Complaint about apt installing Recommends by default.
I'm seriously.. VERY seriously enraged by the very thought of Debian
moving to preconfigure and install "Recommends" by default. This is the
worst decision Debian could ever make. That very one thing is one of my
biggest complaints about Ubuntu doing so and strongly /VERY/ strongly
insist it not be done.
I have been a Debian user since way back when, and I completely disagree
with this decision. Recommends should NOT be treated as if Required,
ever. Things such as, for an example, rsyslog-pgsql, to add postgresql
logging support. Generally such a package could (AND SHOULD!) recommend
postgresql-server, and at the very least Require postgresql-client.
Since rsyslog-pgsql would be just a component to add support to log TO a
PostgreSQL server, it's not essentially required to run it on the same
system the module is installed on. But to "by default" imposedly install
postgresql-server on every system you install rsyslog-pgsql to just
because it's recommend, is outright unacceptably insanely stupid.
Another prime example is a package maintainer may "Recommend" pulseaudio
for the use of ... Let's use Amarok as an example. Is it absolutely
Required to use PulseAudio with Amarok to play audio? Absolutely not.
With the direction PulseAudio has gone as well, it would be hard to
honestly recommend such a thing, but it can and likely even will happen,
and unless someone pins pulseaudio packages from ever installing, they
may very well have it shoved down their throat. Is this acceptable?
Completely not.
I will firmly say this. It is completely stupid to, by default, install
Recommends. In the past, only Ubuntu has ever done this, and it is by
far, one of the stupidest things they have ever done. Absolutely /no/
other reasonable distribution does this.
Eric Renfro
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