Debian, and its shortcomings

[bob at sinister.com (Bob Keyes)]

On Tue, 4 Nov 2003, John Chambers wrote:

> Bob Keyes <bob at sinister.com> writes:
>
> > As I am installing debian 3.0 right now, I decided to double-check the
> > statements I made earlier about its extraneous packages. With the tasks of
> > conventional unix server and C/C++ , it does indeed install emacs20 and
> > emacs-common, along with ispell, libfreetype6, libglib, libgtk, libpng,
> > libxaw, pdksh, lpr, python, wenglish, xfree86, xlibsm abd zsh -- all
> > packages that are probably quite useful but certainly not appropriate for
> > the base install of a convential unix server.
>
> Well, I'd expect a server machine  to  include  all  the  usual  text
> editors,  because you need them to handle config files and log

I disagree. An editor is usually someone makes a choice about using and
sticks with it; there's little need to have all of them on a server
maintained by one person. VI should probably be the default, though at
times I like Nano.

> s.  And
> it would be handy to have as many shells  and  languages  like  perl,
> python,  tcl,  etc.,  because  you  need things like that to properly
> manage a server.

I don't know that Python is neccessary. Perl didn't used to be but it
seems to be these days. TCL...well some people might say its neccessary

  Things like  C/C++  and  their  libraries,  or  the
> printer  packages  should  probably  be  kept separate so they can be
> installed only when needed.  (Though I always feel somewhat  crippled
> on a machine without a C compiler.  ;-)

Yes as do I. But when you're trying to make a simple, small system such
development tools are not neccessary. However they shoudl only be an
apt-get away.