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Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What is the best course of action?

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  Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What is  the best course of action? Stella Ashburne <rewefie@gmx.com> - 2022-02-12 17:30 +0100
    Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What is  the best course of action? Bijan Soleymani <bijan@psq.com> - 2022-02-12 17:40 +0100
      Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What  is the best course of action? Stella Ashburne <rewefie@gmx.com> - 2022-02-12 22:40 +0100
        Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What is  the best course of action? David <bouncingcats@gmail.com> - 2022-02-12 23:30 +0100
          Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What  is the best course of action? Stella Ashburne <rewefie@gmx.com> - 2022-02-13 07:40 +0100
            Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What is  the best course of action? Andy Smith <andy@strugglers.net> - 2022-02-13 12:00 +0100
    Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What is  the best course of action? David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2022-02-13 01:40 +0100
      Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What  is the best course of action? Stella Ashburne <rewefie@gmx.com> - 2022-02-13 07:40 +0100
        Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What is  the best course of action? Andy Smith <andy@strugglers.net> - 2022-02-13 12:00 +0100
        Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What is  the best course of action? David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2022-02-13 18:10 +0100
          Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What  is the best course of action? Stella Ashburne <rewefie@gmx.com> - 2022-02-14 11:20 +0100
            Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What is  the best course of action? "Andrew M.A. Cater" <amacater@einval.com> - 2022-02-14 17:30 +0100
              Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What is the best course of action? Emanuel Berg <moasenwood@zoho.eu> - 2022-02-15 08:20 +0100
            Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What is  the best course of action? David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2022-02-15 00:20 +0100
              Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What is  the best course of action? <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2022-02-15 07:50 +0100
                Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What is  the best course of action? David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2022-02-15 17:10 +0100
                  Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What is  the best course of action? <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2022-02-15 18:10 +0100
                Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What  is the best course of action? Stella Ashburne <rewefie@gmx.com> - 2022-02-15 18:30 +0100
                  Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What is  the best course of action? <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2022-02-15 18:40 +0100
              Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What  is the best course of action? Stella Ashburne <rewefie@gmx.com> - 2022-02-15 18:40 +0100
                Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What is  the best course of action? <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2022-02-15 19:00 +0100
                  Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What  is the best course of action? Stella Ashburne <rewefie@gmx.com> - 2022-02-15 19:10 +0100
                    Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What is  the best course of action? <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2022-02-15 21:30 +0100

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#245285 — Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What is the best course of action?

I did a minimal install of LXQt:

sudo apt install lxqt-core lightdm

and discovered that the following two packages were installed as well:

libthai-data/stable,now 0.1.28-3 all [installed,automatic]
libthai0/stable,now 0.1.28-3 amd64 [installed,automatic]

*I do not speak or write Thai*

When I did the following

sudo apt remove libthai*

I was very surprised to see that many packages that I think are essential to running Debian properly would be removed if I answered "Yes" to the question "Do you want to continue?"

What should I do? What is the best course of action?

