For something like a C compiler, or, say, a web browser or a mail reader, it's easy enough to leave that out and let the user install one if he wants it. But a developer can say, "if I put Perl in the base installation, then I can write some of the package management tools, etc, in Perl". The same argument also applies to regex libraries, etc, that the basic system software can end up depending on. I'm not sure that there's anything wrong with this thinking, it just happens to be a slippery slope that can eventually leave you needing 4 terabytes to get to a shell prompt. -- Adam