Slimming down default install?

[Martin Alderson]

> It's not like am in any position to decide anything, in fact this is my
> very first post to this mailinglist ( hi there! )

You sent it to me instead of the list. I don't know if you meant to do
that, I hope you don't mind  that I am sending my reply to the list in
general.

> But if I *had* anything to say my response was probably something like
> "over my dead body" :)
> but seriously - any distrib should really have vim installed my
> default.And i guess most do anyway.

Ok. It does seem vim is a lot smaller than I thought, so it probably
wouldn't be much hassle to have it nicluded. Emacs is a different
matter though - it's probably nearer 30MB with all the language
bindings installed.

> As for "slim"/"bloated" argumentation in general:
> With  hdd prices dropping to $80 for 160gig 20mb +/- prolly dont matter
> much as long as the software is not completely obscure and you can keep
> the users happy because after installation they have what they need.
> 
> Someone who wants a super slim/"raw" linux installation should stay away
> from distributions like ubuntu and the alike anyway..

HDD is only one part of the argument. I totally agree that disk space
is not a huge issue, but:

1) It'd be better to keep ubuntu on one CD - that way people are much
more likely to download, burn and install it, and pass it to friends
as they don't have to do multiple cds which is much more time
consuming and means you can't just install and leave it - you have to
check that the right CD is in.
2) Connection speed. Many are on slow connections, and this means that
it takes an age to download 30MB of a text editor that they won't use.
2b) Bandwidth costs for ubuntu.
3) It keeps with the Ubuntu 'philosphy' of only having one tool for a job.