Baslinux mailing list

[Ian Scott <mriscott AT yahoo.co.uk>]

>   The one thing I DIDN'T want to do,is take a
good,high-end system,get
> whatever the popular,trendy version of Linux is,and
load that ton of crap on
> it.I'm sorry,but I remember when Red Hat 6.0 was one
CD (the OS) and it came
> with a CD of applications.Now,you have versions of
Linux on THREE CDs.What's
> up with that?Windows XP is only on one CD and it
comes with more crud than
> you'll ever use.I can't imagine why any OS needs
three CDs.Along with that
> growth in size,Linux seems to be striving to "be
like Windows".Why?There
> already is such a thing.I like and use Windows,but
if I wanted to install
> and use that yet again I'd have already done it.I
appreciate Windows for
> what it is (and isn't),I like Macintosh for the same
reasons.I wanted to
> learn,and appreciate what Linux is on it's own
merits,not for what it can be
> made to look like or run on.
> 

I think you are getting confused here between the OS
(linux) and the 
applications.

The OS itself is very small (can easily be loaded off
a floppy) but if you
want to do anything with it, you need applications.

With linux, there is a lot of free software.  Most
distros bundle loads of
this up on their CDs.  It is the equivalent of getting
windows XP and MS 
office and photoshop and MS visual studio and many
more things.

Having said that, every distro I've ever used has the
basic stuff on the first
CD - so all you need is one CD to get a working linux.

Also, all the distros will let you choose exactly what
to install.  A base
install (just commandline) takes up virtually no
space, but you can add X,
networking, etc.

As for the growth in size, there is a simple reason:
choice. Windows/mac are
like they are, and you have little or no choice. 
Linux can be many things:
Do you want just the commandline or Xwindows too, what
window manager would
you like (ratpoison, KDE, gnome, fvwm, twm .....),
would you like to run
HTTP servers, FTP servers, etc.  Do you want to be
able to compile programs?
In what languages?

All in all, I think your quest to find a normal
version of linux is doomed to
failure.  There is no such thing.  Each version is
different, because people
have different preferences and different ideas of what
they want to use
linux for.

Ian


        
        
                
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