Re: kernel

[JF Martinez <jfm2@club-internet.fr>]

> 
> 
> 
> 
> > > Also, a little off topic. But is everything going to fit on a CD? I
> > > tried to build an ISO image to burn onto a CDRW when I downloaded
> > > everything a while back and it would not fit.
> > >
> >
> > THe ftp siyte still has RedHat's graphic installer.  It is so big I
> > decided we will keeep the older, text based one used in 6.0.  This one
> > is about 30 Megs smaller.
> 
> This is just writing from a user perspective.  When I install Windows 95 (i
> know, "ick" but i am stilll not free from bill gate's wraith ) it installs
> about 100 megs normally.  With linux installations I noticed, especially
> mandrake,  that they install tons of crap, sometimes around 600 megs.  Now I

Well there is a a difference and this is that Windows comes as a naked
system with the userr being expected to _buy_ additional applications.

> can say maybe 200 megs of this is necessary.  It's larger than a normal
> windows installation because of all the different libraries, from qt to

Also I don't reason in terms of 200 megs of software, I reason in
terms of the ccost of this disk space.  A 10G disk costs 150$ so 600
megs is 9 dollars of disk space.  Reason to avoid Indy becoming a
monster distribution is not disk space but the capacity of the user to
cope with too much stuff.

> gtk+, but even after that there is still tons and tons of crap.  It's almost
> one of those "1000 shareware programs and games" CD's you can buy for 5

The Gimp, Emacs and gcc tend to far better than those programs.

> bucks at CompUSA.  It's so easy to put all those apps on there cos so much
> of linux apps are open source and free.  However is this helpful to the
> user? To have 6 Windows Managers, 8 text editors, 4 image viewers, 7
> different music players,  3 different X config tools and more.  Yeah i know

I am a man of simple tastes: I want the best in all.  In an ideal
situation I would only include a single program for each thing in
order to avoid confusing the user and because I feel it is autho's
duty to shield the user from inferior programs.  Howver this policy
has limits: sometimes which is the best program is subject to debate,
we have to keep in mind small machines and we have to keep programs I
feel are not the best but who have a large user base so not including
them would hurt too many people.  I also sometimes do't have the time to
make an in depth analysis of a program in order to decide it is
inferior to its neighbour and should be dropped.  But ideally I would
include only one.

What Indy tries is cover additional needs to those covered by RedHat:
we include a fast mpeg player, SoundStudio, a check book manager and so
on.

> we all have our favs and is hard for us to agree on programs (I am an emacs
> person myself) and I am all up for freedom of choice but sometime
> orginazation is worth the sacrifice.  I'm not to say you haven't done any of
> this, I've seen you ask the list which developer software package is better
> and other questions like this but to cut out a Graphical Installation
> because of 30 megs needed for space maybe is a bad idea. That installation
> kinda makes linux look a little less frightening.
> 

But I think those 30 megs can be used to make Linux more useful and
less frightening to _use_ and I feel this being more important than less
frightening to install.   Of course this is only my opiion.

> Also for another suggestion has anyone looked at urpmi? It's a nice frontend
> to rpm for users that aren't root.  I use it myself, it came with mandrake
> 7.0.  I think its another seul-ish kind of program.
> 
> These are all suggestions for the future releases not the upcoming one. I
> know how under stress all you guys are.
> 
> 
> ~Jon
> 
> 

-- 
			Jean Francois Martinez

Project Independence: Linux for the Masses
http://www.independence.seul.org