On Thu, Jan 15, 2015 at 10:49:42AM -0600, Dustin Kirkland wrote: > On Thu, Jan 15, 2015 at 9:12 AM, Adam Conrad <adcon...@ubuntu.com> wrote: > > > I can see several ways "power users" can shoot themselves in the foot > > with autoremove, but no way that "normal people" can, and I'm not sure > > catering to people who think they're clever doing unclever things is > > the right default. > > Autoremoving kernels, when you have lots of them, and as long as you > keep your current one (and one other known good one), should be very > safe, for almost any user.
Right, kernel autoremoval is always safe. Where people can shoot themselves in the foot (assuming automatic autoremove) is the following sort of scenario: 1) Corporate IT dept distributes end-user bundle of apps by way of a private repo consisting of all apps, and a company-meta package that depends on them. 2) The company-meta package isn't in the "metapackages" section (which apt treats specially). 3) User (with root, so already a small subset) removes "company-meta" 4) On the next autoremove, all the company apps are removed. This scenario is a non-issue for the Ubuntu archive, we treat our meta packages correctly, and install things in a way that removing the meta should do no harm. Ultimately, I think optimising for the fear of autoremove causing harm is the wrong thing at this point, and we're better off doing the cruft removal. This isn't just about kernels (though, they're the huge thing people notice), but also old libraries you no longer need, etc. ... Adam -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
