Features/MinimalInstall

= Minimal Install =

Summary
To have a "Minimal Install" option with full yum support so one can start building a custom distribution from there.

Owner

 * Name: Renich Bon Ciric

Current status

 * Targeted release: Fedora 10
 * Last updated: Wednesday, August 13 2008
 * Percentage of completion: 0% (I'm no programmer)

Detailed Description
This "Minimal Install" option would be very useful for a lot of things and it would let fedora be installed in a PC with minimal requirements and be used in many other areas that it is right now.

Benefit to Fedora
This would expand the range of uses that one can give to Fedora. Not just for installing into minimal requirement PCs but, also, one could build an entire new system from almost scratch and as small as possible (small footprint and all) but, always, with fedora's base support (yum, iptables, lbs, udev, etc) and use revisor or any other tool to make custom distributions.

Scope
It requires striping Fedora from any package that is not essential in a practical way and, maybe, a custom kernel. Any GUI or unneeded lib would be omitted and this would make the system much smaller.

Test Plan

 * 1) Analyse the standard installation package list.
 * 2) make a list of essential packages and their deps.
 * 3) Analyse if the deps are really necessary and do further stripping.
 * 4) Test install and see if anything else can be stripped or is needed.
 * 5) Make 3 or 4 kickstart files and let the community vote on them.

User Experience

 * 1) The admins would be very happy to make a minimal installation, even if they don't need it, and start adding their own list of packages using yum.
 * 2) Developers that are interested in making some new Fedora-based distro will love it and use it much.

Dependencies
No deps... just a kickstart file.

Contingency Plan

 * Use a standard installation.

Documentation
None

Release Notes
"Minimal Installation" should be use in the case of minimum requirements, firewall boxes or custom distrobution development. It contains only the essential packages and it will not have the features you'd expect from a standard installation.

Comments and Discussion

 * See Talk:Features/MinimalInstall