[CentOS] installing Desktop faster

FreeBSD base system is installed similarly to what you suggest: just by
unpacking a few tgz files containing it. This, however, only comprises
base system; the rest necessary for workstation (such as Xwindow system,
office suites, etc) are to be added separately.

However, once the system is installed it would be a nightmare to update
"one single enormously large" package (as someone already mentioned).

Luckily, there is nice equivalent of what you would like standard Desktop
installation would be, or anything else which you can tweak to your needs
once and then install that tweaked system with one go on as many boxes as
you wish. It is called "kickstart". Even better: RedHat (and CentOS) have
more or less preconfigured set of stuff to install (minimal, Desktop,
server, Development workstation,...) you can just use one of them in
graphic installer and voila, you will have it installed with minimal brain
effort.

Just my 2c

Valeri

On Sat, September 6, 2014 11:46 am, Gergely Buday wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> I installed centos 7 -- it works great.
>
> What made me think is that installation took 1300 packages for a Desktop
> with some add-ons.
>
> As usual, there might be a solution for this already but I do not know it.
> Would it be possible to create one big package for a standard Desktop?
> Then
> an installation would not take ages.
>
> - Gergely
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> CentOS at centos.org
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>


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Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: 773-702-4247
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