Re: Bug#696154: cloud.debian.org: Please install 'less' by default on official Debian AMIs.
Excerpts from Thomas Goirand's message of 2012-12-17 06:46:27 -0800:
> On 12/17/2012 10:23 PM, Charles Plessy wrote:
> > To Thomas: less is installed on almost all Debian systems where
> > popularity-contest is installed, and is used in almost a half of these systems.
>
> And?
>
> > So instances used interactively, this is definitely a command that is missing.
>
> I don't agree.
>
> > But in the long run, we need a solid criterion to decide what is included and
> > what is not.
>
> This was exactly my point, and I had no doubts that you would get it.
>
> > Do you or others know about evaluations on the costs caused by
> > adding extra kilobytes or megabytes to a machine image ?
>
> The point isn't to add or remove extra kilobytes, but to ship the
> strict minimum. Otherwise, we might as well add:
> - GNU screen
> - vim
> - joe (yes, I like this one...)
> - emacs (wooo... a few megabytes!)
> - less
> - etc.
>
> Why not? These are nice...
>
> So if the criteria is to have the strict minimum, "less" isn't needed.
> If it's to have a nice env, then we'll fight and fight over and over
> again to decide which should be added (vim vs emacs anyone?).
Just a thought, but the more that is left out, the more people are pushed
to create their own special-snowflake images, which makes it much harder
to consume the official ones. While a few apt-gets at first-boot here
and there are fine, at some point you look at how much instance time
you're spending bringing up instances, and you make an image.
Perhaps apply an 80/20 rule. If a package is useful to 80% or more of
the users and does not interfere with any other package, then its a win.
Just using anecdotal reference, I'd say less is something most users
expect to have. Vim and screen are pretty popular, but I don't think
they're quite over the 80% hump.
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