Re: Debian IS for the enterprise (Was: Debian Enterprise?)
On Fri, Nov 21, 2003 at 03:00:20PM +0100, Turbo Fredriksson wrote:
| So when talking 'crud' and 'crap' here, I mean 'everything that is not
| needed/wanted on a server'. Example on that is anything that uses a GUI
| (ie, X11 stuff such as window managers, games), the lg-* (The Linux
| Gazette) packages etc, etc... The list could be long...
Now that is just rubbish! To start with, Debian aims to be useful on
more than just servers. The web page describes it as "the universal
operating system"; one of the nice features about Debian, from my
perspective, is that an enormous amount of software is packaged for and
included with it. Normally the Debian developers do a bloody good job
of packaging things consistently and sensibly. (And for the record, I'm
not one.)
It is also conceivable that the 'crap' that you decry might be required
on a server - if that server is a terminal server providing applications
to remote X displays, for example, having X11 installed would be a
requirement.
Further to this, if you don't want to have a given package installed on
your server, you are quite welcome to /not/ install it! Packages which
are not installed take up a negligible amount of space and have no
adverse security implications. For the most part, the packages which
might be considered to be holding up the release (such as XFree) are in
fact wanted by a considerable proportion (in fact, in the case of X, I
would say an overwhelming majority) of Debian's users. Channelling the
considerable effort being devoted to packaging, say, XFree86 or KDE to
fixing problems in other packages could perhaps help get a stable
release out sooner, but would more likely result in the release process
taking just as long, and countless people bickering about how useless
Debian is for their purposes, now that it doesn't contain X.
Cameron.
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