Re: Packaging WM themes - question
On Sun, May 27, 2001 at 06:45:10PM +0200, Viktor Rosenfeld wrote:
>
> Come on! I don't mean to be ignorant, but a 286 is 18 years old. The
> 386 is only 3 years younger. No one is "depending" on hardware this old
> -- not even in schools. At least not in Europe or North America.
>
You'd be shocked. I know of at least 2 schools in my town (120.000
inhabitants) that are _still_ using 386'es. They could do without them,
but as long as they are low on funds, they are happy with anything they
get. And I'm living in the Netherlands, which is rather wealthy. In
countries with less money those old machines are even more wanted.
> But this is all beside the point. The fact is, that one is still
> perfectly able to run Debian on a 386 with 8 MB of RAM, which
> coincidentelly is also the minimum requirement for running Linux in the
> first place. (Okay, so 4 MB might be enough, but only with some magic.)
> It might not be fast, but this is a 386 we're talking about. It simply
> isn't fast by todays standards [1]. But for some purposes it's good
> enough.
>
> Now, how is that lessened by the fact, that Debian takes ages to install
> on such a machine? Not at all. It's obviously a load-intensive job, so
> you get a bigger machine. And making that process less dependent on CPU
> power is not an option when this means that core functionality of apt is
> sacrificed (ie the ability to figure out dependencies). Simply because
> the vast majority of Debian users has no problem using it (at least
> speed-wise). No one forces you to use apt. If it's to slow for you,
> than don't use it, there are alternatives (eg Slackware, installing from
> sratch).
>
I think this is not changing the core functionality of apt at all.
Instead I want to make use of an apt feature. One that has been
implemented on purpose: the ability to use multiple sources of software.
This is hardly different from a system with or without packages from the
non-free section. If you don't want non-free software you remove it from
sources.list and you're computer won't even know non-free software
exists.
Now do the same for eg. KDE. If a user doesn't want KDE, he removes the
appropriate line from sources.list and apt/dselect won't know about KDE
and will not be slowed down because of it.
I repeat, this does _not_ changing apt in any way, and for most users
their will be no noticable difference.
--
Casper Gielen
casper@huiscomputer.homeip.net, capslock2000@mailandnews.com
--
People just generally like to disagree.
Bill Joy
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