Re: man missing ?
In a message dated 1/26/99 7:34:37 PM Central Standard Time,
paul@experimental.braille.uwo.ca writes:
> Well think about this? do you need to install all of the pakcages under
> windows3.x or windows9x to get it to work. games solitaire and
> mindsweeper. you don't need man-db to get linux running. that is the issue
> not the convience of the "newbie" to make it easier to install. if you
> want that try windows operating system. windows comes on a cd to install
> the complete windows operating system you need roughly 150-200 megs of
> hardrive space. Is this what you want. the next thing people will want who
> are new to linux will be emacs.
> As I stated in the this thread man-db is not necessary to get linux up and
> running it is there for convience.
>
I'm beginning to think I'm talking to a brick wall on this, but I do have a
few more comments...
* I'm not saying we should go the Winblows route and install ALL of Linux's
packages at initialization time. And, just for the record, you can choose to
NOT install the games, and other Winblows "packages" as well (including it's
help facility), as needed by the installation. Basic, minimal installations
do not take 150-200M, in fact, my current heavy installation doesn't even take
up that much space.
* I think it's a rather large leap from saying help manuals would be
beneficial to saying new installations should include emacs.
* I recognize that man isn't required for Debian installation.
* I, and I am positive I'm not alone, would be willing to download an extra
(optional) disk at install time so I could get a basic man set, with the full
package being available as it is now - just so I wouldn't be completely in the
dark once the install program completed.
Frankly, I don't see why there is such strong resistance to discussing this.
I understand it's policy to include only required packages on the boot disks;
fine, however policies should be flexible or at least allow for consideration
on modifications. It would make things ALOT easier for us new folk to have
something to reference early on - although I'm getting the feeling from
responses to my posts on this issue that some of us aren't really interested
in making Debian a bit more newbie friendly, and that's a shame.
Jay
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