@terdon quick question is asking questions of type "my script works but does this script have any potential issues" on topic here ? or is it more suitable for code review ?

@SergiyKolodyazhnyy Yes, it is on topic. I mean, assuming you're talking shell scripts or at least something *nixy, and the issues are to do with files or other sysadminy stuff, if that makes sense. Of course, code review is dedicated to precisely that, so it might be better there.

But yes, I'd say it would also be on topic here although the details would probably depend on the specific question asked.

Isn't "fork" the wrong term here?

Fork means it split off. AFAIK, Ubuntu never split off. It's still a Debian derivative.

@FaheemMitha I'm not sure how everyone uses the term "fork" these days, but I am inclined to agree with you. I do not consider Ubuntu a fork of Debian. When work begins on each new Ubuntu release (well before it is actually officially released, and well before the first alpha for it is even released; I'm talking around the time when the previous release is officially released), packages are synced or merged to it from Debian unstable.

Furthermore, when people want to get their software in Ubuntu officially, they are usually advised to get it included officially in Debian first, and then it "trickles down" into the next Ubuntu release. This is a much closer and more ongoing relationship between the operating systems than the term "fork" typically signifies.

@EliahKagan Thanks for the feedback and confirmation. Yes, in summary I think Ubuntu is a derivative of Debian, not a fork.

Ubuntu is definitely a derivative of Debian. There's no question about that. I've seen the word "fork" used in different ways but I've never seen it used in way that I think would cover the relationship between Debian and Ubuntu (unless the author of that post intended to use it that way).

@EliahKagan I agree to all of that.

I wonder if it is worth editing the question. I don't want to ruffle any feathers, but I think the term as used is a bit misleading.

I suppose it should be edited but I'm not sure how best to edit it because I'm not sure what the significance is of the comparison between Debian and Ubuntu in that answer.

I edited it to:

> Remember that Ubuntu is a Debian derivative, and to this day still retains a great similarity to Debian.

That is better.

The thing is... Ubuntu doesn't install with a firewall blocking anything by default either, so I don't understand the significance of the comparison.

@terdon The second clause (?) then seems a bit redundant, because a Debian derivative by definition is going to "retain a great similarity to Debian".

@FaheemMitha OK, frankly, I think we are putting way too much importance on a very minor and largely irrelevant point in a good and quite long answer.

That said, no, a derivative can end up being very different. I don't see a problem.

@terdon It's not important.

@terdon It can?

But I just wanted to remove the term you were objecting to with as small a change to the answer as possible and that seems to serve.

Did you have an example in mind?

Ubuntu's a good one, actually. There are significant differences with Debian.

I suppose there are a large number of Debian derivatives. Mint, for example. At least the Debian Edition.

My concern with the recently changed text would not have been that it used the wrong term but that it described the connection between the projects as having only once existed. (Specifically, as being about how Ubuntu started out.)

But also consider chemical derivatives which can have completely different functions to the original compound. Words derived from other words whose meaning is very different etc.

@terdon Yes, but it is still very similar to Debian, and always will be.

@FaheemMitha Which is precisely what that sentence states :)

Well, unless it becomes a completely separate distribution.

@terdon My concern was the redundancy, not the inaccuracy.

It's like saying - this person is French and speaks French.

Well, I suppose he could speak Turkish instead.

@EliahKagan Yes, exactly my point.

So, what I am wondering is what the significance is of the whole paragraph. Quoting just the beginning:

> First off, I do want to repeat what has already been said: Debian caters to a rather different group of users than many other mainstream distributions, particularly so Ubuntu.

As terdon says, not a big issue. But I think everyone is a little sensitive about the Ubuntu/Debian relationship. At least people in the Debian side are.

Then it goes on to talk about how they're different.

For a long time, Ubuntu didn't even mention Debian on their web page.

@FaheemMitha I don't see it. SuSe is derived from slackware, for instance, but has next to no similarity today.

