Re: Which Linux distro

[Paul Sladen <gnome-uk sladen org>]

On Sat, 18 Mar 2006, David Lodge wrote:

Hello David,

> I have a common, old wireless card (based on adm8211)

The following are from my current Ubuntu testing setup;  lets see:

  $ dpkg -S adm8211.ko
  linux-image-2.6.15-18-386: /lib/modules/2.6.15-18-386/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/adm8211/adm8211.ko

Looks like it's there, so no need to roll your own!  (It would be bug if you
had to).

> the "put everything in /usr" is the pre-1980 concept.

Indeed :)  It also means that $PATH stays a sane length, that executables
are in the well-known location and you don't have:

  C:\Program Files\Guess the Directory\And then Some\Runme.exe

> (From my NAS box, running FC4) Why does nautilus depend on cd-burner? 

You should probably file a bug against Fedora about this;  On Ubuntu:

  $ apt-cache show nautilus | grep burn
  Recommends: desktop-base (>= 0.2), eject, nautilus-cd-burner (>= 2.6)

cd-burning is a 'Recommendation', but not a forced dependancy.

> I'm never going to use the French and Spanish translation - and if by
> shear fluke I ever learn the languages I can always download them.

Ubuntu is really focused on making as many translations available as
possible.  ...They also take up alot of space on the CD, so the locales
strings are split out at build-time and distributed in language-packs:

  $ dpkg -l | grep language-pack
  language-pack-en             translation updates for language English
  language-pack-en-base        translations for language English
  language-pack-gnome-en       GNOME translation updates for language English
  language-pack-gnome-en-base  GNOME translations for language English

> I'd show you an example, but my VMWare licence has expiried :-(.

The next version of Ubuntu should hopefully be coming with Qemu on the CD so
you can even pop it into Windows and run the LiveCD from within Windows.  
(Admittedly slightly slower than normal!)

> The problem I found was that I'd try and remove software I don't want
> (e.g.  pppd) and I'd have to remove placer packages

Ah, something like this:

  $ sudo apt-get remove ppp
  The following packages will be REMOVED
  ppp pppconfig pppoeconf ubuntu-base ubuntu-desktop ubuntu-standard wvdial
                          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
'Wvdial' and the 'ppp*config' packages are helper utilities with a direct
dependancy---so will obviously be removed as they are rendered useless
without the PPP core utilities.

What you're more likely wondering about is the following:  lets do it!

  $ sudo apt-get remove ubuntu-desktop ubuntu-standard ubuntu-base
  After unpacking 123kB disk space will be freed.
  Removing ubuntu-base ...
  Removing ubuntu-desktop ...
  Removing ubuntu-standard ...

...no harm done there. ;-)  As we can see from the '123kB freed' message,
these are meta-packages---packages that don't actually do anything
themselves but 'Depend:' on other packages.  eg:

  $ apt-cache show ubuntu-base | grep '^[ D]'
  Depends: ubuntu-minimal, ubuntu-standard
  Description: The Ubuntu base system (transitional package)
   This package exists only to cause ubuntu-minimal and ubuntu-standard to be
   installed on upgrades from earlier releases to Ubuntu 5.10.  It is safe to
   remove this package once the upgrade is complete.

(Meta-packages for 'kubuntu-desktop', 'xubuntu-desktop' are just the same).

They are seed-lists and effectively dictate what's 'in' and what's 'out' of
a single-CD, default install of Ubuntu.  With the meta-package installed,
you know you've got everything that makes up the tested subset of Ubuntu
that you see in the screenshots on the net.

That tested subset includes things like 'ppp' modem support for some users
or 'adm8211' driver support for other users.

It would be possible to remove the ppp support from out of the box "because
only a $percentage of users use it" (personally I do use it, because I use
GPRS!) but by the same argument you might aswell remove 'adm8211' support
from out of the box "because only a $tiny_percentage of users use it".

You've just defeated the whole point of Ubuntu;  which is that it should
work out of the box, for a normal "Human Being" user, with the hardware that
they should and if it doesn't, then that's a bug that should be fixed!

Equally, you're free to free to remove the meta-packages and your system
won't suffer.

	-Paul
-- 
Britain is just cold, in a pesky way.  Bristol, GB