Potato install - package suggestions?

[Alan DuBoff]

Rick Moen wrote:

> I certainly concur.  Starting with nothing more than the Debian Base
> System is instructive, but a slight pain in the neck, as it's a bit
> _too_ sparse until augmented.  Let's just say that you end up poring
> through /var/state/apt/lists, making sure you didn't miss anything
> crucial.

Yes, it is possible to get such a lean system with the install that everything
will not work, as an example...man pages if dependant packages are not
installed (i.e., groff). However, with apt-get, as long as the network is
hooked up you can get any package after.

Red Hat's RPM files make this a PITA, since even if you do get a package to
install, it will tell you that you don't have lib so-and-so, where at least
apt-get knows the dependant packages rather than just telling you that a
library is not installed. With RPM you are still faced to figure out what
package the file is in...

On the newer versions of Red Hat at least they turn off the localhost for X,
the way it used to be setup was that you could su to another user and run X
apps. That is very bad as it opens a giant security hole as X doesn't have to
run on the same machine. They have changed that...Debian has always handled
this properly by requiring root to add the localhost for the shell that would
be running an X app as another user.

-- 

Alan DuBoff
Software Orchestration, Inc.