Okay, working on Zen-not-so-mini now, lol, starting with my 365 mb iso and building on that, have added some new stuff already after a gawdawful amount of testing different programs and features. Am going back to Exaile as it has some features I just can't get from the lighterweight players (I gotta say, if Deadbeef had a function to import music library, it would be my choice for sure, sound is good and has the best equalizer of any i've tried.
Added:
Exaile
Streamripper- this little cli program kicks butt, with a little tweaking it works great, and now Exaile can use it, though there is an issue of Exaile not saving preferences for file placement, it defaults back to your home file even if you change it, will try to fix somehow...arrgh.
Photorec-file recovery, TestDisk is already included with Zen, so made sense to add this neat little companion program.
Asunder-Cd ripper, I tried a bunch of others, Asunder is very lightweight and worked flawlessly, I have made it the default action to open it when a CD is inserted instead of opening the music player, most of the time the only reason I put a music CD in my computer is to rip it, not to listen directly, so this action seems to make sense. I know rubyripper is probably better for an audiophile, but Asunder is ten times smaller, and works great for everyday use.
Thinking of adding a DVD ripper, there are a lot of limitations to most, and some work better than others, most are complex to use, and don't have the capability to overcome all the DRM stuff (seems like only DVDfab fer windows will do everything), open to suggestion here, but so far,
Acidrip seems like the easiest and by far the smallest, it ripped a DVD for me with no problem once I figured out how to tweak the settings. I know it's no longer maintained, but there's a lot of programs out there like that, some of them work perfectly with no real reason to take them any further. I personally don't keep big HD's around to save a bunch of movie files, so don't much need a ripper, but I figure a lot of folks do, any thoughts/feedback on this subject are very much welcomed.
Probably going to add Clamav-Clamtk for AV, don't really need it much myself since I do run linux
, but it actually works great so far in practice, when used on the liveCD to help fix/recover a windoze machine, so if i'm gonna lug around a livecd here and there, might as well have it on there just in case (even though i'm cringing at adding 60-70 mb's just for this one program)
Do most of you even use a photo program like Shotwell? I never do, cdrkit allows my machine to instantly recognize and mount my camera, and I just go to the file and choose what I want to keep manually and delete the rest, but to be of use to other people who I give a copy too, perhaps I should add Shotwell or some other program? I was thinking that having the ability to modify, crop, remove red-eye etc. might be one of the main reasons to have such a program, the alternative is to add Gimp to the iso which will do everything one could want, but Gimp is another big big program, and pretty much no one i've ever installed gimp or Photoshop for, ever uses it. Feedback on this issue very much needed.
Zenmap/nmap- probably going to add this back in, it's not something most people will use, but it's very small and I use it and it's just a groovy little thing
Xterm- I deleted this, and still don't understand a use for it, anybody have a compelling reason to include it?
Office programs- sheesh, I hate 'em. Abiword and gnumeric are still better than the comparable progs in Libre,OO, or micros**t office. But does anyone use any of them at home whatsoever? Gedit is unbeatable to me for a text editor for everyday personal use. And who uses spreadsheets at home?
Games- Gnome-games is a big batch of 50 mb worth of stuff, but that gets you all the most common time-wasters, lol, and they all work pretty good, even the chess program is tolerable.
Printing- I could add Cups, but really, what good does that do unless you add the whole task-printing package? And that's 450 mb. I think if you have internet access, you just add these things yourself. But cups will recognize another linux-machine that's got a printer attached on a network and utilize it's drivers to print, cool feature, so i'm considering adding the cups package for that reason, and it's only 12 mb's or so, any thoughts on this one?
Samba- f**k samba. nuff said.
Torrents- I look at torrents the same way I do peer-to-peer, great way to get virused by some little troll douchebag. But I do understand that some people use and need them. I am unwilling however, to experiment to find the best one, but I would be willing to include a very small, lightweight, gtk-based app that is easily configurable and above all, reliable, and also as secure as these things can get. Suggestions very welcome.
Any other areas that should be covered in a fairly complete basic system?
Thanks y'all!
Home
I'd refrain from deleting system env locales... basically, any directory under /usr/share/locale containing stuff like LC_NAME, LC_ADDRESS, LC_TIME and so forth... that is, everything in the above list except /usr/share/locale/be-tarask (that one, you can safely remove as it only holds *.mo files, i.e. translation files)
looks like the iGnome is coming to Zen this year. (but not on my box 