Below is the output of sudo apt remove libthai*

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Note, selecting 'libthai0' for glob 'libthai*'
Note, selecting 'libthai-data' for glob 'libthai*'
Note, selecting 'libthai-dev' for glob 'libthai*'
Note, selecting 'libthai-doc' for glob 'libthai*'
Package 'libthai-dev' is not installed, so not removed
Package 'libthai-doc' is not installed, so not removed
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  adwaita-icon-theme at-spi2-core cpp cpp-10 cups-pk-helper fonts-quicksand
  gir1.2-atk-1.0 gir1.2-freedesktop gir1.2-gdkpixbuf-2.0 gir1.2-glib-2.0
  gir1.2-harfbuzz-0.0 gir1.2-notify-0.7 gir1.2-packagekitglib-1.0
  gir1.2-polkit-1.0 gir1.2-secret-1 gnome-accessibility-themes
  gnome-keyring-pkcs11 gnome-themes-extra gnome-themes-extra-data
  gparted-common gsfonts gsfonts-x11 gtk2-engines-pixbuf i965-va-driver
  intel-media-va-driver libaom0 libappstream4 libass9 libatk-bridge2.0-0
  libatk1.0-0 libatk1.0-data libatkmm-1.6-1v5 libatspi2.0-0 libavutil56
  libblas3 libbs2b0 libcairo-gobject2 libcairo2 libcairomm-1.0-1v5
  libcodec2-0.9 libcolord2 libcurl3-gnutls libdatrie1 libdav1d4 libepoxy0
  libfftw3-double3 libflite1 libgdk-pixbuf-xlib-2.0-0 libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0
  libgfortran5 libgirepository-1.0-1 libglibmm-2.4-1v5 libgme0 libgomp1
  libgsm1 libgstreamer1.0-0 libgtk-3-common libgtk2.0-common libigdgmm11
  libisl23 libjpeg-turbo-progs liblapack3 liblightdm-gobject-1-0 liblilv-0-0
  libmfx1 libmp3lame0 libmpc3 libmpfr6 libmpg123-0 libmysofa1
  libnet-dbus-perl libnorm1 libnotify4 libnuma1 libopenjp2-7 libopenmpt0
  libpackagekit-glib2-18 libpam-gnome-keyring libpgm-5.3-0 libpixman-1-0
  libplymouth5 libpocketsphinx3 libpostproc55 libquadmath0 librabbitmq4
  librest-0.7-0 librubberband2 libsamplerate0 libserd-0-0 libshine3
  libsigc++-2.0-0v5 libsnappy1v5 libsord-0-0 libsoup-gnome2.4-1 libsoxr0
  libspeex1 libsphinxbase3 libsratom-0-0 libsrt1.4-gnutls libssh-gcrypt-4
  libstartup-notification0 libstemmer0d libswresample3 libswscale5 libtheora0
  libtie-ixhash-perl libturbojpeg0 libtwolame0 libunwind8 libva-drm2
  libva-x11-2 libva2 libvdpau-va-gl1 libvdpau1 libvidstab1.1 libvorbisfile3
  libvpx6 libwavpack1 libwnck-3-common libx11-protocol-perl libx264-160
  libx265-192 libxatracker2 libxfce4ui-common libxfce4util-bin
  libxfce4util-common libxfce4util7 libxfconf-0-3 libxfont2 libxklavier16
  libxml-parser-perl libxml-twig-perl libxml-xpathengine-perl libxpresent1
  libxres1 libxvidcore4 libxvmc1 libyaml-0-2 libzmq5 libzvbi-common libzvbi0
  mesa-va-drivers mesa-vdpau-drivers ocl-icd-libopencl1 p11-kit
  p11-kit-modules p7zip p7zip-full packagekit packagekit-tools plymouth
  pocketsphinx-en-us python3-cairo python3-certifi python3-chardet
  python3-cups python3-cupshelpers python3-dbus python3-gi python3-idna
  python3-pkg-resources python3-requests python3-smbc python3-urllib3
  python3-xdg qt5-style-plugin-cleanlooks qt5-style-plugin-motif
  qt5-style-plugin-plastique system-config-printer-udev unzip va-driver-all
  vdpau-driver-all x11-xserver-utils xauth xdg-utils xfconf xfonts-base
  xfonts-encodings xfonts-utils xscreensaver-data xserver-common xserver-xorg
  xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-libinput
  xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-legacy xserver-xorg-video-all
  xserver-xorg-video-amdgpu xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
  xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-qxl
  xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.
The following additional packages will be installed:
  lxqt-themes
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  desktop-base ffmpegthumbnailer galternatives gcr gir1.2-gtk-3.0
  gir1.2-pango-1.0 gnome-keyring gpa gparted libavcodec58 libavfilter7
  libavformat58 libayatana-ido3-0.4-0 libayatana-indicator3-7 libchromaprint1
  libffmpegthumbnailer4v5 libgail-common libgail18 libgcr-ui-3-1 libgtk-3-
0
  libgtk-3-bin libgtk2.0-0 libgtk2.0-bin libgtkmm-3.0-1v5 libpango-1.0-0
  libpangocairo-1.0-0 libpangoft2-1.0-0 libpangomm-1.4-1v5 libpangoxft-1.0-0
  librsvg2-2 librsvg2-common libthai-data libthai0 libwnck-3-0 libxfce4ui-2-0
  lightdm lightdm-gtk-greeter lxqt-branding-debian lxqt-theme-debian
  pinentry-gnome3 plymouth-label qt5-gtk-platformtheme qt5-gtk2-platformtheme
  qt5-style-plugins system-config-printer system-config-printer-common
  xarchiver xfwm4 xfwm4-theme-breeze xscreensaver
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  lxqt-themes
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 50 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 3,178 kB of archives.
After this operation, 97.5 MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

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#245286

On 2022-02-12 11:03, Stella Ashburne wrote:
> What should I do? What is the best course of action?

