On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 02:30:04PM +0000, Paul Tansom wrote:
** Chris G cl@isbd.net [2010-12-14 13:04]:
<snip> > Finally I have Ubuntu 10.04 server running on the eeePc which only has a > 2Gb SSD, it's a tight squeeze (at installation I didn't add *anything to > the base install) but again does all I need quite happily. The 2Gb is > now 70% full with a full gcc/g++, configure, make, etc. development > system installed on it (to build OWFS) and mutt (which pulled in quite a > lot of other bits, such as postfix which I removed again). <snip> ** end quote [Chris G]
If you don't want to install and then remove the extra packages disable the automatic installation of recommended packages. If you are using aptitude from the command line then you will need the -R or --without-recommends flag. Alternatively if you are using Synaptic just uncheck the "Consider recommended packages as dependencies" box on the General tab of the Preferences. I only recently twigged that Ubuntu automatically installs all recommended packages by default - actually when I was wanting to install Mutt myself. I'd never really considered looking into it before!
Yes, I had realised that this was going on but it was only with mutt that really unnecessary and large things (like postfix) got installed.