to tell the installer what you will use the system for and it will pick a set of extra packages to install that you may find useful for that kind of task. This may be enough for you, or it may install too much or too little.

The other way is to pick individual packages. This is the way to go if disk space is tight (which it may be for you) as you can install things as and when you find the need for them.

Similar features should be available on other distributions but I will leave describing them to their respective supporters.

Steve.