I'm not sure what the current status of that is.

I expect that most readers would assume from reading the post that Ubuntu does have a firewall blocking stuff by default.

@terdon SuSE is not a Slackware derivative.

@FaheemMitha Are you sure about that?

@FaheemMitha Apparently so

AFAIK, the word derivative denotes a quite precise relationship. The key is that it is an ongoing relationship.

@FaheemMitha Not at all. Derivative only explains origin, not necessarily any current relationship.

@FaheemMitha I'm not sure the word "derivative" is always used that way for operating systems.

merriam-webster.com/dictionary/derivative

@terdon That's not my understanding of the term. In the specific context of Linux distributions, that is.

@terdon Hmm. Point taken.

Ubuntu does have an ongoing relationship with Debian, but I don't think people usually consider that to be required for one distro to be a derivative of another.

But at least for Debian, I've consistently seen it used in that way.

@EliahKagan Ok. Maybe not.

So a fork could still be a derivative?

Every Ubuntu system I've ever installed has shipped without anything blocked by default by a firewall. So my remaining confusion in connection with that post is, why is it significant to the issue that Debian and Ubuntu are targeted toward different users?

@EliahKagan Can you quote the context?

@FaheemMitha I'm talking about the whole first paragraph of that post, except perhaps the last sentence.

@EliahKagan That strikes me as an uncontroversial para. Is your point that it's not relevant to the question?

Personally, I don't see why the poster is concerned about firewalls. He seems to be under the impression that it provides security.

A firewall isn't going to help you if the services you are running have vulnerabilities.

@FaheemMitha I would guess that it is relevant somehow, and I'm not saying it should be removed, but I'm not sure quite what the relevance is. Also, since it's a post that explains why Debian doesn't have a firewall blocking anything by default, which starts out by stating that Debian differs from Ubuntu because Ubuntu is for people who don't want to have to set up stuff manually, it seems to be saying that this is an area where Debian and Ubuntu are different. But I don't think it is.

@EliahKagan I agree. So Ubuntu doesn't configure a firewall by default either? Debian certainly doesn't.

And Ubuntu really isn't that different from Debian, imo. They have a user-friendly layer, I think. And better hardware detection. And a more relaxed attitude towards non-free softtware. But under the skin it's pretty much the same thing.

I think that most of the packages are just unmodified Debian packages.

@FaheemMitha Like Debian, it has an all permissive rule when installed. Ubuntu has ufw installed by default but it's not configured to cause anything to be blocked.

ek@Kip:~$ sudo ufw status
[sudo] password for ek:
Status: inactive

I suppose some Ubuntu release at some point, of some flavor or other, might have blocked stuff by default. But I don't know of it. All the Ubuntu systems I've used have had nothing blocked by a firewall or they had things blocked that I or another user remembered setting up. I've heard from people that stuff is blocked by default but it's always turned out that it wasn't, except in one vague case where I don't have information about it. :)

Ubuntu has wiki.ubuntu.com/SecurityTeam/Policies#No_Open_Ports so there's no really strong need for a firewall.

@FaheemMitha Do you mean that the source code is unmodified? I believe that may be so, at least by number, and excluding snap packages, which supposedly are going to be replacing deb packages. There are thousands of packages from Debian where the source code is modified for Ubuntu, but that's still not most packages. For binary packages, however, they are different, as they are built separately. I don't believe there's always full toolchain compatibility, either.

On the other hand, I imagine there's something of a correlation between packages that have Ubuntu-specific patches and packages that are popularly used.

@EliahKagan I mean that the packaging for Debian and Ubuntu in most cases is identical. Ubuntu might have rebuilt the binary packages.

I'm surprised that Ubuntu has modified thousands of Debian packages. Hundreds, I could believe.

Let me check in case I am mistaken.

Well the actual wording on this page is:

> There are more than 1000 such packages in the Universe repository.

And by packaging by Debian I'm uncluding Debian's patches against upstream, of course.