It seems that basic X windows or GUI apps are compiled with libthai support.

This is probably done in a way that they won't run without it being 
installed (failed to load due to missing library).

If you remove it you probably won't be able to run those programs.

It would seem your options are:
1. Keep libthai installed

2. Remove it the way you are trying to do and lose all those GUI apps 
and libraries

3. Remove it some sneaky that only removes libthai but leaves everything 
else the same, and have things break and or apt/dpkg complain.

Bijan

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#245301 — Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What is the best course of action?

Hi,

> Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2022 at 12:35 AM
> From: "Bijan Soleymani" <bijan@psq.com>
> To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
> Subject: Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What is the best course of action?
>
>
> 3. Remove it some sneaky that only removes libthai but leaves everything
> else the same, and have things break and or apt/dpkg complain.
>
Could you show me how to do it please? Thanks.

Stella

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#245305

On Sun, 13 Feb 2022 at 08:33, Stella Ashburne <rewefie@gmx.com> wrote:

> > 3. Remove it some sneaky that only removes libthai but leaves everything
> > else the same, and have things break and or apt/dpkg complain.
> >
> Could you show me how to do it please? Thanks.

Hi Stella,

With a small effort, you can try something like this:
   https://wiki.debian.org/Packaging/HackingDependencies

But, why do you care? There may be many packages installed
that you will never notice that you will never use.
Why pick on this one?

libthai appears to not occupy much disk space:

$ for n in $(dpkg -L libthai-data libthai0) ; do if [[ -f "$n" ]] &&
[[ ! -h "$n" ]] ; then ls -l "$n" ; fi ; done
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 9314 2019-08-27 10:56
/usr/share/doc/libthai-data/changelog.Debian.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 28215 2018-08-01 15:08
/usr/share/doc/libthai-data/changelog.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2450 2019-08-27 10:56
/usr/share/doc/libthai-data/copyright
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 579256 2019-08-27 10:56 /usr/share/libthai/thbrk.tri
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 41000 2019-08-27 10:56
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libthai.so.0.3.1
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 9314 2019-08-27 10:56
/usr/share/doc/libthai0/changelog.Debian.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 28215 2018-08-01 15:08
/usr/share/doc/libthai0/changelog.gz

So there's hardly any win for the effort.

Alternatively, don't install lxqt-core. Only install what you want.
Some ideas here:
  https://wiki.debian.org/ReduceDebian

Naturally this kind of thing takes time and effort which you may
or may not find is worthwhile depending on your goals, and
what you choose to spend productive time doing.

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#245315 — Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What is the best course of action?

Hello Dearie

I am happy to hear from you again and hope that everything's fine with you and your family.

> Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2022 at 6:23 AM
> From: "David" <bouncingcats@gmail.com>
> To: "debian-user" <debian-user@lists.debian.org>
> Subject: Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What is the best course of action?
>
>
> But, why do you care? There may be many packages installed
> that you will never notice that you will never use.
> Why pick on this one?
>
> libthai appears to not occupy much disk space:
>
>
> So there's hardly any win for the effort.
>

Indeed, you asked a very pertinent question.

"Why pick on this one?", you asked.

It just happens that this file was in my installed Debian. I have checked for other non-English files and found none other than Thai files.

"But, why do you care?" you wondered.

I care because I am worried that it may contain poorly designed code or backdoors that enable root privileges without my explicit intervention. Nobody has bothered to audit the Thai files that I mentioned for integrity and probable malicious activity.

> Alternatively, don't install lxqt-core. Only install what you want.
> Some ideas here:
>   https://wiki.debian.org/ReduceDebian
>
> Naturally this kind of thing takes time and effort which you may
> or may not find is worthwhile depending on your goals, and
> what you choose to spend productive time doing.
>
You're right. I don't have the time nor the intellectual capacity to customize my Debian setup. I'll just have to look for other ways to install a custom Debian without foreign-language files.

