Tim wrote:
Gordon Messmer:
What's htdig got to do with pie charts?
Tim:
Nothing, it was part of another conversation: A minimal, headless,
X-less, server installation installing graphical library files.
Gordon Messmer:
Oh. Sorry, I missed some connection. To address that, then:
# rpm -q --whatrequires `rpm -q --provides libpng` | grep -v '^no '
cups-libs-1.1.22-0.rc1.9.11
# rpm -q --whatrequires `rpm -q --provides cups-libs` | grep -v '^no '
cups-1.1.22-0.rc1.9.11
# rpm -q --whatrequires `rpm -q --provides cups` | grep -v '^no '
redhat-lsb-3.0-8.EL
So, there you go. "libpng" is needed by cups. "cups" is needed for
LSB conformance. That's why you have graphics libraries on a headless
server.
But CUPS isn't *needed* on a PC. Sure, you might want it if you're
printing. But there's going to be a plethora of boxes that don't need
to print. A headless HTTP server, or mail server, or new server, etc.,
just being some of them. They won't need to print, or be printed to.
CUPS isn't necessary to print, either. It is a convenient solution,
but others exist.
Requiring CUPS is a bogus requirement. Maybe CUPS should be a
requirement if you're including printing support, but it shouldn't be,
otherwise.
Possibly. Other print solutions exist.
CUPS, being just one example of this mentality. We could "require"
BIND, because Linux does need to resolve hostnames, but we don't (don't
require *it* as the solution).
Exactly. OTOH, trying to make everything work with every possible print
driver is not necessarily a good goal.
Some people, and I don't mean you, but those putting together what they
think is a minimal install list, have a strange idea about what minimal
and required actually mean.
I suppose a "minimal required system" would be the kernel, the init
RAM disc, and tmpfs for /tmp. Not a very usable system. But when
you go beyond this, then you get into "minimal required to do <x>"
where <x> is some desired function. Everyone seems to have a different
set of <x> to put into there. I don't know of any objective means
to ascertain what <x> must contain.
But disregarding minimalism, there's still plenty of situations where a
rather extensive installation won't need various things considered to be
"required", but actually aren't. And that bloats out installations to
the point that we needlessly have to get multi-gigabyte hard drives to
do moderately basic installations.
I was amazed when I installed FC2. I didn't think I selected
all that much to install. It was about 7 Gig.
All systems seem enormously bloated to me these days. But I
started with computers when 4K of RAM was considered a lot.
Mike
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