On Sat, 08 Dec 2007 10:47:58 -0500, David Boles wrote: > The default Fedora install gives you Fedora (Everything) and Fedora > Updates enabled. All others default to disabled. > > In order to use the other repos, any of them, *you* had to *enable* > them. Which can be done by root in a text editor or one of several GUIs > provided by Fedora. As I have explained, I had completed a fresh install, run yum update, and begun running a finer-toothed comb than either anaconda or yum, namely pirut.My point was that one of the defaults in pirut is new, and effectively pushes itself on the unwary. > So please explain to me how your enabling the defaulted disabled repos > while not understanding what you were doing, your PEBCAK if you will, is > Fedora's fault? IMMV but I make the effort to know what I am doing > *before* I do it. It's safer that way. ;-) Applying ugly acronyms is beneath you, and does no one any good -- especially ones that amount to calling names. You surely are not saying, are you, that the "Customize now" option in anaconda is put there to be a stumbling block nor a pitfall? Nor that customizing at all is to be discouraged?? I have almost always used it, and found it more convenient than the "Customize later" choice. There are quite a lot of things that no user on any machine of mine will ever invoke -- some I don't use, and some are reputed to be security risks, even (if not especially) on active linux discussion lists. (I try to follow several besides this one.) The new pirut default *forces* me to enable *something* -- until I get rid of that default to medium, pirut will fail me. Putting the DVD back in would be counterproductive and silly. But pirut calls for it! To eliminate that, I get a new and uncommented list of choices. Fwiw, I can and do make large efforts at caution, even while appreciating the need to tinker with any such OS as Fedora; among those is not just disabling but uninstalling any server I can -- such as all the chat ones. I never enable nor download even "testing" anything; actually enabling the development repo must have been a brain fart. I don't dispute that; I suggest that it carry a caveat. (There are things I do enable, notably livna -- I would not have wanted a machine in my house without Pine, before Alpine came out.) One reason it happened is that I do quite often yum telling me I need <xyz>-devel for something that has long proved perfectly safe for me to run. I said so in my earlier post. You certainly don't *have* to allow for users who can't write code; some otherwise excellent developers plainly despise us. But those who do so allow might wish to erect some sort of caution sign in this new place; they have in others, and many of us count that a virtue. It is such a virtue, in fact, that after having done the fresh install over, I have just run pirut (avoiding unfamiliar repos like the plague!) on three machines at once, twice -- browse choice by browse chioce (hitting Apply at least once in each), and then alphabetically through the list. That helped me spot things I could remove, since two machines had been running fine without them; and I'm sure I'm safer because of it. -- Beartooth Staffwright, PhD, Neo-Redneck Linux Convert Remember I know precious little of what I am talking about.