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#245324

On Sun, Feb 13, 2022 at 07:31:58AM +0100, Stella Ashburne wrote:
> Hello Dearie
> 
> I am happy to hear from you again and hope that everything's fine with you and your family.
> 
> > Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2022 at 6:23 AM
> > From: "David" <bouncingcats@gmail.com>
> > To: "debian-user" <debian-user@lists.debian.org>
> > Subject: Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What is the best course of action?
> >
> >
> > But, why do you care? There may be many packages installed
> > that you will never notice that you will never use.
> > Why pick on this one?
> >
> > libthai appears to not occupy much disk space:
> >
> >
> > So there's hardly any win for the effort.
> >
> 
> Indeed, you asked a very pertinent question.
> 
> "Why pick on this one?", you asked.
> 
> It just happens that this file was in my installed Debian. I have checked for other non-English files and found none other than Thai files.
> 
> "But, why do you care?" you wondered.
> 
> I care because I am worried that it may contain poorly designed code or backdoors that enable root privileges without my explicit intervention. Nobody has bothered to audit the Thai files that I mentioned for integrity and probable malicious activity.
> 
> > Alternatively, don't install lxqt-core. Only install what you want.
> > Some ideas here:
> >   https://wiki.debian.org/ReduceDebian
> >
> > Naturally this kind of thing takes time and effort which you may
> > or may not find is worthwhile depending on your goals, and
> > what you choose to spend productive time doing.
> >
> You're right. I don't have the time nor the intellectual capacity
> to customize my Debian setup. I'll just have to look for other
> ways to install a custom Debian without foreign-language files.

I think there is a more fundamental issue here, that may call in to
question whether Debian is suitable for you at all.

You focus on "foreign-language files" perhaps because with limited
experience these stand out to you as being worthless to you, so a
prime candidate for removal in the goal of having the most
slimmed-down and therefore secure operating system.

The problem is that this is antithetical to the entire way that
Debian is designed. Since Debian distributes binary packages,
someone at some point has to decide what optional features each
package will have baked into it, and everyone gets those (and all
their dependencies) whether they use those features or not.

Now in some cases the programs themselves can detect at runtime what
features are present and disable those that aren't. This enables the
package maintainer to split up the package into a core package and
several optional packages (might be "Recommends" rather than
"Depends" in Debian parlance). So in that case there is some degree
of control over what features are present.

Also there are some packages that can be compiled in such different
ways that they warrant having different variants with different
compile-time options. For example, there is exim-daemon-light which
does the basic job, but for a more feature-rich experience you'd
want exim-daemon-heavy, which is the same application but with many
extras compiled in and a much bigger dependency list as a result.

But these examples are outliers and most moderately complex packages
in Debian have just one variant and no modularity, so the maintainer
has erred on the side of features and enabled pretty much
everything.

Therefore what I am saying is, Debian starts from a position of
enabling and installing a lot of dependencies that you may never
use, so if you don't like that, you don't like Debian. I am
suggesting that the only reason why this isn't more obvious to you
is that you probably don't notice what (the fictional example)
libfoobarbaz3 might be, but you DO notice libthai and wonder why you
have Thai things on your system. Yet both things have the
possibility to include buggy code that an attacker might leverage.

The task you seem to want to set yourself, that of auditing what is
the minimal software requirement and only installing that, is a big
one. I am not convinced that it's a good use of time and on the
whole the risk proposition of having unused and unaudited code
sitting on your storage isn't that bad especially if you take other
steps to improve security ("defence in depth"). However, it is your
time to use as you please. I am suggesting that if you want to do
this, Debian may not be a great place to start from.

If you want an operating system where you have high levels of
customisation over how each and every package is compiled, such that
you can disable every feature that you don't need, I think you want
a source-based operating system like Gentoo, NixOS or Guix. Or you
could go for one like Arch where the core operating system is quite
small but you can build additional software to your whim:

    https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Arch_Build_System

If that "ports" style of system appeals, then you may even consider
going for something BSD-based like OpenBSD which tries to have a
very small and security-audited base OS, with additional software
compiled and added by the user through ports.