So by saying "thousands" I may have been overstating it.

I suppose it's possible that more than a thousand packages might have been modified in Ubuntu relative to Debian, since the beginning. 2004, I think it was.

But I doubt many packages are modified between one Ubuntu release and the next.

I never got the impression that Ubuntu/Canonical had that much manpower. Not counting volunteers.

@EliahKagan ufw -> Priority: optional

Is Ubuntu different? If not, under what circumstances is it installed by default?

Comments don't expand inline in answers. Instead is produces the name of the question. The former would be more useful.

@FaheemMitha ?

Comments? You mean links?

Ah, right, I see what you mean. Yeah, that'd be nice.

@terdon To be more precise, links to comments could expand inline to the comments. They do so in chat.

But I expect there is already an outstanding wishlist request about this.

Given that comments are supposed to be ephemeral, it actually makes more sense to always expand to the question title. Otherwise, if the comment is deleted the link is completely useless. If it expands to the question title, you still have some idea of what it was about.

I'd guess that was the rationale anyway.

@terdon That's a good point. I hadn't thought of that.

Only just occurred to me too.

Though even questions and answers can be deleted.

But less often, I suppose.

True, but far less often than comments.

I'm repeating my recommendation for "Inside Job". In case anyone didn't see it the first time.

We (the mod team) have deleted 376 comment last month alone, to give you an idea.

Very well made documentary, as these things go.

@terdon That does sound like a lot. Are you counting those that were moved into their own room?

@derobert I think you use Spotify. Do you pay for it?

@FaheemMitha No idea. There's a thing called "mod dashboard" that shows the number of comments deleted this month per mod.

@FaheemMitha I do.

@terdon Do you pay for it? To be clear.

Yes

9€ per month as I recall.

@terdon Ok. Good value for money?

Absolutely.

@terdon That sounds relatively reasonable.

And that's the expensive one.

@terdon Have you been following the Catalonia thing? That's not too far from you.

@terdon Oh.

@FaheemMitha Oh yes. Very closely. I lived there for 7 years, after all.

Assuming you are still in Greece, that is.

@terdon Where? Catalonia?

Yeah. Barcelona.

Did my PhD there.

@terdon Oh yes. Now I remember.

Might wind up being a big thing for Spain.

I don't know the background or history.

Wow, the Euro has really gone down against the dollar in recent years.

@FaheemMitha It is an enormous thing for Spain.

@FaheemMitha I don't use Spotify.

I have a Google Play Music subscription, I use that.

Used to use MOG. Then Beats for a bit, after MOG became Beats. But canceled before it become Apple Music.

I pay $7.99/mo for Google Play Music. That's a special price because I signed up early, I think it's $9.99/mo otherwise.

Amazon has one that is $7.99/mo if you're already an Amazon Prime member... which I've never tried, but I suspect is about the same.

@FaheemMitha BTW, I heard you can now get your very own NSA obelisk, now shipping to India. Well, I guess it's not really the right shape to be an obelisk, but column, pillar, or pile just don't have the same ring to them.

TIL, the good people of Highgate Cemetery in London have a sense of humor:

I kid you not.

@derobert I have the Indian Amazon Prime.

But I doubt that qualifies.

@derobert Are you satisfied with Google Play?

@FaheemMitha mostly, I wish it had better classical metadata. But I'm not sure anyone does.

@derobert I think I'll pass. I'm puzzled that people actually pay for this thing.

But I supposed if they started giving them away, it might make people suspicious. Even Americans.

@FaheemMitha Voice control is useful. E.g, last night was using one while cooking. Can change the volume of the podcast, or skip an episode, or set a timer — all while hands were messy.

@terdon I don't have a sense of the big picture. Will/can the Spanish Govt just squash this thing? Or is there more to it than that?

@derobert Voice control for Google Play?

Via a laptop? Or something else?

