As the Ubuntu 23.04 development cycle gets underway we’re learning more about what’s in store for Ubuntu and its growing family of flavours.
Xubuntu, one of the more minimally-minded spins, has revealed its planning to release a new ‘Xubuntu Minimal’ image starting with Ubuntu 23.04. It’s an expansion of the Xubuntu Core effort started back in 2015 but with a big ol’ rubber-stamp of officialdom on it.
In a post to the Ubuntu developer mailing list, Steve Langasek says Xubuntu Minimal “…parallels existing minimal install targets from the Ubuntu Desktop and Ubuntu Server images to provide a smaller install footprint without applications that the developers want installed as part of the default experience, but which are not essential.”
Xubuntu Minimal will be made available as a separate download. It will still use the Ubiquity installer and won’t require an active internet connection1 to complete installation. It will differ from the “xubuntu-minimal” option in the existing image by not installing everything and then removing what’s not needed for the minimal image.
The “full fat” install image for Xubuntu 22.10 is currently a 2.8 GB download, which is well past the size limit for a CD (which iirc have a space limit of around 700 MB for a regular disc), so there’s work to be done to try and reach that goal.
Interesting development, and something I definitely plan to keep an eye on.
1An earlier version of this article said the new minimal image would use a text-based installer and require an active internet connection. This is not the case for the planned image so the article has been amended.