[Mageia-dev] About dm

[Olav Vitters]

On Sat, Feb 18, 2012 at 02:15:40PM +0100, Wolfgang Bornath wrote:
> I see your point and understand upstream POV of Gnome. The other POV
> is the user's POV who wants a "minimal" installation with Gnome as the
> basis but with a few applications only. IMHO this is what a
> "task-foo-minimal" is made for. So after this task-foo-minimal I have
> to install only :

I agree that some want something minimal and that it should be possible.

What I dislike is not that people want something minimal, but that
the minimal one is installed by default instead of task-gnome. I can
understand people wanting a more minimal installation and that should be
possible. But at the moment, the minimal installation is the default and
by default it is diverted from upstream. Or at least that is what
happened when I installed Cauldron via internet + done by the Mageia
installer. I still hope for some hidden magic to have task-gnome on the
DVD.

>  - web browser (for mail, www, downloads),
>  - mc (filemanager),
>  - vim (editor),
>  - vlc (music, video),
>  - mcc (including the draktools). Done.
> 
> (just an example of what I would do for my netbook, others may want
> another set of applications).

I'm not saying it should be impossible, my point is that that by
default, you should install the whole thing, unless knowingly selecting
a minimal installation.
My idea behind Mageia is that by default, it just works. I want to be
sure then when handing out a Mageia DVD, I know that no hand-holding is
necessary.

> Going by the upstream POV we don't need a task-gnome-minimal at all,
> you can safely remove it.

That is my point of view. Only have task-gnome. And within task-gnome
use "Suggest:" for those things which could be removed if someone really
wants an minimal installation. At the moment, the "-minimal"
installation is different from upstream, yet that is installed by
default.
IMO, users knowingly choosing a minimal installation should be the ones
which might get error messages like a missing gnome-contacts, etc. Not
people who just install Mageia. I

E.g. you'll get errors if gnome-contacts is not there. But if you really
care about minimal and don't use the functionality, then it should not
be impossible.

I have the feeling that after Mageia 2, there will be unneeded
bugreports due to differences with upstream. IMO, such bugs can and
should be avoided.

-- 
Regards,
Olav