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
automatic
and some are not.