[linux-elitists] Gentoo, linux users too can be racers

[James Sparenberg]

On Monday 29 October 2007 17:46:42 Jeff Waugh wrote:
> <quote who="Peter Lowe">
>
> > Thank you! You have just expressed something that I've always found
> > utterly annoying but never thought too hard about (the overall experience
> > being something I prefer to forget), so have never really been able to
> > put my finger on. I FUCKING HATE IT when I try and install something
> > like, I dunno, Samba, and end up with CUPS, X, and KDE - they're not
> > fuckin *dependencies*! They're just commonly used with the associated
> > app! Arg.
>
> Wow, which silly distro does that?
>
> - Jeff

Jeff,


   Neither my example of a word processor nor Peter talking about his chain is 
meant to be a literal.  This is a parable like instance known as an analogy.  
A good example from PCLinuxOS (I'm workng with it at the moment.) is that 
Kmail requires 5 different PIM packages that use Kmail's libs.  They don't 
provide libs.  They are in fact a part of the full KDE PIM suite.  Oh and 
Ubuntu requires CUPS if you install Samba.  RH requires that you install X 
(even if during the install you tell it not to install X or any of the X 
config tools.)  No matter how hard you try in RH a minimal install is around 
800mb (pre hacking)  Very few distro's provide a small base to start from.  
In the effort to provide maximum customer service they have started creating 
problems with forced installation.  

James