fc5 goals

[Bernardo Innocenti]

Nicolas Mailhot wrote:

> So my goals would be to :
> 1. make a kick-ass network boot iso

I've been installing clients over NFS quite happily for years.

Usually, I boot from the DVD (but could be CD1) and then select
NFS installation.

I wish I could use pxeboot, but the number of motherboards
capable of network boot is still not good enough.


> 2. reduce package interdependencies and make network install smarter so
> this iso can pull *small* sets of packages from the *large* FC pool.

+1.

This is something that requires some help from upstream developers
(split programs into modules, use plugins, dlopen rarely used
libraries, etc.).

Something that *could* be done now is extending RPM to add the concept
of soft-requirements.  Something along the lines of Debian's "Suggests"
tag.

For example, ssh could suggest kerberos instead of just requiring it.



> In the last releases anaconda accrued a deplorable tendency to install
> everything available all in the name of simplifying
> installation/anaconda coding and reducing the number of possible RHEL
> support scenarii.

I agree on the basic philosophy, but I had irritating experiences with
distros that try to be minimalist and forget to install an ftp client
or development packages.

You end up installing RPMs one by one for weeks before you can
start being productive.  Disk space is cheap and removing unwanted
packages later is easy enough.

Fedora is still a lightweight distribution with respect to SuSE
(~3GB for the default installation) or even Debian and Mandriva.

For special systems where I'm very space constrained, such as
embedded systems, one would not consider a desktop distribution
such as Fedora because you'd have to rebuild packages to remove
big dependencies such as selinux, audit, kerberos and openssl.

Let's not try to shift Fedora to this goal.  Extreme scalability
is an area where distributions focused on binary packages will
never be able to compete with systems like Gentoo, LFS or uClinux.

-- 
  // Bernardo Innocenti - Develer S.r.l., R&D dept.
\X/  http://www.develer.com/