Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (1695 mails)

[Adam Tauno Williams <awilliam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> > Ok, this puts you in a pretty small minority of tech users.  It doesn't
> > really bolster the position that what you like should be an indicator of
> > what should be installed/enabled by default.
> Never said that.  I would like a questionaire I can click on at
> install that makes it easier to disable crap.
> > There already is <http://en.opensuse.org/Disabling_Beagle>
> I prefer my solution.  Taboo Beagle during install.  Then you don't
> have to worry with it.  But it takes a lot of time to go through and
> weed out the crap from the basic install.  Maybe we could have a list
> of packages sets designed for the casual users, the middle of the road
> and the power user.  Something WOULD be nice, but since I would just
> remove stuff anyway, I guess I'm wishfully thinking.  Or something
> where you can say, Hey, My machine is older and doesn't have resources
> to waste.  Can we pare down the install to help me?  I don't have a
> Core2 Quad and 8MB RAM.  I have a P3/700 and 384MB RAM and just want
> to be able to do a little writing and check my email.

Hey!  Then we finally come to something we can agree on;  it would be
nice to have a install category of "Minimal GNOME Desktop" / "Minimal
KDE Desktop" in addition to the "[Default] GNOME Desktop", etc...  I'd
have no problem with that at all;  I probably even use it in some cases.
But the "[Default] GNOME Desktop" should install the
reasonably-current-default-GNOME toolchain and not make people add an
enable bits in order to get 'real' GNOME (or whatever). And the
'Default' should always target a reasonably current machine.  

But you run into a issue of scarce resources - someone would need to
define and *test* that category on an *ongoing* basis.  As a software
developer I can tell you that *ongoing testing* is the most expensive
[in resources] part of the entire process.  Seriously.  On projects I've
worked on I've vetoed many a otherwise good feature/idea because "who is
going to maintain it?"  Testing requires *lots* of time from very
[scarce] knowledgeable people.  

So, I agree, it would be very nice to have such a category but I can
very much understand why it doesn't exist.

As an aside: to further your argument calling this "broken", "bloated",
"hog", "an excuse", etc... won't help.  It just forces people to argue
with you when they may not even disagree with *some* components of your
actual premise.  But inflammatory statements just disguise your actual
premise.

> > No, they didn't, see the above URL (at least in the case of Beagle).
> > And most new users probably have text messaging and use collaborative
> > tools (like twitter, IM, etc...)
> No, I meant overall.  The KDE devs decided it was their way or the
> highway, and it's taken a long time to get them to understand how
> broken v4 is compared to v3.  There are other examples as well.

A project can't go every-way,  again you have the scarce resources
issue.  Somebody has to make a decision, and that decision will possibly
make a good number of people unhappy.  But that is just how life is.  I
live in a democracy and I'm pretty unhappy about lots of things the
government does.... but that's the breaks.  However, I can [and have]
used the appropriate channels and well-reasoned [calm] arguments to make
small [I'm just one guy] changes in policies.  Open Source isn't much
different.

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