Not just desktops; too many libraries as well

[Christopher Browne]

On 11/21/05, Lennart Sorensen <lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Well certainly a current install of Debian has no problem installing in
> 500M.  With being selective 256M can be done too.  Pick kde and gnome
> and all that crap, and maybe 1.5 to 2GB is more in order, but unless you
> install stuff you don't need or want, you should never need 6G.

The trouble comes when you install one thing that then draws in 15 others.

Consider, let's say, PostgreSQL.  It can use SSH connections, so it's
liable to lead to that dependancy being added.  It can support
Kerberos, so, if that's seems a "reasonable" default to someone, it'll
add some Kerberos components.  One might want pgcrypto, one of the
"contrib" modules; if so, that forces in mcrypt and possibly some
other crypto packages.

So you added a database, and because it is *able* to link to a bunch
of other things, you wind up drawing in a bunch of peripheral packages
that don't appear to be "database" stuff.

This sort of scenario is remarkably common, particularly with GNOME/KDE :-).

It's a little troubling.
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