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Can you come up with a solid definition to separate "essential" userland from other user-installed packages? You cite DEs as essential, but maybe I want to be
by AceJohnny2 5y ago
Can you come up with a solid definition to separate "essential" userland from other user-installed packages?
You cite DEs as essential, but maybe I want to be using my own Enlightenment install rather than whatever the system has installed (true story!)
- kitsunesoba 5y agoWell I mean, there’s no reason why the user shouldn’t be able to control what’s installed as essential userland. It just needs to be managed entirely separately from the system and “normal” userland. It could be as simple as a flag on apt, dnf, etc.
- sneak 5y agoThis is the reason I really, really love Nix. I have been fighting this same battle for years and Nix finally fixed it.
- zacmps 5y agoYou can always build escape hatches for that kind of use case. Some more stringent separation between essential and installed components could have prevented Linus removing his DE.
- pdimitar 5y agoI'd define it as "never have zero packages that provide a DE". This could be a global setting in the package manager which you would be able to set to `false` if so desired.