[CentOS] 5.0: installing everything

[Les Mikesell]

Jim Perrin 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.
> 
> There seem to be two mindsets when it comes to stuff like this. The
> folks who want everything there in case they might need it down the
> road, and the folks who want only what they need immediately, and if
> something else is required they'll install it later.

The folks who don't want everything probably wouldn't choose the 
'everything' option during the install...

> I believe the latter to be the safest approach, given the ease of
> installing software with yum.   The only reason I could possibly see
> for an everything install would be for a beginning user who has know
> idea what the package names are or what things do.

Nobody knows what the packages are or what they do when installing a new 
system.  I'd rather waste a dollar's worth of disk space and 5 minutes 
time during the install and have everything than the hours it can take 
later when something you need or want to try isn't there and you can't 
even read it's man page.

> They're not providing it because they think you'll need it. They're
> providing it because they think SOMEONE using the distribution might
> need it.

OK - so what if you are installing a multiuser computer and you want to 
provide things because SOMEONE using the computer might need it?  You 
want it to provide services and be a workstation, possibly for 
development, and everything else it can usefully do.

 > For example, you don't need sendmail AND exim AND postfix,
> you only need one of them.

That was never an issue back when an "everything" group was a choice. 
Conflicts could be more of a problem if you have to pick things you 
don't understand yourself, though.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com