@FaheemMitha Not on an Echo, you have to get a Google Home for that.

@derobert Do you have an Echo then?

I think I'm up to 6 Amazon NSA listening devices and 1 Google NSA listening device :-/

@derobert Hmm. You could give the NSA a show. :-)

@FaheemMitha A horribly simplified version of this is that Spain, the country, is a collection of various nations, some of which had existed previously as nation states and all of which were joined through warfare. The relationship of Catalynya and Spain is similar to that of England and Scotland, but if the UK were not called 'UK' but instead were called 'England'.

@terdon I see. And presumably these relationships are not entirely happy?

I read an article that implied that Catalonia was more "progressive" than Spain overall.

Or the respective govts, at any rate.

Add to that the fact that Spain and the Spanish flag represent the oppression of Franco's dictatorship to many Catalans, during which they were violently repressed and their language (which is completely different and quite as old as Spanish, older, actually) was attacked in an effort to wipe that out too.

@terdon Oh. That sounds horrible.

BTW, "SPain".

Yeah, and also the current democratic Spain is pretty young.

Now, on the other hand, you have the Catalans who consider themselves an "oppressed" nations which is just absurd. They have their own government with extensive autonomy, their own schools and universities, in their language etc etc. And yet, they consider themselves comparable to say the Palestinians or the Kurds.

I never really got my head around the whole Franco thing, but he sounds horrible too.

@terdon sidebar: have you read "Homage to Catalonia"?

So while they do have some very valid demands, painting themselves as the poor downtrodden nation is ridiculous. Especially given that they are far richer than their presumed oppressors.

Now, every poll they've ever had in the past several decades has shown support for independence to be juuust under the 50% mark.

@terdon The article I read said that the Spanish Govt was stopping Catalonia from passing laws and stuff.

Nevertheless, the idiots currently in power in the regional government decided to call for a referendum, something which is (apparently) anti-constitutional and therefore illegal under Spanish law.

@terdon Yes, I read that part.

They were told it was illegal, ignored it and had it anyway. The result was 90% pro independence but there was only around 40 something % turnout, so basically only the pro independence people voted.

They then proceeded to treat that as a mandate from the people, conveniently ignoring the silent majority.

@terdon Oh. Did the anti-independence people not vote because it was illegal, or for some other reason?

And I didn't get that last bit from the news reports.

Now, the absolute morons in the Spanish government, instead of letting things play out and simply allowing them to hold the damn thing and then ignoring the results seeing as it wouldn't have been conclusive, decided top send in the cops who started beating people up in an effort to block the referendum.

@FaheemMitha Who knows. All of the above.

@terdon What's Catalonia's normal turnout? You need a lot of no votes staying home to turn 90% into <50. Oddly none of the news stories I've seen answer that, and I've been too lazy to look it up

The violence from the Spanish state was really quite shocking and way over the top and, as a result, many more people are now pro independence than were last month.

@terdon I agree, that doesn't sound too bright. But maybe they thought things might snowball.

So basicaly, what we have here is two groups of nationalist idiots fighting it out and ignoring the people who are in the middle.

If they didn't do something.

@FaheemMitha It was moronic but no more than we've come to expect from Rajoy who has never been known for his intelligence.

@terdon If you say so. I have no idea who that is.

@terdon Yeah, that seems to be the mistake that were it not so, the crisis would not exist.

@derobert Hmm, good question, but the normal turnout would not be representative. This was a plebiscite for independence so many people who never cared to vote for what they would have seen as a puppet, subservient government would have voted here and many who would vote normally wouldn't have.

point is, polls have always shown a support for independence in the high 40s but never a majority and that's what the actual plebiscite showed as well. There were next to no votes against independence, so those people simply didn't vote.

@FaheemMitha President of Spain.

@terdon Still, in order to get it to 50%, you'd need another 40% (80% total turnout!) to vote 90% against. I know our turnout numbers are low in America, but... 80% seems sky-high turnout to me....

