On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 2:22 AM, Mike McGrath <mmcgrath@redhat.com> wrote:
On Sun, 28 Feb 2010, Jeremy Katz wrote:

> On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 2:21 AM, Peter Robinson <pbrobinson@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I agree with most of the above but I don't really see that this, AOS or a
> > minimal (minimum?) install should be any different, and even the Amazon
> > image should only add EC2 stuff on top of that so should be able to include
> > this .ks and add a few pacakges and what ever scripting is needed for the
> > ec2 images.
>
> The problem with the whole AOS/jeos/minimal OS idea is that it's a
> race to the bottom.  There's this whole sub-culture of "let's see just
> how tiny we can make it because *clearly* it's easier to add things
> than remove them" when the end result of that is just a kernel and a
> shell.
>
> I don't know, I just don't find that interesting or useful[1].  I'd
> rather actually have utilities and the things I'd expect to find on a
> Fedora system and not have to play games downloading packages for ages
> and paying the bandwidth charges to do so as well.
>

I'm kind of with you on that.  I don't think the smallest / tiniest
footprint is as important as a known starting point.  The funny thing is
that anything beyond that is more subjective.  The example I'd give is
what editor to include, vim/emacs or joe.

Definately pico ..... just joking!

I agree with that you don't want it too small. It needs to be usable. But I also don't see the point in installing say a 'http' service where it could easily be used as a db node or whatever. All the other base utils for IP, networking, editing, package mangement, NAS drives etc should be there but someone wanting to use it as a DB server shouldn't have to remove something. Once that bit is worked out the only difference between the base 'virtual server' image and say that of a EC2 image should be the tools that EC2 need.

Peter