[forum] bloatware

[Michel Dänzer]

On Son, 2003-03-30 at 08:45, Vadim Plessky wrote: 
> On Sunday 30 March 2003 04:09, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> |  On Sat, Mar 29, 2003 at 11:49:13PM +0300, Vadim Plessky wrote:
> |  > Ok, what about 60MB of "font sources" (PCF, BDF fonts) in XFree86 CVS
> |  > and resulting 20MB of "installable fonts" in RPMs?
> |  > Isn't it bloatware?
> |
> |  If you don't want to use those fonts, just delete them. This is not
> |  that hard. ;-)
> 
> That's not so easy.
> Many apps use 'fixed' font name as default fontback.
> Those apps (incl. Window Managers) would just crash if that font is 
> missing.

So it seems it's necessary and not bloatware?

> Besides, deleting 60Mb of fonts from sources would reduce size of all 
> Linux distributions - RedHat, Mandrake, SuSE, etc.
> I am speaing about both RPMs and SRPMs combined.

What's stopping those distributors from dropping this stuff from their
binary and source packages if that's possible and useful? It sounds like
maybe your distribution doesn't package XFree86 in a way that allows you
to install only what you need, and you should complain to them?


-- 
Earthling Michel Dänzer (MrCooper)/ Debian GNU/Linux (powerpc) developer
XFree86 and DRI project member   /  CS student, Free Software enthusiast