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Re: Towards a Debian for minimalists



Hi Richard,

Quoting Richard Owlett (2016-07-14 16:19:28)
> Please not the subject line is
>      "Towards a Debian for minimalists"
>                    *NOT*
>      "Towards a minimalist Debian"
> The distinction, as I see it, revolves around the  difference 
> between one's "mindset" as distinct from one's "goals"

Not sure I get the distinction.  Do you mean that the resulting system 
is not necessarily tiny, but that each each piece is carefully 
considered if relevant to include?

If so, I am a minimalist myself :-D


> I started similar threads in 2014.

Can you provide more hints about where/what you wrote in 2014?

Or do you perhaps mean this in 2013?:

Quoting Richard Owlett (2013-03-11 14:34:59)
> Does something aimed at those with little or no connectivity
> using only components from the Debian repositories qualify
> as a potential "Pure Blend".
>
> I envision the user having the multi CD/DVD set of the
> current distro, a new installer iso resembling current
> netinst or bussinesscard, and one of a selection of new
> preseed.cfg files.



> As long as embedded systems were inherently resource constrained I 
> found some common goals in the Embedian(sp??) Project. This group 
> seems to be the closest match to my mindset.

I guess you mean the Debian-derived Emdebian: http://emdebian.org/


> My definitions include:
>   1. Development and target systems shall be i386 only.
>   2. The operative metric for "minimal" will be minimize package 
>      count for currently desired functionality.
>      This focuses on current defined needs over potential future 
>      goals.
>      Which leads to recognizing my "end product" might be a 
>      flexible alternative to Debian's installer, rather than a 
>      Debian  Blend (pure or otherwise).

If by "i386" you mean the system supports Intel 80386 CPUs, then 
unfortunately that is no longer the case with Debian, so will involve 
creating and maintaining a derivative which recompiles core parts of the 
system with compiler flags no longer tested and maintained in Debian.

If by "i386" you mean the Debian label for 32-bit Intel CPUs more 
generally - which effectively means i686 with Jessie and newer (and even 
Squeeze too?), then it is a well supported use of Debian as-is. :-)


> As an example of where I'm headed I've done two Squeeze instals 
> [enough has changed with Jessie that I've not accomplished comparisons 
> yet ;]
> 
> Counting all applications entries under "Applications" there are:
>   11 entries for my minimal Squeeze install [1.5 GB on disk]
>   67 entries for a default Squeeze install  [3.0 GB on disk]

What do you mean by "entries"?  Do you perhaps mean packages explicitly 
installed (as opposed to auto-installed due to dependencies)?

For each of your systems, what might make sense to share and discuss 
without pushing those actual GBs of data over the wire is the output of 
the following command for each environment:

  apt-mark showmanual


> I have to investigate the current crop of metapackages used by the 
> installer and write a coherent description of my target audience.

Looking forward to that.


 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

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