Cheers,
Andy

-- 
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

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#245310

On Sat 12 Feb 2022 at 17:03:06 (+0100), Stella Ashburne wrote:
> I did a minimal install of LXQt:
> 
> sudo apt install lxqt-core lightdm
> 
> and discovered that the following two packages were installed as well:
> 
> libthai-data/stable,now 0.1.28-3 all [installed,automatic]
> libthai0/stable,now 0.1.28-3 amd64 [installed,automatic]

Installing those two would add 170 more packages to my system, so
I presume quite a lot more besides those two were installed on yours.

> *I do not speak or write Thai*

Nor I.

> When I did the following
> 
> sudo apt remove libthai*
> 
> I was very surprised to see that many packages that I think are essential to running Debian properly would be removed if I answered "Yes" to the question "Do you want to continue?"
> 
> What should I do?

You should type:

$ apt-cache rdepends libthai0

and notice that the printed list includes libpango-1.0-0.
So now type:

$ apt-cache rdepends libpango-1.0-0 | less

and that shows the cause of your problem. Whether or not
you read Thai, in order to typeset a document that contains,
say, an aphorism in a foreign language, you need to at least
know how to lay out that language, which includes how its
words break or are spaced.

>From a very superficial reading of APT-ish metadata, I'd guess
that you might have spotted the language Thai because there
are some wrinkles in pango's support for it, and perhaps those
led to libthai* being linked to it.

Anyway, the upshot is that you'll have a job to run a system
without pango's support for text.

> What is the best course of action?

Leave it. Worry about bigger issues than the odd library.

Cheers,
David.

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#245316 — Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What is the best course of action?

Hello Dearie

> Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2022 at 8:34 AM
> From: "David Wright" <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk>
> To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
> Subject: Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What is the best course of action?
>
>
> Installing those two would add 170 more packages to my system, so

OMG

>
>
> > What is the best course of action?
>
> Leave it. Worry about bigger issues than the odd library.
>
For all you know, the odd library which is this Thai file in question may contain poorly designed code, ill-intentioned designed code or backdoors that enable(s) root privileges without a user's direct intervention.

Best regards.

Stella

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#245323

Hello,

On Sun, Feb 13, 2022 at 07:36:55AM +0100, Stella Ashburne wrote:
> > From: "David Wright" <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk>
> > Leave it. Worry about bigger issues than the odd library.
> >
> For all you know, the odd library which is this Thai file in
> question may contain poorly designed code, ill-intentioned
> designed code or backdoors that enable(s) root privileges without
> a user's direct intervention.

Wait until you find out that every single Intel CPU in the world has
a full install of Minix OS running inside of it.

General computing - it'll be the death of us!

Cheers,
Andy

-- 
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

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#245339

On Sun 13 Feb 2022 at 07:36:55 (+0100), Stella Ashburne wrote:
> Hello Dearie
> 
> > Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2022 at 8:34 AM
> > From: "David Wright" <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk>
> > To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
> > Subject: Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What is the best course of action?
> >
> > Installing those two would add 170 more packages to my system, so
> 
> OMG
> 
> > > What is the best course of action?
> >
> > Leave it. Worry about bigger issues than the odd library.
> >
> For all you know, the odd library which is this Thai file in question may contain poorly designed code, ill-intentioned designed code or backdoors that enable(s) root privileges without a user's direct intervention.

Tee-hee. We Brits can sneak our code into Debian without arousing
suspicion — we just label it "english". That's when we bother to
label it at all — Most of it just slips in as the default language
of Debian. And Linux. And computing in general. And the world.

Cheers,
David.

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#245363 — Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What is the best course of action?

Dearie

> Sent: Monday, February 14, 2022 at 1:02 AM
> From: "David Wright" <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk>
> To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
> Subject: Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What is the best course of action?
>
> 
> Tee-hee. We Brits can sneak our code into Debian without arousing
> suspicion — we just label it "english". That's when we bother to
> label it at all — 

Indeed and the world is fortunate to have James and Jane Bond with their sidekick Q to maintain world peace.

Over here, we can count on Jason Bourne, Jack Ryan and Jack Reacher to do the same job.

In more recent memory, the real hero is undoubtedly Edward Snowden who revealed to the world the extent of NSA's snooping. 

