Please Ms - No Dumb non selectable installs

It's been a pet peeve of mine as well... Only way to get rid of the 'bloat' that I'm aware of is to homebrew your own ISO.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCDCustomization

Seems KDE has been shunned by Mint - don't see any testing ISO's yet...

Iso images - Linux Mint Community

This is one of the reasons I prefer CentOS as my Linux distro:

jimbo45 said:

I've just abandoned what used to be great Linux Distro : Linux Mint. The latest (Linux Mint 17.1) as the newest flavour has ZERO customisable options, No software selectable options on the install -- and there's no Live CD either.

You must be referring to Linux Mint (KDE version).

Fedora & OpenSUSE have always had the best OS installers (compared to LM, Ubuntu or Windows).

Linux Mint 17.1 MATE uses the identical installer to Linux Mint 17 MATE.
It also runs as a Live CD/DVD/ISO.

jimbo45 said:

Windows at least allows you to install the base OS and then it's up to you to install whatever else you want.

You must be referring to Windows Server.

The Windows Desktop installer installs what MS thinks it should install.
There are no software install options in Windows.

Every Linux Distro I've tried (even Linux Mint 17.1 MATE) gives you the option to move various folders to other locations.
That's something that MS' professional cadre of highly paid coders haven't been able to achieve for the last 15 years.

jimbo45 said:

For once Ms is doing MUCH better than the various Linuxes around who are going BONKERS in trying to simplify the stuff so it's virtually USELESS if you don't want a system full of bloat.

Even with all of the "bloat" installed, Linux Mint 17.1 MATE:

• Uses ~50% of the HDD space that an "empty" Windows Desktop install uses.
• Takes the same amount of time that an "empty" Windows Desktop install takes.

It took ~20 minutes to install the OS (including the "bloat") plus another ~10 minutes to download & install the updates.

Note:
The disk usage increased by 300 MB after the updates.

After you have installed Windows, you then have to spend extra time installing Windows Updates, MS Office, VLC & Adobe CC which probably takes at least 1 hour.

Windows also caches the extra Windows Features so you can install them later.
So if you don't use them (or know about them) they just "sit around" clogging up the OS partition.

My W10TP VM is using ~3.5x as much space as Linux Mint 17.1 MATE VM (18 GB vs 5 GB).

jimbo45 said:

I always like the idea too of Windows at install time just installing the base package to run your computer --then you can add whatever you want / need later. I dread the day Windows starts becoming "completely configured" !!!!

Windows Desktop is already completely configured by MS.

You have to customise it after the install has finished (the W8 series and W10 offer some options during the final setup step).

You can install KDE using Synaptic.

You can then use Synaptic to uninstall any of the other stuff you don't want.

Superfly said:

It's been a pet peeve of mine as well... Only way to get rid of the 'bloat' that I'm aware of is to homebrew your own ISO.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCDCustomization

Seems KDE has been shunned by Mint - don't see any testing ISO's yet...

Iso images - Linux Mint Community

The other versions Of Linux Mint have always been released some time after MATE and Cinnamon.

Looking at the list (last time) it took a month before KDE and Xfce versions were released.

adamf said:

If you think that a Food and Drink app is a part of a base OS I suppose :) I'm starting to play with Arch which is pretty un-bloated - haven't chosen a GUI to install yet...

LOL.. yes waiitng for apps to install (especially if one will never use them) is a PITA.

lehnerus2000 said:

Looking at the list (last time) it took a month before KDE and Xfce versions were released.

Yup, was just thinking there may be a test ISO by now, considering the last time a test build was on June 30th, about a week after MATE went RTM. Perhaps we'll see them this week.

One can run apt-get scripts after install to add/remove packages, but it would be better to have a choice within the installer.

Overall, I agree with your sentiments though. :)

Lee said:

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!. . .is this a Windows 10 site or is it a New Linux site. . .just wondering. . .:)