Re: ["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>] Re: apt-get
There are other reasons someone might want a minimal installation. For
example, I have an IBM ThinkPad 701CS which has no CD-ROM drive and a
built-in 14.4 kbps modem. The standard boot floppies will not support
using neat PCMCIA gadgets, such as a CD-ROM drive, without a custom
kernel. So the easiest way to install is from a pile of floppy disks,
which gets you up through base, and then over the modem. There are lots
of things that the "minimal" installation wants to install, and which I
disagree should be considered minimal.
For example, emacs20 is "standard," which I find mind-boggling; xlib6g and
xfree86-common are also standard; mtools is also standard, and it depends
upon xlib6g. I know these are not new issues, but what sense does it make
that I should have to download pieces of X to manipulate floppy disks?
Serious thought should go into a decision to make something "standard,"
especially when it is elephantine as emacs. Obviously, there has to be
some system editor, but emacs20 is a 9 MB download that occupies 28 MB
after installation! Sure, I know I can manually override these selections
and install an even more minimal system than the officially minimal
system, but I really don't see why that is necessary.
In my opinion, it would make more sense to rely upon the task selection
system or some other workable scheme to facilitate the installation of
useful components as needed, rather than just declaring things "standard."
-- Mike
On 2000-05-18 at 19:32 +1000, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
> 80Mb? That seems pretty reasonable to me. From memory, you do get a basic
> development system in that space. You could remove that if you really
> needed to save space.
>
> It's nice to support low disk space machines, but we shouldn't (IMHO)
> do that at the expense of more modern machines.
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