Why are the various ISO files of LM about the same size?

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michael louwe

Why are the various ISO files of LM about the same size?

Post by michael louwe »

Why is the ISO file of the lightweight Linux Mint 18.1 XFCE about the same size as the ISO file of the heavyweight LM 18.1 Cinnamon, ie both are 1.6GB.?

In comparison, Lubuntu 16.04's ISO file is about 900MB and Ubuntu 16.04's ISO file is about 1.5GB.

P S - Wrt 32bit.
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xenopeek
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Re: Why are the various ISO files of LM about the same size.?

Post by xenopeek »

Unlike with Lubuntu vs Ubuntu, all Linux Mint editions pretty much come with the same end user applications. They all have GIMP and LibreOffice and Thunderbird for example. Lubuntu tries to be as lightweight as possible and as such ships with lightweight alternatives (even if feature wise these are not anywhere near comparable) like for those examples MTPaint, Abiword and Gnumeric, and Sylpheed. That's what makes the difference with Lubuntu ISO.
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michael louwe

Re: Why are the various ISO files of LM about the same size.?

Post by michael louwe »

@ xenopeek, .......

Xubuntu 16.04's ISO file size is 1.2GB while Ubuntu 16.04's ISO file is 1.5GB. Both have about the same set of end user apps, eg LibreOffice, Firefox, etc.

Maybe, all Linux Mint ISO files are the same and the particular Edition is only unlocked from the ISO during installation, similar to how all Windows 7 ISO files are of the same size for all Editions, eg Win 7 Starter, Home, Pro, Ultimate, Enterprise, etc - also for the different Editions of Win 8.1/10.
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Re: Why are the various ISO files of LM about the same size?

Post by rene »

Not all editions are released at the same time which is to say that you could only release such a merged ISO afterwards at which point it probably sees little use; users running DE X for any X other than the last (KDE, usually) already have what they need, nor do KDE users need the others.

This just in case someone (me, for example) considers entertaining the merged ISO idea, but no, certainly it is not the case that the ISOs are equal at the moment: http://mirrors.evowise.com/linuxmint/stable/18.2/.
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xenopeek
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Re: Why are the various ISO files of LM about the same size?

Post by xenopeek »

michael louwe wrote:Xubuntu 16.04's ISO file size is 1.2GB while Ubuntu 16.04's ISO file is 1.5GB. Both have about the same set of end user apps, eg LibreOffice, Firefox, etc.
Sure, there are other differences that sum up to this 260 MB difference between the Xubuntu and Ubuntu ISOs. A quick look shows a couple of likely suspects like Ubuntu installs a more complete LibreOffice than Xubuntu, which adds 350 MB (uncompressed, so perhaps a third of that size to the compressed ISO). And Ubuntu installs Qt packages, as Unity had been moving towards Qt, which Xubuntu doesn't do and this adds another 250 MB (uncompressed). Ubuntu has more extensive documentation than Xubuntu, which accounts for another 66 MB (uncompressed). We've pretty much accounted for 200 MB of size difference between the ISOs with this already. The last 60 MB is an exercise for the reader :wink:

If you want to do this on your own, here's the command you need:
dpkg-query -Wf '${Installed-Size}\t${Package}\n' | sort -n
That will show you the installed packages by installation size, showing the largest packages at the end. So load up your ISOs (in a VM or otherwise) and go compare.

BTW the Linux Mint ISOs are not respins of Ubuntu or Xubuntu ISOs. So if you want to further compare a Linux Mint ISO to another Ubuntu or Debian based ISO you can go ahead and do that with above command as a starting point for investigation.
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MintBean

Re: Why are the various ISO files of LM about the same size?

Post by MintBean »

XFCE is light on GPU usage, but does Linux Mint XFCE even claim to be a lightweight distro? I don't think that is does.
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