Andreas Barth wrote: > * Neil Williams (codeh...@debian.org) [111015 22:23]: > > The problem with "Standard" is that it is currently (and heavily) biased > > towards multi-user servers and most of the replies in this thread which > > decry the absence of an MTA would appear to come from those principally > > concerned with servers. It just doesn't fit with desktop users or > > embedded users. > > "Standard" is just another word for "what someone expect so it's > considered as normal unix", which *is* a multi-user server. > > Perhaps the task isn't named perfect, but that's just what standard > is.
The name doesn't matter. What does matter: d-i installs standard by default, unless you explicitly unselect it, and few users would think it a good idea to deselect standard unless they'd already had experiences like I had, namely "this contains several things I don't want, I'd rather install what I want then remove what I don't". And that only works well for me because I've gone to the trouble of creating a set of metapackages for myself which install exactly what I want; otherwise, I'd probably just live with installing standard and combing aptitude afterward for the half-dozen things I want to purge every time. I think most packages in standard make perfect sense, not just for multi-user UNIX servers but for any non-minimal Linux system. Perfect examples include: less (scrolling back in manpages is nice), bash-completion (make the shell much more friendly), openssh-client, reportbug, pciutils (lspci), file, locales. These are tools burned into people's finger memory, or which otherwise help people greatly even when setting up a more complete system, or which people often use for troubleshooting. A Debian system without a decent amount of standard installed proves rather painful to use. Nonetheless, if you want to install a truly minimal system and choose everything else yourself, you need not install any of them. So, I think having a standard set of packages installed by default but deselectable in the installer makes sense. On the other hand, tasksel already has a task named "Mail Server", and that seems like the right place to put an MTA, rather than standard. - Josh Triplett -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20111015210530.GA25566@leaf