Since the whole thing is unconstitutional under Spanish law, suppose Catalonia decided to secede or something on the basis of that. Presumably that would be quite serious for Spain.

@derobert But remember, this isn't an election.

Maybe they were trying to nip it in the bud.

But more importantly, they can't use the turnout to indicate broad popular support. Not for something as momentous as this and not knowing that the numbers align perfecty with what was already known about people's opinions on the subject.

@derobert Not that unusual for Europe, apparently.

@derobert Oe of the curiosities of the rich European countries is their very high voter turnouts.

@FaheemMitha They did. They declared independence and then put it on hold for a month to "open dialogue". The Spanish state ignored that and brought in article 155 of the constitution which gives the Spanish goverment the power to suspend the independence of any of its "independent regions" (kinda like US states, but without thre being an actual federal state). Closer to the UK, actually.

Franco was in power a long time, wasn't he? That kind of thing leaves scars.

Yep

@terdon No, they can't — or well, at least shouldn't. But it's hard to believe the support is actually a minority. Or at least, that it was a minority on that day...

Died in 1975. The Civil War was in the 30s. That's an eternity in modern times.

@terdon Sounds very nasty.

It was, given the turnout. Although, to be fair, the fact that you had cops roaming the streets hitting people would make it hard to judge the true turnout.

@FaheemMitha it was.

Basically, the reaction of the Spanish state gave credence to what had always been an absurd claim to oppression by the Catalans. Suddenly, it ain't so absurd no more.

@terdon If it was close before, that whole national government sent police to beat up voters thing very quickly gets you over 50%...

Honestly, at 90% I sort of wonder if the counting was done accurately.

@derobert Yep. Precisely. Quite appart from being offensive and shocking, it is just plain counterproductive.

Hence the sobriquet moronic.

@derobert Oh no, I don't doubt that. It was a very partisan thing and people on both sides were pretty strung up. They saw the vote as thei basic, fundamental right. You had people spending the night in polling stations to protect them and be sure they got to vote.

Including people I know personally.

So the <50 who are pro independence would have gone out to vote in mass.

@terdon You didn't address the Calalonia tries to pass laws that Spain then declares unconstitutional or tries to overturn or whatever.

And the <50% who are against independence would have stayed home in protest.

The result is what everyone was expecting.

That sounds like a good way to produce ill-feeling.

@terdon So, people you know in the area. Barcelona, presumably. Where were they coming down on in this matter? Or was it a mixed thing?

@FaheemMitha That one\s complicated and I don't have a very good handle on it. Apparently, the Spanish judiciary declared the referendum anti-constitutional and therefore illegal. The Catalan parliament passed a law that (according to mostly Spanish sources) was not legally valid. But I really don't know what happened there, legalese is complicated.

@terdon The article I read cited a bunch of laws that Catalonia passed, which Spain struck down.

@FaheemMitha Mixed. It has split Catalan society down the middle. Breaking up families, friendhips etc. Very painful for all involved.

@FaheemMitha Perhaps. The Catalans have a lot of very valid grievances. Don't get me wrong.

The article said they were socialist-leaning measures. Having looked at them, I'm inclined to agree.

Just not enough to merit a bloody revolution IMO.

The link should not be hard to dig up, if you want it.

@terdon Nothing merits a bloody revolution, imo.

@FaheemMitha Probably. The Spanish goverment is currently a coalition led by center-right (right being more relevant than center) parties, while the Catalan one is mostly left leaning nationalists (yes, they have those there)

Once upon a time there was something called the French Revolution. A bit later there was something called the Russian Revolution.

I think even England had one once.

And a bit before the American one which sort of started it all.

None of those produced joy and jollity.

@FaheemMitha They were the first to kill a reigning monarch,actually. One good thing that Cromwell did.

@terdon True. Though that one was a bit different.

@terdon Possibly. Don't know much about that period.

