Re: [gNewSense-users] minimal base system of gNS

[Bake Timmons]

>> gNewSense still has no 'alternate' (ncurses based) install cd, so
>> minimal installs are not posable.
>
> I tried this:        On BLAG, I removed GNOME after installation and after
> that every installation stopped working e.g. when I did "apt-get install
> emacs" , it says to "apt-get fix-broken-packages install" and that
> installs whole GNOME again, so I canot install emacs, firefox or something
> else without installing GNOME again. that's funny :(
>
> what about gnewsense ? Is it possible to remove whole of GNOME after
> installation without causing any "broken-packages" error ?
>
> I just use a Tiled WM and I use MPD to listen to songs.

It seems that gNS follows many Debian guidelines including package
priorities: required, important, standard, optional, and extra (from
http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-archive.html).

To see the bare minimum that you need, you can try something like:

address@hidden:~$ grep --before-context=12 --no-filename 'Priority: required' \
> /var/lib/apt/lists/us.archive.gnewsense.org_gnewsense_dists_deltad_main_binary-i386_Packages
>  \
> /var/lib/apt/lists/us.archive.gnewsense.org_gnewsense_dists_deltad_universe_binary-i386_Packages
>  \
> | grep 'Package: ' | cut -f2 -d' ' | columns

base-files                  base-passwd                 bash
belocs-locales-bin          bsdutils                    coreutils
debconf                     debconf-i18n                debianutils
diff                        dpkg                        e2fslibs
e2fsprogs                   findutils                   gcc-4.0-base
grep                        gzip                        hostname
initscripts                 libacl1                     libattr1
libblkid1                   libc6                       libcap1
libcomerr2                  libdb4.3                    libgcc1
liblocale-gettext-perl      libncurses5                 libpam-foreground
libpam-modules              libpam-runtime              libpam0g
libselinux1                 libsepol1                   libslang2
libss2                      libtext-charwidth-perl      libtext-iconv-perl
libtext-wrapi18n-perl       libuuid1                    locales
login                       lsb-base                    makedev
mawk                        mount                       ncurses-base
ncurses-bin                 passwd                      perl-base
procps                      python-minimal              python2.4-minimal
sed                         sysv-rc                     sysvinit
tar                         util-linux                  zlib1g


Since there's no sign of GNOME in that list, it's safe to purge it from
your system.  You may get warnings about unmet dependencies for other
software, however.

A safe way to see what will happen is to do a simulated removal of, say,
a GNOME library, e.g.:

address@hidden:~$ sudo apt-get --no-act --purge remove libgnome2-0
Password:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  alacarte* bug-buddy* contact-lookup-applet* deskbar-applet* ekiga* eog*
...
[snip]

If you are satisfied that it removes nothing you care about, run the
command again without the --no-act switch.

Have fun.