[Novalug] My Own Private Idahell

[James Ewing Cottrell 3rd]

Bryan J Smith wrote:
> On Tue, 2009-10-13 at 03:59 -0400, James Ewing Cottrell 3rd wrote:
>> no, I am saying that 1/3 of the distro *by size* is useless to a person 
>> who speaks only english.
> 
> So we're doing yet another "context switch"?

I never switched context. My original statement was that the CentOS 
distribution was 1/3 useless.

What I left unspecified was what "distribution" meant -- the answer 
being "the DVD iso", admittedly a subset of the distro, but historically 
  has been true. And also what "useless" meant, which was 
"unintelligible or unneeded to an English only speaker".

> First it was striping it from thhe Firefox package, then other packages,
> and all the related context that you couldn't do it with the package
> manager.

That was merely the stimulus. I didn't write that complaint, but I 
condemn the model that includes Everything rather than only What Is Needed.

It's not RPM's fault that the Firefox people included all those langauge 
packs, nor can it do anything about it.

Before I jumped on how yucky other languages were, my point was that 
simply removing the gunk would just get RPM to complain, and updates 
would pull it back in too.

> But now we're actually talking about things that _are_ stripped out?
> And actually _easy_ to remove?
> 
> I guess I shouldn't even bother entering this threads because the
> context will change in its attempt to "find an argument"?

I suppose someone, probably myself, should have changed the subject long 
ago, but I didn't expect this to go on for quite so long.

>> yes, when we don't have a better method, we install from CDs.
> 
> Says who?  I cannot remember the last time I installed from media.
> Whether it's a direct connect of my notebook to the system for DHCP/TFTP
> or use of the 6-10MB boot.iso or boot.img images for optical or flash,
> respectively to get stage one of Anaconda, I cannot remember the last
> time I've ever used media (not even DVD).

You obviously HAD a better method, and you used it. But my "when" clause 
  limited my arguments to the case where you don't, so your comments, 
while true, don't apply. There Is No Spoon, er, Network.

And I tend to do the same thing with distributions which are like RH, 
such as SUSE, and use grub to start anaconda via the vmlinuz and 
initrd.img from the images directory. But how many people on this list 
(and in the real world) do you think know how to do that? Half, at best.

>> nice when all you have is bare metal and no (or limited) network.
> 
> Again, see my previous statements.  There is always rolling your own,
> using the single disc "Server" option in CentOS, etc... (I mention
> CentOS because I believe that has been your example, unless that context
> will change too?).

Rolling your own WHAT? The clause "when there is no network" means you 
have to get the bits to your machine via a physical medium ... CD, DVD, 
or an external Disk.

No, CentOS is fine. But while the No Physical Media option works for RH 
and SUSE, I seem to recall that at SOME point, the Debian based 
installer wants the Real CD/DVD at some point. But I haven't tried in 
awhile.

>> or when you install a distro for the first time.
> 
> So we _are_ back to you looking for an US-only distro for everyone.  ;)

Well, that would be my Personal Preference, but I'm not holding my 
breath. However, remember what that statement is referring to, which is 
"when we don't have a better method, we install from CDs".

Now you and I (to a lesser agree perhaps) are Veterans at many of the 
various installation methods, but you might be helpless when it came to 
other distros. What is the analog of a kickstart file in Suse, Debian, 
Ubuntu, Mint, Slackware, or Gentoo? What do the repo layouts look like?

Even if you know all those, someone is bound to make up another one with 
yet another set of conventions.

And assuming you cared to actually install in, what are you (or most 
people) likely to do? Download the CD(s)/DVD(s) and install the The 
Obvious Way, at least the first time before you figure out how to do the 
more sophisticated installs.

>> it's not just the locale files. anything that a non-english speaker 
>> wouldn't need. for brevity, i am including regexps which are purposely 
>> too wide, which will catch english packages or the Latin-1 fonts.
> 
> Sigh.  Let me flip this ...
> 
> UTF-8 is designed for ASCII compatibility more than performance of
> multiple character sets.  It's the most eccentric American encoding that
> you can find in computing that still allows extensions for other
> rendering.

Yes It Is. Almost Perfect.

>> the list includes:
>> [CDGV]*			documentation (except [CDGV]*-en-*)
>> anthy-*
>> aspell-??-*		except aspell-en-*
>> fonts-*			all?
>> kde-i18n-*
>> m17n-*
>> man-pages-??-*
>> openoffice.org-langpack-*
>> scim-*
>> xorg-x11-fonts-*	most, but not all
>> and a few onesies:
>> bitmap-fonts-cjk
>> emacs-leim
>> intltool
>> kasumi
>> libchewing-*
>> nkf
>> perl-NKF
>> specspo
>> there may be others; i just made a quick survey
> 
> All nicely "separated out."  Keep them off of your DVD and out of your
> network tree for installations and you have the "lean" distro you
> want.  ;)

Separated out? They are all bundled up into an ISO image.

I have been meaning to re-roll my own distro, altho if you think about 
it, not really necessary unless you're trying to fit it on a flash drive 
4G or less.

Still, perhaps the "harddrive" should work with an exploded repo, like 
the network versions do.

JIM