Me neither. I've just read a few historical novels about it. Nothing scholarly.

But that won't stop me from pontificating!

@FaheemMitha There were a couple of French revolutions. Not just the ~1790 one. (And you could say that one contained a few in itself...)

The French Revolution is generally considered to be a horrible warning on the risks of violent revolutions. Admittedly, some of the commentators may have been biased.

@derobert That might be true. I don't know much about French history either.

@derobert Aye. Same for the Russian ones.

It's hard to, without being a scholar.

I mean, we've all read "A Tale of Two Cities".

I haven't, actually. Keep meaning to. Along with War and Peace and Ulysses.

I will, eventually.

Though it's worth noting that the Revolutionary leaders met a violent end themselves.

Not normally a good sign.

Although A Tale will be a far easier read.

In France I mean.

And everywhere else, usually.

@terdon There are lots of books. :-)

Trotsky comes to mind.

@terdon Indeed, yes.

Similar comments apply to the Russian one. Which was uglier, if anything.

Whoops, it's getting late, I need to rush. Later everyone!

I remember many years ago, watching "Nicolas and Alexandra". And grappling with the strange feeling of feeling sympathy for a royal family.

@terdon Take care.

@terdon Maybe they really should secede.They don't sound like a good fit.

@derobert Are you following the Catalonia thing at all?

I suppose you've never lived in Spain.

@FaheemMitha Yeah, somewhat. Don't have any special knowledge of it, only what I read in the papers.

@derobert I just came on it by accident. But it's been all over the news recently. And I read quite a lot of UK media. The Guardian, for example.

I don't really follow European politics.

Spain is still a monarchy. It's strange.

Last I heard, Catalonia's leader is in exile, and new elections have been called for 21 December. Not sure to what extent Catalonia is actually under the national government's control at the moment (de jure, of course, it's 100%).

@derobert Four (not counting earlier revolts that didn't bring a change of regime). Three that managed to bring down the previous government, and ended up with a return of a monarchic regime. Then a fourth that failed in a bloodbath, but was a link in a chain of events that led to a mostly stable democracy.

@derobert Sounds like they are handling things well. (Sarcasm.)

@derobert 80% turnout for an important referendum would have been slightly on the low side

If half of what that film says is true, all those Goldman Sachs people should be in jail.

It sounds absolutely horrific.

@Gilles Wow... >80% turnout... Such things are possible?

ok, I checked previous figures, 80% would actually have been slightly on the high side for Spain

The referendums establishing democracy after Franco had 78% and 67% turnout

The Brexit referendum had 65% turnout

@Gilles Where would the Storming of the Bastille/Robespierre/Danton one fit into these?

I watched that "Danton" film too.

The Scottish independenence referendum had 82% turnout

Beat me to it, though Wikipedia says 84.59%

@derobert that's of registered voters, if you scroll down there's turnout over eligible voters

@Gilles Ah, ok.

@FaheemMitha That's 1789 (for the storming of the Bastille)

@derobert Yes, my question was, would it be the first in Gilles "Four (not counting earlier revolts that didn't bring a change of regime)".

I'm guessing yes.

@FaheemMitha the storming of the Bastille is the event that started the first and most important one

@Gilles Yes, that's what I thought.

And then wackiness ensued.

Danton and Robespierre's heyday was a couple of years into that revolution

Bad time to be living in France, I'd say.

@Gilles I thought they were involved from the beginning.

@FaheemMitha they were, but their heyday was 1792–1794

@Gilles I see.

@Gilles Yes, neither of them managed to keep his head through the mess.

Literally.

At the beginning of the revolution, a lot of people wanted a British-style regime, with the bourgeoisie getting political power that was commensurate with their economic power, in the form of a constitutional monarchy.

one main opponent was the king, who really didn't want to give up absolute power.

@FaheemMitha you can pick up Revolutions Podcast which did quite a few episodes on the first French revolution (and is now doing ones on the 1848 one, and all the other revolution in 1848). Same guy also did a podcast on the history of Rome, also interesting.

