<div dir="ltr">You\u2019ve simply installed Modern Ubuntu\u2122, which no longer ships an OS so much as a lifestyle choice.<br><br>What\u2019s taking the space? <br>- Systemd, which runs everything under the sun on Linux nowadays and will probably be what Linux is called in the future.<br>- Snap, which comes bundled with its own copy of half the operating system, so that every program can feel emotionally independent and never rely on anyone else ever again. Redundancy is safety. Safety is size. Size is love.<br>- Locales (Ubuntu doesn\u2019t know what language you might want someday, so it installs all of them)<br>- Firmware for stuff you don't have (Sure, you\u2019re in a VM. Ubuntu knows this. But Ubuntu does not care.)<br>- A bazillion \u201cjust in case\u201d packages that you might one day (personally, I never asked for cloud-init, but whatever.)<br><br>Side note: Fedora installs even more.<br><br>If you truly want a tiny system that does nothing but boot and stare quietly into the void, there are still options:<br>- Debian netinst (the diet version)<br>- Debian + \u201cuncheck literally everything\u201d<br>- Alpine (if you enjoy discovering which basic tools are missing today)<br>- Or Gentoo, if you want to spend 7GB on your own time instead of disk space<br><br>But Ubuntu's goal nowadays isn\u2019t minimalism. It\u2019s to ensure that, no matter what terrible idea you have later, the OS is already there waiting, arms open, snapd running. Ubuntu just installed everything and the kitchen sink, because it didn\u2019t know which future you were going to pick.<br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, 2 Feb 2026 at 01:13, William Park via kwlug-disc <<a href="mailto:kwlug-disc@kwlug.org">kwlug-disc@kwlug.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">I'm trying to setup Debian/Ubuntu distro, small size, text-only, no <br>
desktop, in VirtualBox. So, I tried "Ubuntu Server 25.10", because <br>
website says 2.5GB should be enough. Well, fresh install takes up 7GB. <br>
The only optional thing I included is ssh server.<br>
<br>
Am I doing something wrong?<br>
What do you remember when you setup your Ubuntu Server?<br>
<br>
<br>
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