Curt Howland composed on 2025-08-23 23:52 (UTC-0400):
Felix Miata was heard to say:
That creates a minimal installation, IIRC with no GUI, or maybe just Xorg/X11 basics,
I tend to check the XFCE button, and then add TDE, selecting tdm as the login manager.
Keyword: IIRC. I don't ever install XFCE except on Mint, or remember whether Xorg/X11 is considered part of a basic Debian installation. That said, installing TDE requires it, so package dependencies can be expected to cover whatever need(s) may or may not already be met.
That way all the X11 dependencies are taken care of.
Building up from bare-bones takes more time, and the saving of disk space just isn't worth the effort anymore.
It's not about disk space. It's about clutter and waste. Upgrades and updates take longer, and waste bandwidth for no good reason.
I agree with dep that the additional crap, such as automatic directories, is annoying.
The "net-install" image for Debian Trixie is now the size of a full CD. I had to do a test build to see what changes there were to /etc/apt/sources.list so that my in-place upgrade would work correctly.
On fresh installations from scratch on empty disks it may matter, but as I have only one (laptop given me) with only one OS on it, and all 40+ other computers are multiboot, I don't have any need to download any isos regardless of size. I have all partitioning done in advance, download latest installation kernel and initrd, load them with grub and tasks=standard base-installer/install-recommends=false, so have no need to futz finding an available USB stick that works, waiting on a download or burn, or sha .iso or stick. With a new disk, I clone enough from something else to at least start Grub, if not a complete operational / filesystem. Installer processing is a nuisance easily enough avoided when package managers are so highly evolved and good at their jobs, including major upgrading typically done in 20 minutes or less from broadband internet.