The message 200504230940.37805.gt@pobox.com from Graham gt@pobox.com contains these words:
On Thursday 21 April 2005 22:04, Tim Green wrote:
I was thinking of the recent release of Ubuntu as a prime example. One CD of about 700MB contains just about everything you need to boot, install and get to work.
Any distribution of that size is bound to be selective, leaving out anything not essential to its perceived target market. So I wouldn't expect to see - for example - a full development environment or lots of multimedia. Of course, not everyone wants these things, and that's fine, but if you have more eclectic needs you'll be doing a lot of downloading anyway, so it makes more sense to do a full FTP install and get just what you want.
I take the opposite view, preferring a 'pocket OS' and adding apps as they are needed. I seem to be doing very nicely with all my multimedia still unmolested on the CDs of the distro. (For boring values of 'nicely')