Bugzilla – Bug 143078
Seperate components for laptop in extra package selections
Last modified: 2006-01-13 17:01:59 UTC
Currently there a several apps which are for notebook only (e.g. pcmcia support or special kde control center modules), but are installed even on a regular machine. What about moving all "generic" notebook apps (and services) to the "laptop" package selection in YaST, and creating special selections for machine specific modules (ege a "Sony Vaio Notebook" selection with the KDE control module for that machine). Then when the installer queries for a system type it could install only that modules which are needed, e.g. none for a desktop computer and for notebooks the gerneric selection and the system specific selection if needed. Because it is just a package selection the user could install notebook supprt on a desktop if he wants, too (even if it´s useless).
We tried to do that several times on and off. And every single time some people complained because we are either installing too many packages for their taste or not many enough. What we have now is a compromise of that. Besides, today's hard disks come in sizes of 160 GB or more. Most users don't want to spend a lot of time hunting down packages they might need in addition to their carefully hand-crafted individual package selection - in particular not when traveling around the country with a laptop and then finding out the one package they'd need right now is on the SuSE DVD that is sitting peacefully on a shelf back home... You have full control of the package selection. If you feel like spending the time to select your personal absolute minimum installation set, feel free to do that. But your needs will be a lot different from most other users' needs. Making the large majority of users happy is bound to be a compromise, and this is what we have.
Thanks for your detailed explanation. I wasn´t thinking about saving disk space here. What I think is that it looks very unprofessional if I install SuSE on a desktop computer and I have KPowersave (though this item could be argued about) and most of all KDE control center modules installed for e.g. Sony Vaio notebooks. IMHO you should have all those options and modules which fit your particular system. What I meant was only about selections for certain systems/configurations which are only installed on the appropriate systems, what do you think about the autodetection of certain package selections if e.g. installing on a notebook? I mean no one needs control modules for a system which he doesn´t habe.
Right, kpowersave _can_ be argued about. You can use suspend and resume even on many desktop PCs (unless the BIOS is very broken). You may have PCMCIA slots in your desktop machine (remember Aldi PCs?) or other hardware that may be typical to laptops, but sometimes even present on desktop PCs. As a matter of fact, there is not one single piece of hardware I could think of that is not being used at all in (at least some) desktop machines. And that's only the PC architecture. Just think of all the other architectures we support (x86_64, Power-PC, i.e. Apple PPCs and a number of IBM machines, the IBM S/390 architecture family, IA-64 a.k.a. Itanium)... There will always be some menu entries or control center items some users don't ever use - because they don't have the respective hardware or because they simply don't bother or because they don't even know that they could use them. Think of getting rid of KWinTV? And what of USB TV hardware? OTOH why would I need printer configuration stuff when I don't even own a printer? No modem detected - get rid of the modem config stuff - or rather keep it, because it might simply be turned off or PCMCIA-pluggable or USB? I could carry on like that for every single item in all our control centers... ;-) And as for "Sony Vaio", do you mean the Sony Vaio XY from before Dec 15th, 2004 or after that? ;-) You know, not even the same marketing name of hardware has the same stuff built in for any reliable period of time... ;-) No way to support any of that any more specific than we do right now. This is a neverending game - and a losing game. ;-)