Les Mikesell spake the following on 5/2/2007 2:37 PM:
Scott Silva wrote:
The thing I always wanted from an 'everything' install was the expertise of the distribution packager as to whether something would likely be useful to have installed. Someone, somewhere must have known enough about the packages to decide what was worth including in the distribution. I'd take their word for whether it should be on my hard disk or not.
If the distribution packager wanted you to install everything, there would not be any options of what to install. It would always be an "everything" install.
Not true. There was a time when distributions included "everything" as one among several more specialized and limited choices. Now you only get the limited versions.
I have been guilty of an "everything" install in the past. It is much harder to remove things that you are not sure you need than it is to just install something you do need. If you are doing something that requires a new bit of fluff, you just need to "yum install fluff" and now you have it. I think you learn much more by knowing what and why you install something.