On 29 May 2010 23:20, Nigel Verity <nigelver...@hotmail.com> wrote: > the user. There is no reason, of course, why the installation procedure > should not present a list of recommended applications, from which the user > can make a selection.
There are plenty of reasons, you just can't think of them :) > It would enable the distro developers to concentrate > on things like reliability and boot-time performance, rather than trying to > squeeze the most applications possible into a 700MB ISO. They don't actually spend a significant amount of time 'squeezing' so that's not valid argument. The developers do spend time on reliability and boot-time performance, and having met them and seen them doing that work they're passionate about it too. Your suggestion would make things worse, not better. The developers would have to spread themselves even thinner over all the _possible_ apps that someone might choose during install. Right now most focus is spent on apps which are in the default install. There isn't the manpower to have developers work on every single application to bring them all up to speed just in case someone installs one of them. > This way anybody > wanting a really light system can have one by default, but those users who > want a large portfolio of applications can very easily get it. I put it to you that an Ubuntu install doesn't come with a 'large portfolio of applications' installed. One mail client, one browser, one note taking app and so on. We have software centre to enable users to add more software, or change the defaults. It's not productive to present a brand new user with a big list of apps and as them to make decisions about software they have no clue about. > Surely, > that's precisely the sort of choice that Linux is supposed to be about. > It may be for some Linux distributions, but Ubuntu has always been about the system being supplied with core selected applications. Those applications are carefully chosen after consideration. If you dont like the default its trivial to change most of them. Of course ultimately if Ubuntu doesn't do what you want and if changing default apps isn't sufficient then you can always exercise ultimate choice and select a different distro, or roll your own. Cheers, Al. -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
