Anders Johansson
Here's an idea that I've been toying with for a long time now: How about a SUSE-CORE that is really CORE? Something that contains only the bare essentials of the system, such as glibc, kernel and a few other things. A really barebones system.
We currently have a base pattern that is an extended core. I'm appending the list below and would like you to send me a proposal - either as definition or as list of what you would consider such a CORE. The question is then also what to do with the packages that are currently in the basis but should not be in the new CORE. If people like this, we can use it. I'm open for ideas...
On top of this you have add-on products on separate media, such as "KDE Desktop", "Gnome Desktop", "development tools", "mail server", "gaming system" and so on. In each, the relevant configuration utilities, yast modules etc are included, so you only see on your system what you have installed
That's more radical then I think - but something to discuss further.
This would have two benefits: with a core system that is really core, it would be far easier to maintain separate from everything else. The "subsystems" could also be developed, tested and maintained separately, so you could have a two year release cycle of core, and a 1 year release cycle of KDE Desktop (for example).
You want the kernel to be updated more often than every 2 years...
The second benefit would be that it would be much easier for third party companies to create offerings that go in as an add-on on top of SUSE-CORE. Far fewer combinations to test,
Moving away from the monolithic distribution is my idea. I think it would improve maintainability a lot
Having a defined CORE has its merits, Andreas Required (must have packages): aaa_base aaa_skel acl ash attr audit-libs autoyast2 autoyast2-installation autoyast2-utils bash bzip2 checkmedia coreutils cpio cpp cracklib cups-client cups-libs curl cyrus-sasl cyrus-sasl-saslauthd db db-utils dbus-1 device-mapper diffutils e2fsprogs ed eject ethtool evms file filesystem fillup findutils glibc gnome-icon-theme grep groff gzip hwinfo insserv iproute2 iptables iputils kbd klogd krb5 ksymoops ldapcpplib less libacl libattr libcap libcom_err libgcc libnscd libxcrypt liby2util libzypp limal limal-bootloader limal-perl logrotate lvm2 m4 mailx make mdadm mingetty mkinitrd mkisofs mktemp module-init-tools multipath-tools ncurses net-tools netcfg openssh openssl pam pam-modules parted perl permissions procps psmisc pwdutils reiserfs rpm sed openSUSE-release suse-build-key sysconfig sysfsutils syslog-ng sysvinit tar tcpd util-linux vim w3m wget yast2 yast2-bootloader yast2-core yast2-country yast2-dhcp-server yast2-dns-server yast2-firewall yast2-hardware-detection yast2-installation yast2-instserver yast2-ldap yast2-ldap-client yast2-mail-aliases yast2-mouse yast2-ncurses yast2-network yast2-nfs-client yast2-nfs-server yast2-nis-client yast2-nis-server yast2-ntp-client yast2-online-update yast2-online-update-frontend yast2-packager yast2-pam yast2-perl-bindings yast2-pkg-bindings yast2-printer yast2-runlevel yast2-samba-client yast2-samba-server yast2-schema yast2-security yast2-storage yast2-storage-lib yast2-support yast2-sysconfig yast2-tftp-server yast2-theme-SuSELinux yast2-trans-stats yast2-transfer yast2-tune yast2-update yast2-users yast2-xml zlib #ifdef __ia64__ elilo efibootmgr ia32el #endif #if defined(__i386__) || defined (__x86_64__) microcode_ctl grub lilo #endif #ifdef __powerpc__ lilo #endif Recommended (should have - selected by default) packages: qlogic-firmware OpenIPMI SuSEfirewall2 acpid at autofs bc bind-libs bind-utils binutils blocxx bootcycle bootsplash compat compat-libstdc++ compat-openssl097g convmv cpufrequtils cron dbus-1-glib delayacct-utils deltarpm dhcpcd dmraid dos2unix dosfstools expat fbset finger freetype2 gawk gdb gdbm gettext glib2 glibc-i18ndata glibc-locale gnome-filesystem gpart gpg gpm hal hdparm hfsutils ifplugd info initviocons ipmitool ivman jfsutils joe ksh libevent libgcrypt libgpg-error libgssapi libidn libjpeg liblcms libmng libpcap libpfm libpng librpcsecgss libstdc++ libtiff libtool libusb libxml2 libxslt libzio linux32 log4net lsof lukemftp man man-pages master-boot-code mcelog mono-core mono-data mono-web mpt-status netcat nfs-utils nfsidmap nscd ntfsprogs numactl openct openldap2-client opensc openslp openslp-server patch pax pciutils pcre pcsc-lite pdisk pfmon pmtools popt portmap postfix powerpc32 powersave powersave-libs ppp pptp prctl procinfo procmail providers readline recode release-notes resmgr rsh rsync rug salinfo sash scpm screen scsi sharutils siga smartmontools smpppd sqlite star strace sudo suseRegister suspend syslinux tcpdump tcsh telnet terminfo timezone udev unzip usbutils utempter vlan wireless-tools wol wvdial wvstreams xfsprogs xinetd xntp yast2-backup yast2-boot-server yast2-bootfloppy yast2-cd-creator yast2-heartbeat yast2-http-server yast2-inetd yast2-irda yast2-iscsi-client yast2-iscsi-server yast2-kerberos-client yast2-mail yast2-power-management yast2-powertweak yast2-profile-manager yast2-repair yast2-restore yast2-slp yast2-slp-server yast2-vm yp-tools ypbind zip zisofs-tools zmd zsh -- Andreas Jaeger, aj@suse.de, http://www.suse.de/~aj/ SUSE Linux Products GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F FED1 389A 563C C272 A126