@derobert Thanks for the link. A podcast is purely audio, right? Never figured out why that name.

I suppose you could listen while doing the dishes or something.

Also did the American, British, Haitian, and the South/Central American ones from Spain.

@FaheemMitha yeah, just audio. iPod + broadcast = podcast

@derobert Sounds comprehensive.

@derobert iPod -> Apple -> Yuck.

For a while, it was extremely popular. Hence the name, even when played on other devices.

@derobert I see. I didn't know the origin of that term. Thanks.

@derobert I suppose you load it into a portable player and listen to in while travelling and stuff.

@FaheemMitha I use a phone

@derobert oh

But yeah, while traveling, out walking, doing chores, cooking, etc.

I would have thought a custom player would be more convenient.

I suppose the ipod and their relatives still exist.

@FaheemMitha Not really. Especially since it'd be another thing to carry around.

Also, the phone already has connectivity — which is great for getting podcasts on to it.

Not sure if the iPod still exists. There are some other players... e.g., small, cheap flash ones are somewhat popular. Much lighter than a phone.

@derobert ok.

@FaheemMitha ubuntu-standard lists it as a "recommends" dependency.

@EliahKagan At least in Debian, the options for Priority are required, important, standard, optional, extra.

That's separate from dependency relationships, isn't it?

As I understand it, in both Debian and Ubuntu, each package is classified by "Priority" as you say, and this can be viewed by running dpkg --status packagename. When I run dpkg --status ufw, it does shot it as having "optional" priority, as in Debian. However, I don't think the Priority field in a package has the same relationship to Ubuntu overall as it does to Debian overall.

Numerous "optional" packages are present on nearly all Ubuntu systems because they are included in several important tasks, and also specified as dependencies of the corresponding metapackages. If Ubuntu is installed from the server or minimal ISOs or the old alternate ISO, then debian-installer runs and tasks are installed through tasksel. If the graphical installer Ubiquity is used, the situation is more complicated (from a Debian perspective anyway).

However, conceptually speaking, we Ubuntu users often talk about various ubuntu- metapackages as defining what goes into each "flavor" of Ubuntu.

So, aside from the even more minimalistic Ubuntu Core, I believe it is accurate to say that Ubuntu systems should always have at least the packages that depend on ubuntu-minimal with a "depends" relationship. Not all Ubuntu systems have that task or metapackage installed, but if not they usually have another one that covers what it provides and more.

help.ubuntu.com/community/… (that's not a complete list though)

* it does show it as having

@EliahKagan I realise the Priority for a package is not necessarily very relevant wrt whether it actually gets installed or not.

As you say, it depends on the details of the installation.

That's true even of Debian.

Yes.

I guess this is not really a difference, except that in Ubuntu a number of additional tasks and metapackages have been defined. For example, Ubuntu has the lxde metapackage from Debian but also a lubuntu-desktop metapackage, which is the generally recommended way to install LXDE on an Ubuntu system that doesn't have it.

And Debian has metapackages too. Although I don't use them much.

Mostly because they just install too much stuff.

I suppose hard drive space (even SSDs) are so large it doesn't matter that much, but, for one thing, the more packages you have installed, the less idea you have of what your system is doing, and the more the possibilities of bad interactions.

I have in mind, for example, that wacky KDE database search thing, nepomux or something. It's constant hard drive searches would really mess up I/O.

Something called "semantic search".

Maybe ask people first whether they want their hard drive constantly hammered for no particular reason.

On the other hand, I definitely have encountered situations where it seems like the default choices are unreasonable. I had a USB flash drive with a huge file on it, and every time I plugged it in, an attempt was made to read the file in its entirety to produce a hash of it to be associated with a thumbnail for it. This was on Lubuntu 16.04 LTS, which is supposed to be lightweight... and other than that experience of mine, I did find it to be lightweight.