On Tue, 2006-06-06 at 14:05 +0100, Mike Cohler wrote: > I see that there is a long thread in fedora-devel about whether to > push KDE out into extras. There are a lot of people out there (Linus T > for one !) who feel that KDE should be part of the OS. I would hate > to see KDE pushed out of the core. >From a pedandtic point of view, a graphical user interface is not part of the operating system, it's additional. It's not an essential part of the computer to use it, and I see the point of view that the "core" ought to be the bare essentials for building a computer system that does at least something. Of course, that could lead to a "core" download which is little more than a few hundred megs that gave you a PC that sat there and did nothing more than blink a cursor at you until you install more software. But some people might like that idea. Core plus this, or core plus that, you'd always get to start with the minimum of what you want (webserver, electric typewriter replacement, etc.). Not the shovel every thing on approach (last time I tried a "minimum" installation, I got all sorts of things that weren't needed by me, and weren't probably needed by anything else). The essentialness of such shovel-it-on mentality is disproved by the various tiny Linux distros which manage to make working systems without any of that. Then there's the point of view that the "core" download ought to be the bare minimum for a PC that could be used for some common basic tasks. And should include an X server, a windowing system, and some applications. But I really feal that's *more* than "core". Personally, I wouldn't mind it if disc 1 was really "core", was small, and didn't *need* any other disc to make a working system. Then you could opt to download more-than-core disc sets, and source disc sets, all independently. You could take the idea further, against the Linux attitude of shove everything in the kernel and make it huge (sound card drivers, video card drivers, etc.). We don't shovel in the "ls" and other commands that *everyone* has into the kernel. Why not keep out the other things that really are peripherals? ... 'cor blimey ... -- (Currently running FC4, occasionally trying FC5.) Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored. I read messages from the public lists.
