On Tue, May 11, 2010, Tzafrir Cohen wrote about "Re: Common problems with Ubuntu": > Normally I don't need most existing "development" packages anyway.
This is a good point. I do think there needs to be a clear separation between "development" tools and standard compilers: Everybody, not just developers, needs a C compiler on the system, because when you want to install something from source, you usually need a C compiler. Everybody, not just developers, needs a shell. Everybody, not just developers, need, Perl and Python on their system because many packages require it to run. However, most people do not need four variants of Java, three IDEs, two debuggers, or a valgrind in a pear tree. Even for developers, hardly anyone needs or wants all the tools available under the sun, especially when there are so many huge tools that replicate each other's purpose (e.g., Eclipse and Netbeans for Java development). In the old days, the distro makers had to choose: Does package X get included in the distro, and installed for most people, or does it not get included? Nowadays, this is hardly the case - most users are connected to the Internet, and are used to using "yum" or "apt-get" or whatever for quickly getting packages they want but weren't installed by default. Instead of answering a zillion questions during installation (do you want eclipse? do you want netbeans? etc.), it's often easier just to install whatever you want, whenever your want it. -- Nadav Har'El | Thursday, May 13 2010, 29 Iyyar 5770 n...@math.technion.ac.il |----------------------------------------- Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |Tact is the art of making a point without http://nadav.harel.org.il |making an enemy. _______________________________________________ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
