Lynx in base system?

On Sat, 25 Mar 2006, Dieter wrote:

> One thing that is nice about NetBSD is that you can
download a
> relatively small amount of bits (base + etc + kernel)
and try it
> out.  If you want to build a firewall or similar
minimal and/or
> secure install you don't need to go through and remove
a bunch of
> stuff.  Therefore I'd suggest not putting a web
browser in "base".

   The obvious counterargument is that a web browser is
something that is 
expected to be present on all systems today, and therefore
sometimes is an 
essential tool to get your network running at all.  (See
original poster.)

   And a basic "minimal" install includes a lot
of stuff most people won't 
need anyway; various daemons come to mind.  (I guess the
presence of stuff 
like an ntpd and a dhcpd says something about the intended
audience...)


> On the other hand, these days there are some
utilities/apps
> that should be there in a "full" install.
[...]
> Just as there are tarballs for comp, X11, text, there
could be
> a tarball or 3 for this stuff.

   Sounds like a good idea to me.

   And for those people whose bedrooms don't resemble major
data centers, 
it might even be useful to factor out stuff like NFS
(,dhcpd, pppd, tftpd, 
...) into a separate tarball too.  It might also be useful
for embedded 
devices.

IMHO.


MAgnus

Just to let everyone know, the thread that mentioned this a
while back 
only brought up the subject of a web browser in the base
system because 
there are docs in /usr/share/doc that are in HTML format,
and nothing 
that can read HTML in the base system.  Also because the
Guide is only 
available online, and there is no way to access it without a
net 
connection and a browser.

This was never an issue of wanting a browser in the base
system for 
convenience, it was about the issue of accessing docs that
you might need.

-Brian