"can we blow it up yet?"

[fuscia]

when i was eleven, i went to a summer camp in new hampshire. one day, two other boys and i spent over an hour building a little village out of popsicle sticks and a variety of other materials. it turned out to be quite elaborate, with huts, a lookout tower and even a fence that went all around the village. it only took us five minutes to blow it up into little tiny pieces (a cherry bomb took out the tower in one blast - that was sharp!).

some people like to have tons of crap on their machines and i've certainly gone through my own phases of using synaptic package manager like a buffet menu, but most of the time, i prefer the lean approach. i'm sure a lot of you feel the same way. while i suppose i could now do the 'server install' approach to minimalism, i think it is in my nature to use the 'seek&destroy' method for trimming it down. i just did a clean install a few days ago and went nuts adding tons of junk (every kind of media player, billions of different window managers, etc.. ok, so i was just going through another phase...](*,) ). i'm now down to kde-core, openbox and as few apps as i need. so, which are you? someone who likes to start with a seed and nurture it until it blossoms into your very own creation? or, someone who likes to blow it tf up? for the latter, what are some of your favorite things to dump?

[scrooge_74]

i rather pick one thing and work with it, making changes and adjust so I can feel it is only mine

[kuja]

I like the barebones approach myself. I hate having to figure out what I need to remove later on.

[~LoKe]

I use everything I've installed. I might even remove some applications like Totem, Rhythmbox, Sound Juicer, etc. That usually only happens when I'm horribly bored, like if my Internet were to go down.

[Titus A Duxass]

Absolute bare-bones, which pisses off my wife. She's of the Lock, Stock & smoking Barrel type.

I install an app, use it, then remove it.

[Dragonbite]

I'm currently in the stage of getting something working and maintained with as little fuss as possible, but that's the family shared computer.:rolleyes:

Unfortunately (because I don't have my own PC yet) I do itch for that feeling when I did a fresh install of Gentoo, reboot and am sitting there at a command line with only the OS and Portage (package manager) sitting there and a virutally-unlimited array of directions I could go!

Then again, using Gentoo on a very slow machine teaches one to be cautious and make sure you WANT what you want because it's going to take a while to install ANYTHING (like KDE is a multi-week process)!

[scrooge_74]

i know the feeling I have to share this PC with the family and i have to work on it, so I need to care for it, trim it, water it....wait this are not my house plants.....I want to make a fresh install sometimes and try other stuff, but i need another machine to toy around

[bastiegast]

Blow it up all the way :KS
I never remove things, but hey. Every six months a new ubuntu is released then I rush into it, update fails, have to do reinstall, and me system is ready to be cluttered up once again.

[megamania]

so, which are you? someone who likes to start with a seed and nurture it until it blossoms into your very own creation? or, someone who likes to blow it tf up? for the latter, what are some of your favorite things to dump?
I try to do the thing that sounds most time-efficient to me: I install Ubuntu (Gnome), and then add the things I need. I don't remove anything as long as I don't need hard disk space (which I'll soon need).

I'd like to try the server install one of these days though, just to try to learn something new.

[Mateo]

Somewhat of a minimalist. I installed a book managing program (Alexandria), and while it was quite nice, after a while I started thinking "what will I use this for?" and so I uninstalled it.

[Mateo]

By the way, how are you browsing synaptic? it doesn't seem like a very easy program for browsing to me. i use it to search for stuff I find on the web.

[Josh1]

I like the barebones approach myself. I hate having to figure out what I need to remove later on.

Same here, people who I have talked to who use ubuntu use all the little gizmos and whizzbangs you can have with it, but I really do prefer the default Gnome Ubuntu - plain and simple (and matches the forum too!).

I only install stuff I need (or want to play 'round with :D) as it makes my system go a little faster :P.

[fuscia]

By the way, how are you browsing synaptic? it doesn't seem like a very easy program for browsing to me. i use it to search for stuff I find on the web.

i start at the top and scroll down.

[Brunellus]

By the way, how are you browsing synaptic? it doesn't seem like a very easy program for browsing to me. i use it to search for stuff I find on the web.

apt-cache search $pattern

fast, no-nonsense. and if the output spills on too long, change your pattern or pipe it to
less

[bonzodog]

I go for the minimalist approach - i have a list actually written down of software I want - So I do a basic bog standard install of Zenwalk, which itself takes the 'one app per purpose' maxim to the extreme, and then start removing stuff I think is STILL excess. I also add the odd program here and there, as zen doesn't install everything I use, but does install stuff I don't want. It literally has just one application for each purpose - One web browser(Firefox), one email client(thunderbird), NO IRC client, one media player (Audacious), NO Games, Geany, Dia, Abiword, Galculator, GIMP, and a couple of others. There are almost no console client equivalents installed. How ever, I remove most of the above, save Firefox, and install Quod Libet, the openbox desk (it uses xfce as the default), and weechat for IRC.