On Sat, 25 Mar 2006, Dieter wrote:

> One thing that is nice about NetBSD is that you can download a
> relatively small amount of bits (base + etc + kernel) and try it
> out.  If you want to build a firewall or similar minimal and/or
> secure install you don't need to go through and remove a bunch of
> stuff.  Therefore I'd suggest not putting a web browser in "base".

   The obvious counterargument is that a web browser is something that is 
expected to be present on all systems today, and therefore sometimes is an 
essential tool to get your network running at all.  (See original poster.)

   And a basic "minimal" install includes a lot of stuff most people won't 
need anyway; various daemons come to mind.  (I guess the presence of stuff 
like an ntpd and a dhcpd says something about the intended audience...)


> On the other hand, these days there are some utilities/apps
> that should be there in a "full" install.
[...]
> Just as there are tarballs for comp, X11, text, there could be
> a tarball or 3 for this stuff.

   Sounds like a good idea to me.

   And for those people whose bedrooms don't resemble major data centers, 
it might even be useful to factor out stuff like NFS (,dhcpd, pppd, tftpd, 
...) into a separate tarball too.  It might also be useful for embedded 
devices.

IMHO.


MAgnus