev on Gentoo when younger and had much more 
time to fiddle around with various settings. Maybe Arch Linux would be 
something to look into once I get back up to speed with the Linux.

/Martin S