Fedora Has Formed A Minimization Team To Work On Shrinking Packaged Software

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Fedora Has Formed A Minimization Team To Work On Shrinking Packaged Software

The newest initiative within the Fedora camp is a "Minimization Team" seeking to reduce the size of packaged applications, run-times, and other software available on Fedora Linux...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Fedora-Minimization-Team

[yoshi314]

i wish those were more of cross-distro initialives, for instance like gcc's LTO mechanism. everybody tinkers with it, everybody benefits if packages receive patches upstream (in case they misbehave with it).

but when it comes to packaging, only given distro benefits from that.

[bash2bash]

I understand that Fedora is a workstation/desktop distro so I expect it will install a bunch of extra packages, but I don't quite understand the logic behind some of the default packages that have nothing to do with a desktop. For example, Fedora installs and enables a daemon for Smartcards, abrt for debugging, sssd and related libs, virtualbox guest additions (on a host, not guest), LVM when using only plain partitions, bluez (when there is no bluetooth adapter), so on and so forth. Eventually, there is tons of garbage.

Here is my list of "dnf remove" packages that I run right after a clean install:

"powerline" "powerline-fonts" "tmux-powerline" "vim-powerline" "vim-enhanced" "pocl" "ibus" "ibus-cangjie" "abrt" "avahi" "bluez" "colord" "cyrus-sasl-gssapi" "*vnc*" "iscsi*" "iscsi-initiator-utils" "sssd*" "sssd" "sssd-ad" "sssd-client" "sssd-common" "sssd-common-pac" "sssd-ipa" "sssd-krb5" "sssd-krb5-common" "sssd-ldap" "sssd-nfs-idmap" "sssd-proxy" "mcelog*" "thunderbird" "transmission" "transmission-gtk" "transmission-common" "pidgin" "*xaw*" "xawtv" "*setroubleshoot*" "setroubleshoot-server" "setroubleshoot-plugins" "*dragora*" "sos" "plymouth" "plymouth-core-libs" "plymouth-graphics-libs" "plymouth-plugin-label" "plymouth-plugin-two-step" "plymouth-scripts" "plymouth-system-theme" "plymouth-theme-charge" "php-fpm" "dnfdragora-updater" "dnfdragora" "xmlrpc-c" "virtualbox-guest-additions" "satyr" "mariadb-gssapi-server" "mariadb-rocksdb-engine" "mariadb-tokudb-engine" "tigervnc-server-minimal" "fprintd" "fprintd-pam" "qemu-guest-agent" "hyperv-daemons" "hyperv-daemons-license" "hypervfcopyd" "hypervkvpd" "hypervvssd" "iodine-client" "isdn4k-utils" "lvm2" "mactel-boot" "ModemManager" "onboard" "spice-vdagent" "teamd" "open-vm-tools" "open-vm-tools-desktop" "realmd" "xen-libs" "xen-licenses" "pcsc-lite" "redshift" "thai-scalable-fonts-common" "thai-scalable-waree-fonts"

finally, some packages are hard to remove and need manual intervention, like geoclue2 (no thanks RedHat, I'd rather not have a spy in my desktop).

a few years ago, I moved to ansible, so now all that is taken care of by my playbook

[Calinou]

bluez (when there is no bluetooth adapter)

This is likely done for people who end up adding a Bluetooth adapter to their PC (like, using an USB adapter). Otherwise, they might wonder why nothing happens when they plug it in

[starshipeleven]

I understand that Fedora is a workstation/desktop distro so I expect it will install a bunch of extra packages, but I don't quite understand the logic behind some of the default packages that have nothing to do with a desktop. For example, Fedora installs and enables a daemon for Smartcards, abrt for debugging, sssd and related libs, virtualbox guest additions (on a host, not guest), LVM when using only plain partitions, bluez (when there is no bluetooth adapter), so on and so forth.

They prefer a distro that works out of the box even later when you connect a smartcard reader (on USB), or you decide/someone asks you to debug stuff , or you may want to connect to an Active Directory or Kerberos server with your company credentials, or want to set up LVM, or connect a bluetooth USB dongle....

This is convenient for most end-user people that don't need to waste time searching for what is the package they need to get basic stuff like Bluetooth working. It's mimicking the behaviour of newer Windows, where all features are enabled by default or added automatically behind your back when needed.

I mean distros for embedded devices like OpenWRT don't install much and split even very basic stuff like mdadm kernel support in 4 different drivers, one for RAID0, one for RAID1, one for RAID10 and another for RAID456.

Do we need to care about that in a desktop? Just bundle it in so it's there if you need it.

geoclue2 (no thanks RedHat, I'd rather not have a spy in my desktop)

geolocation daemons provide location to your applications, they aren't spying anything.

[Britoid]

finally, some packages are hard to remove and need manual intervention, like geoclue2 (no thanks RedHat, I'd rather not have a spy in my desktop).

So you'd prefer applications use their own method of geolocation which you can't control/not aware of?

My current bother is that GNOME Itself starts a bunch of services even if they're not needed, like gsd-wacom, gsd-smartcard, gsd-sharing and gsd-power on desktops.

Although I'm aware that GNOME is moving these to systemd services so they can rely on udev/sockets to only start when needed.

[bash2bash]

Well said, I understand the need to have a "ready" system that has some things pre-installed. But if I disagree with having them enabled on boot. For example, the Smartcard daemon is enabled by default. There are lots of these services that have no real reason to by enabled by default.

My personal preference, would be a clean system without any extras, but with a smart manager that pops-up when the user connects something new. For example, asking the user to install bluetooth packages when something related it connected. Much better than the current situation that has thousands of Fedora desktops running all that garbage by default "just in case" someone connects something.

At least I've ditched the horrible gnome3 and moved to cinnamon, which is a much better experience and much lighter.

[bash2bash]

About geoclue, I don't want a central system for locating me, so no thank you. Better to deal with individual apps.

I also find it *fishy* that geoclue was always an optional package and suddenly it became a dependency with redshift. So good riddance.

[FireBurn]

Switching to the Gentoo way

[Xake]

I also find it *fishy* that geoclue was always an optional package and suddenly it became a dependency with redshift.

That paranoid, eh?
Geolocation is not a bad thing as long as the information stays on your computer.
When it comes to redshift that depends on geoclue because redshift has function that alters the activation and deactivation of the filter depending on sunrise and sunset, and since when sunrise and sunset happens depends on the date and where on earth you are, redshift has a function to automatically adjust the timestamps on when to do this so you do not have to manually do this manually evey day/week and when traveling to match the current location and time of year. And redshift uses geoclue for that. Geographical information about your location that stays on your computer for a local function and nothing more.

That geoclue is in itself installed will _not_ tell anyone about your geographically position but maybe the programs the uses geoclue (like other programs using geoclue).
My question is: what kind of programs do you install on your system that you do not trust that much that you do not trust them interfacing with geoclue?
It feels like you are going at this dependency from the wrong angle, since if you have a program you do not trusts and that reports your data, then geoclue is still not the issue, and the programs will use other ways to try to identify where you are.

Personally if I was that paranoid I would rather have geoclue installed, and make sure it does not report the correct location (patched, feed with wrongful information and so on). The more false information that exists about you, the harder you are to track in contrast to having almost no information about you, since that will stick out. And here you have something you can actually use to your advantage rather then having the trackers having less but probably more accurate information that is to you probably unknown and not uncontrolled.
However if you are that paranoid, Fedora is probably not the operating system for you.