> Most of it just slips in as the default language
> of Debian.

Does Debian have a default language? What is it? Latin? Esperanto? American English?

Best regards.

Stella

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#245378

On Mon, Feb 14, 2022 at 11:18:12AM +0100, Stella Ashburne wrote:
> Dearie
> 
> > Most of it just slips in as the default language
> > of Debian.
> 
> Does Debian have a default language? What is it? Latin? Esperanto? American English?
> 

Probably N. European English as learned in school - which covers most denizens
of the UK, Ireland, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Switzerland  - and also 
Australia and NZ (and Commonwealth English - which is largely influenced
by British spelling - Canadian is a hybrid spelling.)

If English is not your first language, then your English will normally be
determined by where your English teacher studied.

This question came up - I think on debian-devel many years ago - and somebody
said, as I remember it: - "British/American English - it really doesn't matter 
if you'll accept bad English" - and I think that's the right attitude.

Debian does support many languages - but the level of translation and 
percentage of wiki/www.debian.org is significantly higher for some than for
others.

With every good wish, as ever,

Andy Cater

> Best regards.
> 
> Stella
> 

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#245404 — Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What is the best course of action?

Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:

>> Does Debian have a default language? What is it? Latin?
>> Esperanto? American English?
>
> Probably N. European English as learned in school - which
> covers most denizens of the UK, Ireland, Netherlands,
> Germany, Austria, Switzerland [...]

Haha, English is thought all over the WORLD in schools :)

UK and Ireland BTW LOL :)

> This question came up - I think on debian-devel many years
> ago - and somebody said, as I remember it: -
> "British/American English - it really doesn't matter if
> you'll accept bad English" - and I think that's the
> right attitude.

Yeah, US English with all about computers that are
about computers. Obviously spellcheckers for different
languages if you want to spellcheck personal mails and stuff
in whatever language. Just because you are using a computer
doesn't mean what you do is _about_ computers, so then it is
OK to use whatever language.

But all programming, scripts etc that does things with
computers - US English. So no "colour" even, please. Why do it
wrong when it is so easy to do it right?

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

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#245390

On Mon 14 Feb 2022 at 11:18:12 (+0100), Stella Ashburne wrote:
> > Sent: Monday, February 14, 2022 at 1:02 AM
> > From: "David Wright" <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk>
> > 
> > Tee-hee. We Brits can sneak our code into Debian without arousing
> > suspicion — we just label it "english". That's when we bother to
> > label it at all — 
> 
> Indeed and the world is fortunate to have James and Jane Bond with their sidekick Q to maintain world peace.
> 
> Over here, we can count on Jason Bourne, Jack Ryan and Jack Reacher to do the same job.
> 
> In more recent memory, the real hero is undoubtedly Edward Snowden who revealed to the world the extent of NSA's snooping. 
> 
> > Most of it just slips in as the default language
> > of Debian.
> 
> Does Debian have a default language? What is it? Latin? Esperanto? American English?

Perhaps the simplest way of answering this is to configure
your system with /etc/default/locale file as LANG=C.UTF-8,
and unset any specific i18n or L10n settings and see what
you get. Perhaps try again in 50 years: it could differ.

But in view of that single letter in your reply, and another
post on d-u, I'll not bother to continue this thread. I'm
just not interested in taking what looks to me like a
xenophobic approach to foreign language scripts or anything
else in Debian.

People who are genuinely concerned about security vulnerabilities
normally work on fixing them, rather than spreading insinuations
of conspiracies.

Cheers,
David.

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#245402

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

On Mon, Feb 14, 2022 at 05:14:36PM -0600, David Wright wrote:

[...]

> Perhaps the simplest way of answering this is to configure
> your system with /etc/default/locale file as LANG=C.UTF-8,
> and unset any specific i18n or L10n settings and see what
> you get. Perhaps try again in 50 years: it could differ.

I guess that is an avenue of investigation. still, I think
packages like a modern Web browser will pull in such
dependencies, either through the distro or (worse) bringing
in their own versions. A browser can't "know" which scripts
a Web page brings along and will insist in rendering Unicode
correctly.

> But in view of that single letter in your reply, and another
> post on d-u, I'll not bother to continue this thread. I'm
> just not interested in taking what looks to me like a
> xenophobic approach to foreign language scripts or anything
> else in Debian.

