[Mageia-dev] About dm

[Wolfgang Bornath]

2012/2/18 Olav Vitters <olav at vitters.nl>:
> On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 03:50:45PM +0100, Wolfgang Bornath wrote:
>> The Gnome base is more than gnome-shell but less than Gnome in total.
>> Example: Gnome config editor belongs to the basic Gnome, eog is a
>> Gnome application. Same with KDE: kdm and the setup configuration are
>> related to the environment, kmail is a KDE application.
>
> GNOME is not the same as KDE.
>
> Eye of GNOME is part of GNOME Core (things which should be installed
> together):
>  http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/core/3.3/3.3.5/sources/
> As it is part of Core, anything in GNOME is ok to assume that it is
> installed.
>
>
> There is a separate "apps" section listed at:
>  http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/apps/3.3/3.3.5/sources/
> These consist of applications which closely follow GNOME. Meaning:
> they're QA tested, etc.
>
>
> Aside from the "apps" section, there are loads of other modules.
> Everything in total is at:
>  http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/
> You see e.g. xchat-gnome. Something in /sources/, but not in "Core", nor
> in "Apps". It doesn't follow the GNOME release schedule, translation
> freezes, etc.
>
>
> Regarding eog:
> Anything wanting to call eog within GNOME should of course use
> freedesktop.org specifications. So if you've installed something other
> than eog, it should still work. Still, from upstream POV it is a
> distribution bug if there wasn't any image viewer installed.
>
> In practice, not installing everything by default should be more or less
> ok. But that's not how things are released or assumed to be. It it just
> by using freedesktop.org specifications that things still work.
>
> But things still working doesn't mean that eog is not assumed to be
> installed.
>
> Anyway, I'm ok with discussing after Mageia 2 as suggested in another
> email. I have no idea if "Core" + dependencies would fit on a cd anyway
> (don't believe it would) + I can mention on
> http://www.gnome.org/getting-gnome/ that Mageia 2 users should install
> "task-gnome" to get the full experience.

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 :
 - 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).

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

-- 
wobo