On 05/25/2017 03:13 PM, A B wrote:
>
> Before I clean my hard disks and USB sticks of everything linux and go
> back to Unix and VMS
> (a very expensive proposition for me), I would like to know if there is
> a way to tell SL 7.3 to install
> KDE, please!? Is there a way to tell the installation tool not to
> install google, please? Is there a way
> to tell the installation tool not to install gnome, please?
>
> I have been using computers for some 45 years now, using as what it is,
> a computer, a machine to make
> computations i.e. to write programs to make a living. I have no
> inclination to use the thing as music box,
> movie theater, porn joint or as a tool to be used by google facebook &
> Co to spy on me.
> The recent versions of Fedora do not allow access to a command line and
> I tried SL. Although I told ana-
> conda to ignore gnome and install KDE, the thing did the opposite. I was
> really depressed but I decided
> I had no other choice. I tried a smaller file that explicitly said it
> contained only KDE.
> To my horror I found out that I was not ableto install the software I
> need for my work because virtually
> everything depends on libraries and SL comes with virtually no
> libraries. I spent many nights trying to install
> libraries and it quickly became a nightmare because of the
> interdependencies. The people who coined the
> word “nightmare” had that situation in mind.
> Technical software that was a trivial task to install  on Red Hat 7 back
> in 2000 is uninstallable on SL in 2017.
> I cannot even install clamav or splint which was trivial on Fedora 6.
> But at least I have access to a command
> line, lucky me......................
> I do not use yum and yam and git and whatever for two reasons: first I
> want to know what is on my hard disks
> and second my box is not connected to the Internet, it is in a Faraday
> cage, the power cord and the cables heavily
> filtered and isolated. I communicate with the Internet using other
> peoples' boxes. No, I do not fear law enforcement,
> I fear google & facebook.
> A few weeks ago I observed that there was a new large file of SL, 8
> Gbytes large. After spending more than 20
> hours trying to understand why downloading a file larger than 4Gbytes
> was failing, I reformatted my usb stick from
> vfat32 to ntfs and installed the stuff. I immediately observed that KDE
> was not installed although I clearly told
> the installation tool to do so. Needless to say, I have no way to check
> what else was not installed. Using gparted
> I deleted the stuff on the spot and I have to spend countless hours now
> to check if google left spies on my already
> installed system. I know from previous experience with SL that the
> installation tool is hardwired to install certain
> things only, independently of the user's decisions and entries. Really
> sad..........
> As Huxley said some 80 years ago, Brave New World..........................
> But I have promised to my Gods, I will never love the big brother........
>
> Please help!!!!
>
> Thank you!!

To find out why KDE is not installing, you can look at the installation 
log file to see what packages were installed and if any errors.  I'm not 
familiar with the guided graphical install, as I use kickstart files, 
but all of my machines use KDE by default, so it is possible.  some 
gnome packages are usually installed as dependencies and the default 
login manager is still GDM for my purposes.

You could install @base to start and then mount the DVD/USB after 
installation, set it up as a yum repo, and add in the packages you want 
manually to keep a minimal install base.  Or build a kickstart, which 
isn't too difficult to do either.

As far as I have experienced, the command line is most definitely still 
accessible in the latest Fedora releases.  Are you not installing a 
console/terminal emulator if using a gui?  Otherwise it is a matter of 
setting your systemd target to not start the gui and a text login should 
be presented.

As far as lack of libraries, this is actually where an internet 
connection and yum are very useful.  Yum will not do anything to your 
system unless you tell it, assuming you don't have a yum-cron package 
active.  Many libraries are available through the EPEL 
(http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL) repository and hardware drivers 
through ELrepo (http://www.elrepo.org/).

To list and manage the installed files you can use either yum or the rpm 
tools directly, nothing is purposefully hidden from you.  Log files are 
created during installation as well to see what was installed.

No distribution is going to contain every software library and package 
in existance.  Without an internet connection, you are going to have to 
do some manual dependency resolution for some softwareas this is 
generally well handled by yum or dnf (Fedora's replacement for yum) 
these days.

I'm not sure what you mean by not installing google.  Google is not a 
piece of software and SL does not ship with Google's Chrome browser 
either.  Since your system is air-gapped, I'm not sure why you are 
concerned with internet enabled applications anyway.

Ultimately it is up to you if you go back to Unix/VMS, both are solid 
platforms.  Use what you feel comfortable with.

-Mark