Please, hold your horses. Lack of knowledge sometimes might
come across as "xenophobic" -- things sometimes clear themselves
once knowledge grows. Give us people a chance to learn :-)

Cheers
-- 
t

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#245418

On Tue 15 Feb 2022 at 07:48:57 (+0100), tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 14, 2022 at 05:14:36PM -0600, David Wright wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
> > Perhaps the simplest way of answering this is to configure
> > your system with /etc/default/locale file as LANG=C.UTF-8,
> > and unset any specific i18n or L10n settings and see what
> > you get. Perhaps try again in 50 years: it could differ.
> 
> I guess that is an avenue of investigation. still, I think
> packages like a modern Web browser will pull in such
> dependencies, either through the distro or (worse) bringing
> in their own versions. A browser can't "know" which scripts
> a Web page brings along and will insist in rendering Unicode
> correctly.

Oh, that's part of the investigation too. For example, I just typed
$ less /home/auser/.cache/mozilla/firefox/sole-random.default/cache2/entries/0*
and kept pressing → (the zero avoids too long a command line,
and → implicitly answers "no" to "binary file.  See it anyway?").
That which isn't random text or numbers is almost all in the usual
"North Atlantic" English. For me, that it. Others might have
different results.

I'm afraid I won't be around in 50 years time.

> > But in view of that single letter in your reply, and another
> > post on d-u, I'll not bother to continue this thread. I'm
> > just not interested in taking what looks to me like a
> > xenophobic approach to foreign language scripts or anything
> > else in Debian.
> 
> Please, hold your horses. Lack of knowledge sometimes might
> come across as "xenophobic" -- things sometimes clear themselves
> once knowledge grows. Give us people a chance to learn :-)

Look back: the OP has had plenty of help from me, and may well
in future. Just not in this thread, not beating up on libthai*
just because they're the only "non-English files" found by
the OP.

Cheers,
David.

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#245424

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

On Tue, Feb 15, 2022 at 10:09:35AM -0600, David Wright wrote:
> On Tue 15 Feb 2022 at 07:48:57 (+0100), tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:

> > Please, hold your horses. Lack of knowledge sometimes might
> > come across as "xenophobic" [...]

> Look back: the OP has had plenty of help from me, and may well
> in future. Just not in this thread, not beating up on libthai*
> just because they're the only "non-English files" found by
> the OP.

Was just a shy attempt on my part. If I've failed to convince you,
it's my failure.

Nevermind

Cheers
-- 
t

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#245425 — Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What is the best course of action?

Dearie,

Thanks for your reply.

> Sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2022 at 2:48 PM
> From: tomas@tuxteam.de
> To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
> Subject: Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What is the best course of action?
>
>
> Please, hold your horses. Lack of knowledge sometimes might
> come across as "xenophobic" -- things sometimes clear themselves
> once knowledge grows. Give us people a chance to learn :-)
>
We have to make allowance for the fact that some people are quick to judge others....

Best regards.

Stella

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#245427

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

On Tue, Feb 15, 2022 at 06:26:18PM +0100, Stella Ashburne wrote:
> Dearie,
> 
> Thanks for your reply.

[...]

> We have to make allowance for the fact that some people are quick to judge others....

Right. But we have to make allowance for the fact that no one of us
is right all the time ;-)

Cheers
-- 
t

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#245426 — Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What is the best course of action?

> Sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2022 at 7:14 AM
> From: "David Wright" <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk>
> To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
> Subject: Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What is the best course of action?
>
>
> But in view of that single letter in your reply, and another
> post on d-u, I'll not bother to continue this thread. I'm
> just not interested in taking what looks to me like a
> xenophobic approach to foreign language scripts or anything
> else in Debian.
>
My dear David,

I am surprised you are quick to pass judgments on people. I don't think that's you.

Me a xenophobe? Nothing can be further from the truth.

One of my parents is a diplomat and I spent a significant part of my childhood and adolescence in Asia and Latin America.

> People who are genuinely concerned about security vulnerabilities
> normally work on fixing them, rather than spreading insinuations
> of conspiracies.
>
You are right. I would fix them if I had the knowledge and competency.

Best regards.

Stella

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