On 03/07/2016 08:24 PM, Matthew Miller wrote:
On Mon, Mar 07, 2016 at 04:42:46PM -0800, Adam Williamson wrote:
> For now my PR would make the DVD list only Fedora Server as an
> available environment. However, it's not clear whether or not we should
> include Minimal.
Here's my view as an interested bystander.....
I think that unless we get to the point where there are Fedora Server
Roles for a _lot_ of different use cases, many people are going to be
using Fedora Server in the old way, of "Fedora server" — a minimal
install plus whatever packages to build a system for a specific use. Is
there a way _other_ than providing Minimal as an environment to make
this simple for people?
Ideally, we'd have roles to cover just about _anything_ anyone wanted,
and so the process would be start with Fedora Server _instead_ of
Minimal, and then install your role, instead of packages, but maybe
that's too far out.
Well, one thing we've been working towards up to now is that Fedora Server is
still pretty darn small, but it's not *quite* minimal. (We did shrink it pretty
substantially from F23 as well, in part due to splitting up Cockpit into
mandatory and optional components).
Really, the difference we're going for is that Fedora Server should be as
minimal as you can get while still having certain guaranteed functionality.
Minimal has never really been a useful target because historically people have
had a very different definition of minimal.
For example: does minimal include openssh? For Fedora Workstation, many people
would argue that it would not. But on a Server? Absolutely required.
The reason people claim to want "minimal" is because realistically they are
trying to build-their-own-distro. That's an understandable use-case, but is it
necessary to have that built into the Fedora Server install DVD? My gut says
"no".
There's certainly still a place for it in the network install (which really is
more likely to be used by the set of people doing a minimal-plus-their-stuff
install, since the likelihood that all the other packages they want are also on
the DVD is slim.
I also don't like the user experience confusion that this would generate: this
is branded media and being able to install something that isn't actually Fedora
Server from this media leads to brand dilution. If we could find a way to make
it more clear that this installing Minimal doesn't result in a Fedora Server
Edition install, I could be swayed on this point. The current behavior is that
the Grub boot menu will list "Twenty Four" instead of "Server
Edition", but
that's easily missed, particularly on a headless install.