Is there a term to refer to the subset of packages that is automatically installed by Debian distribution?
I though that it had something to do with packages priorities, but it doesn't seem to be the case, cause there are packages of all the priority levels among the packages installed by default.
Also, some of those packages of initial subset have automatically installed
flag, e.g. wireless-tools
. So they will be automatically removed if packages of the initial subset, depending on them, are manually removed. I wonder, does the installation tool keep only a list of packages to be considered manually installed and installs their dependencies automatically?
Answer to the first two questions:
After installing the core Debian utilities, Debian installer seems to invoke tasksel
to carry out installation "tasks". Among the typical tasks are "standard" task and "laptop" task. From tasksel page:
"standard" task
The standard task is a special task used by Debian Installer. It actually relies on the packages' priority. What does the "standard system" task include?
tasksel --task-packages standard
which is an aptitude search string that equates to
aptitude search ~pstandard ~prequired ~pimportant -F%p
So tasksel
installs standard
, required
and important
packages.
"laptop" task
The laptop task is a special task use by Debian Installer, to pull the
packages useful on a laptop:
- wireless-tools
- acpi-support
- cpufrequtils
- acpi
- wpasupplicant
- powertop
- acpid
- apmd
- pcmciautils
- pm-utils
- anacron
- avahi-autoipd
- bluetooth
Desktop
Best Answer
The
base system
is described in Debian policy as all packages withrequired
orimportant
priority.You can search for the packages that the
required
andimportant
priorities are attached to with theaptitude
utility.debootstrap
installs these packages during the setup process.tasksel
will then install whatever other roles you choose on top, normallystandard
is the default selection that is used.On top of what is listed in the base system you will get
This amounts to about 60 packages on my VirtualBox VM (without the VBox guest additions which pull in a lot of dependencies).
Run the
Expert Install
(select "Advanced options > Expert") if you get a chance. It gives you a better idea of the step by step install process and whenapt
is being run outside of the base install.