How would you shrink Fedora? [LWN.net]

How would you shrink Fedora?

Posted Feb 24, 2005 18:36 UTC (Thu) by b7j0c (subscriber, #27559)
Parent article: How would you shrink Fedora?

When you see the fedora devel list on these topics, its painful to watch the "NO, NOT THAT!!!" response to any suggested package removal.

Epiphany? Come on, this browser has a userbase that you need a microscope to see. Easily removed. Now I bet I'll get ten response from Epiphany users (100% of the userbase) telling me "NO, NOT THAT!!!". Face it - even if you are an Epiphany user, you have to admit its *fringe* at best.

Abiword and Gnumeric? Easily removed. I say this as a person who removed OO and put these packages in its place. Still, for 99% of people, OO is where they want to be.

Come on folks! Its not like this software is being deleted from the universe...its a yum install away. There is no reason that FC4 cannot be a one CD release. If you are an adherent to some fringe piece of software, do you really care if it is on the CD release?? Why?? What does it matter?? Oh, you want to install all of your fringeware without hitting the network. I say if you don't have a network connection, to hell with you, you're out of luck.

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How would you shrink Fedora?

Posted Feb 24, 2005 20:09 UTC (Thu) by nicku (subscriber, #777) [Link]

I say if you don't have a network connection, to hell with you, you're out of luck.

In Australia, if you live out of the big smoke, there is little alternative to dial up. Even installing the updates costs a lot of money :-)

How would you shrink Fedora?

Posted Feb 24, 2005 21:30 UTC (Thu) by b7j0c (subscriber, #27559) [Link]

>> In Australia, if you live out of the big smoke, there is little alternative to dial up

but thats still a network connection...

in any case i would not develop a major distro with you as a target market. 99% of fedora users most likely have a broadband connection, if not 99.99%.

How would you shrink Fedora?

Posted Feb 25, 2005 3:21 UTC (Fri) by dlang (subscriber, #313) [Link]

I have a 'broadband' connection that's 144k. I am paying $89/month for this line and cannot get a faster line (satellite may be a possibility, and _may_ be faster, but it's even more expensive)

by the way, I'm in the US, within easy commuting distance of downtown Los Angeles

now as it happens I'm not interested in Fedora anyway due to not liking several things RedHat has done (both technicaly and otherwise) but saying that you wouldn't produce a distro that I would have any ability to use at home just shrinks your potential userbase.

also for corporate use, many companies want a local, static installation source so that they can be very sure that the Nth machine they build is exactly like the first (no 'upgrades' slipping in on them) and as such many of them also won't be willing to do a network install

your potential userbase is getting smaller and smaller

How would you shrink Fedora?

Posted Feb 25, 2005 6:00 UTC (Fri) by b7j0c (subscriber, #27559) [Link]

>> but saying that you wouldn't produce a distro that I would have any ability to use at home just shrinks your potential userbase.

why would you not be able to use a one CD distro at home with a 144k connection? the average package size i suspect is under 5MB.

>> also for corporate use, many companies want a local, static installation source so that they can be very sure that the Nth machine they build is exactly like the first

speaking as someone who works at a company that must install a free OS on tens of thousands of rackmount servers, any company that is trying to do this by CD is retarded. typically installs like this are done by cloning an image, for which tools already exist and are network-based. seeing as most 1U boxes do not have CD drives, its not clear what purpose the disc serves other than as a Mountain Dew coaster.

How would you shrink Fedora?

Posted Feb 25, 2005 15:36 UTC (Fri) by yodermk (subscriber, #3803) [Link]

> I have a 'broadband' connection that's 144k. I am paying $89/month for this line and cannot get a faster line (satellite may be a possibility, and _may_ be faster, but it's even more expensive)

> by the way, I'm in the US, within easy commuting distance of downtown Los Angeles

Wow, I'm in Ecuador, paying $85/month for 128k. Didn't figure it got that bad in the States!

Nevertheless, it *is* adequate for keeping my Gentoo install up to date, and downloading ISOs when needed. Just takes a night and a day... :(