Generally what is installed as a base system?

[Bviper]

I know this is VERY dependent on which distro is chosen but as a general rule of thumb on most major distributions what is installed when no "extra" packages are selected. I consider extra any other option besides "base system" including gnome, apache, etc.

The reason I'm asking this is I'm currently running a Cent OS 5 web server and its always bothered me that I don't know EVERY piece of software installed on it.

Also is there any advantage from installing from source rather than Yum or apt? Die hard linux users insist that installing from source is better than a package manager, but I just don't see the benefit besides a headache.

[bigtomrodney]

You may not like this answer but there is no real base system. Really a kernel and a shell is the most basic you can get but the amount of functionality you need is dependent on what you install. Some people need an X server, orther running servers may not. Also given the modular nature of Linux there will be many packages you may not consider necessary but are required for other packages that you do need.

From the source point of view it really isn't as big a deal as you might think. A lot of people like to build from source but even in the most extreme cases I have heard of only 15% performance increase. Rebuilding an application with specific CPU flags enabled really only makes a difference if the application requires it or there are several CPU extensions that you don't want to make use of.

Ultimately the benefits of package management in my opinion far outweigh the benefits of building from source. Consider the extra effort involved with every softwaer installation and/or removal. That's a lot of overhead. Not to mention maintaining all of the original source directories for removal (chkconfig could help with this). If you are really curious then consider using Gentoo. You only install what you want and you get the benefits of package management with source built applications. You will also learn pretty quickly which of those packages you really needed