fc5: install everything?

[Michael A. Peters]

On Tue, 2006-05-09 at 20:19 -0500, Jeff Vian wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-05-09 at 08:21 -0500, Roger Heflin wrote:
> > Jeff Vian wrote:
> > > On Mon, 2006-05-08 at 15:20 -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
> > >> On Mon, 2006-05-08 at 15:10, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> > >>>> It's not a bug, it is a design decision.
> > >>>>
> > >>>>> This is a user list...whining here is merely pissing in the wind.
> > >>>> That's only true if the designers don't care enough about users
> > >>>> to pay attention to the whining.
> > >>> Its not possible or efficient for developers and designers to read all
> > >>> the mails in the fedora-list to gather feedback. 
> > >> OK, but does that differ greatly from what I said?  A lot of
> > >> decisions seem to be made with no thought about the real-world
> > >> effects.  For example if someone wanted to build PCs with
> > >> fedora pre-installed, what might the user expect to find on
> > >> it?
> > >>
> > > Whatever the "builder" chose to install. Doh!
> > > 
> > 
> > Which the safest choice is "install everything" since the builder
> > does not know exactly how the customer is going to use the machine.
> > 
> Actually the better choice would be to install what *most* will use, and
> provide media with the rest so they can tailor the install to fit their
> needs.

The builder should pick a user interface, and stick with it - IE gnome
or KDE, but not both. The builder should pick a set of applications that
they are willing to support when the customer calls.

> 
> No Windows machine comes with ANY apps installed except those the
> builder chose to provide and that usually is something like microsoft
> works and some media apps.  The flexibility and availability of apps for
> Linux is overpowering even for the expert user to keep up with.  A
> newbie would be totally overwhelmed and would have no clue as to the
> number of apps installed if he was given 'everything'.

Exactly. A newbie does not need every app available.
My personal recommendation is a basic GNOME desktop with maybe a few
things from Extras added, and (when they are ready) the GStreamer
multimedia plugins from fluendo.