Quote Originally Posted by chris1x
During the install of FC2-test2 I noticed that there's no ``Install Everything'' option. This makes it relatively easy for new users forget to install usefull software. IMHO the option Install Everything is very useful, and should not be forgotten in the final release of FC5

TIA

Chris1x
This was a concious design. "Everything installation" is not really everything since Fedora Extras is not supported during installation time yet though thats being planned for the subsequent release. As part of a earlier discussion I have expanded on why everything installations are generally not a good idea.

I will list some of them here.

* Dependency issues - One of the reasons behind doing a everything installation is avoid dealing with dependency issues. However that is largely not a problem now since yum install and yum groupinstall along with along programs like Yumex and system-config-packages in a future release. Again it would help to point out the yum guide available at http://fedora.redhat.com/docs

* Discoverability - Fedora Core like you indicate a large number of useful programs but the installer divides these into several different types to target particular segment of use cases and avoid having to a everything installation. Custom group and package selection is available for those who would like to do a granular installation. Even if all the packages of Fedora Core is installed it doesnt grant users immediate access to all the packages since the ones in Fedora Extras repository is not available at installation time. Though the installer itself is getting support for additional repositories the aspect of making these packages more visible to users is better handled through the use of tools such as Pirut (replacment for system-config-packages) rather than having users install everything which they cant now anyway since the installation is limited to Fedora Core packages.

* Redundancy - While Fedora Core itself is slowing moving towards providing more packages as part of the Fedora Extras and possibly doing several different targets the current selection uses multiple programs that provide the same functionality, browsers or desktop environments for example and its better for users to use a graphical tool like s-c-p or yumex and install packages as necessary.

* Security, manageability and performance - As more and more packages are installed on a system the amount of updates and interactions between the packages that the user has to handle drastically increases. For users who are using Fedora as a development system or using it just to learn Linux where the system serves no other purpose and a high amount of bandwidth is available this might make sense but for others users who use it deploy it at various levels the amount of updates and potential security issues that they have to deal with packages that they might not even use is a additional burden. Moreover the additional packages installed might need listen to network connections by default making the systems potentially more vulnerable by increasing the attack vector. Additional services enabled by default also affect performance.

So "Everything installation" is not part of Anaconda anymore