shrinking the desktop DVD image to 1.5GB

[Allison Randal]

At UDS-O, we discussed CD space again (as at many a past UDS). Colin has
nicely summarized the discussion:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/Specs/OneiricCDSizing

Following on the tail of this, a few of us have been talking more about
the idea of shrinking the 4.3GB DVD image down to a 1.5GB flash card/USB
stick/DVD image. It's looking interesting enough to be worth talking
about it more broadly.

Ubuntu desktop will be sticking with the ~700MB image size in Oneiric
(see the wiki page for details), so this isn't about reopening that
discussion or about fitting things on the 700MB image.

A few questions:

- Does a 1.5GB image sound useful?

- 1.5GB is what we keep coming back to, because it's a nice size to fit
on a cheap 2GB flash card/USB stick with room for formatting and
persistent data storage. It's about double the size of the current CD
image, which allows plenty of room for a generous desktop image, without
the painfully large download of the 4.3GB image. What other size
considerations come to mind?

- What should we cut from the current DVD image (currently a superset of
desktop, alternate, and server)? Or, perhaps more simply, what would be
worth adding beyond the current 700MB CD image?

Allison