#1217 What is critical in Fedora?
Closed None Opened 10 years ago by frankly3d.

I hope this is not OT for FeSCo.

What got me to think about writing this is\was:
http://lists.baseurl.org/pipermail/yum-devel/2014-January/010499.html
" I've absolutely nothing against the
protected packages feature as such, on the contrary. The slippery slope
comes from the inconsistent manner of its usage in Fedora "

In non esoteric cases, DE agnostic, talking base.
What would be considered crucial!
for an installed Fedora regular use Desktop &| Server role
to boot, do work, shut down, reboot.


This seems like one of the cases where we're unlikely to achieve a perfect consensus, and while it's important functionality, the exact matter it works is not cirtical for the distribution[1].

So, having a decision that is not completely crazy, made by one person, and possibly writing software to improve the automation of the decision for the problematic cases, might be better than many people spending time debating until they find out for certain that they can't achieve a consensus, in the mean time not having even the basic cases covered, and not a chance of ever working on the improved automation of the problematic cases.

[1] The feature is essentially protecting the system against people experimenting when they don't know what they are doing, either because they are not-yet-experienced tinkerers ("gee, Linux is so customizable, I can remove packages! let's try removing something!"), or because they are cargo-culting a recipe while troubleshooting ("somebody on the internet solved a problem that has had the same keywords with this command"). It's critically important neither for experts, who can predict the effects of the removal, nor for newbies and people pressed for time, who don't feel the need to remove things.

Replying to [comment:1 mitr]:

[1] The feature is essentially protecting the system against people experimenting when they don't know what they are doing, either because they are not-yet-experienced tinkerers ("gee, Linux is so customizable, I can remove packages! let's try removing something!"), or because they are cargo-culting a recipe while troubleshooting ("somebody on the internet solved a problem that has had the same keywords with this command"). It's critically important neither for experts, who can predict the effects of the removal, nor for newbies and people pressed for time, who don't feel the need to remove things.

So basically we need to inform those who have say, less than 5+ years experience with Linux [1]
Not to use it unless they stick to the Desktop GUI apps only and to only use cli under the direct supervision of expert from [1] before typing anything into cli. Because despite the fact that you are part of the new Fedora.next student targeted user. You are a novice and should not test anything.

[1] 5 years as most sysadmin jobs here I see (Ireland) require a minimum of 3, usually 5 before even consider handing in a cv. Taking the higher threshold as closer to expert.

Sticking with my usual mantra of "why decide today on something that would be better to decide on later", I'd suggest making any decisions about how dnf behaves right now before it's proposed to replace/become yum seems premature.

In the mean time reasoned argument and use cases may sway the maintainer. If not, please do bring it up in the discussion to move dnf to default if it still happens then and it can be taken into consideration.

Replying to [comment:3 kevin]:

Sticking with my usual mantra of "why decide today on something that would be better to decide on later", I'd suggest making any decisions about how dnf behaves right now before it's proposed to replace/become yum seems premature.

In the mean time reasoned argument and use cases may sway the maintainer. If not, please do bring it up in the discussion to move dnf to default if it still happens then and it can be taken into consideration.

Getting away from dnf for the moment, I get sidetracked quite often.
Trying to pull myself back to "inconsistent manner of its usage in Fedora"

1: Do we need any packages protected ## protecting users from themselves.[[BR]]
2a: If yes, # what, why, how[[BR]]2b: If no, how to inform said users.

AGREED: Punt on this and let the products determine the appropriate mechanism. (+9,-0,0) (mmaslano, 19:03:24)

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