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View Full Version : [all variants] Why is the Natty minimal install so much bigger than on Maverick?


LazyBoy
May 25th, 2011, 08:40 PM
I have a couple of 64bit Maverick installs from the minimal CD. They each have about 1100 packages installed.

When I started to upgrade one to Natty with the Upgrade Manager, it told me it wanted to install 205 new packages (along with upgrading 877). 205 new packages seems like a lot of growth in the minimal install. Why do I need those 205 packages?

Then I looked at the minimal CD page where I saw that the minimal CD itself (which has lists of packages not the packages) grew from 15.6 to 22MB.

So, did the minimal install just bloat up with Natty or what? Is there an even-more-minimal install?
tommcd
May 26th, 2011, 07:03 AM
Ubuntu has been bloating up for several years now. It has become much more resource intensive than it used to be.
This is the #1 problem with Ubuntu imo.
By way of comparison, Slackware does not have this problem. Slackware still supports i386 systems.
Debian does not have this problem either.

You could always just uninstall anything that you do not want after installing Ubuntu from the minimal install CD.
LazyBoy
May 30th, 2011, 09:10 PM
My mistake.

I've had more time to look at the details and it's not ubuntu-minimal that bloated up on me.
It's lubuntu-desktop.
tommcd
May 30th, 2011, 10:21 PM
I've had more time to look at the details and it's not ubuntu-minimal that bloated up on me.
It's lubuntu-desktop.
Well, I suppose it is possible that even Lubuntu is bigger than it used to be.
(Note that the first official Lubuntu release was only as recent as 10.04; and the Lubuntu 10.04 was considered to be a "beta release" according to the Lubuntu developers).

My Lubuntu 10.10 and 11.04 installs have been as light and fast as Ubuntu used to be in the Breezy 5.10 and the Dapper 6.06 days of Ubuntu. They have also been rock solid and stable. Note that these are pure Lubuntu clean installs. They are not the lubuntu-desktop grafted over an already bloated Ubuntu.

Anyway, the whole point I am trying to make here is that Lubuntu is the least bloated member of the official *buntu family.