Users,

I've found Linux to be quite nice, however, I have questions about the installation process.

During a Linux installation, I've had to select or deselect packages that I would like to have installed or not installed on my system. My issue is that there are so many packages, that I don't even know what is required to get the OS running without running into a dependency problem.

So my question is, how do I get Mandrake Linux 10.1 installed with KDE and no additional software? Think of it as a very basic installation. I don't like to install packages that have no description and wont tell me what they are or what they do and how they are dependant to other packages or software installations.

Once I have a basic OS installed, I want to install other packages as needed. I don't need a fully bloated computer of software I don't use or will use rarely.

Tim

I'm fairly sure there's an option to do a very minimal install using the absolute basics that you will need. That's at the install page.

Durring the install, you can un-check pretty much all (like games, etc), leave kde sellected.. then use urpmi or mdk's gui frontend to do installs as you see fit. (that'll take care of deps)

I haven't done a minimal install, but it should weigh in at less than 1/2 GB (with kde).

Curious: why do you want a minimal install (with kde... which is a bit of an oximorron in itself). Just phylosophical, hardware constraints, or your need to know exactly what's on your machine (prolly the best reason)?

I don't have a slow computer, nor limited disk space that would prevent a full installation. My reasoning behind installing only what is needed is that I don't like a file system to be cluttered (like that of my WinXP machine) with unecessary applications and features I wont use, or in other cases, background applications that don't need to be running. One could respond by saying that I should just disable the background applications from starting up in the first place, but things tend to get a little messy as one tries to hunt and peck around at the system trying to find all the affiliated/associated files to a specific application.

Personally, I would like to just gradually build up the system with what I need. If I run into something where I need it or cannot do without, I'll simply install it. Just as everyone else has their own way of installing software, I too, have mine. I can try to give that a try of just selecting KDE GUI with some required dependecies in other groups. Last time it gave me headaches; perhaps I didn't install it properly that time.

Tim