On Mon, Nov 23, 2020 at 10:16:47PM -0600, Mike McClain wrote:
I guess I'm just a little old fashioned. My first computer had no storage and my first hard drive was 20M so having a directory taking up 3.5MB when all I'm using there is less than 10KB just doesn't sit well with me.
The kernel, compressed, is larger than that. The initrd needed to boot the kernel is also typically larger than that. A modern system has more CPU cache than that. At some point trying to save bytes is a waste of developer and administrator effort, and 3.5MB in 2020 is well past that point. If you want a minimal system, debian isn't for you. Instead, you'll need to hand craft every file to make sure it isn't "wasting space". If that's your thing, great. But it's just not a focus for debian.