[jmclnx]

>I don't think GNU has ever committed to any kind of minimalist philosophy

So true. I remember early on when GNU was started, people in the project where saying and developing with something like this in mind (paraphrasing):

"Make sure it works and meet users needs, even if it is too heavy for current systems, the hardware will improve as time goes on"

And that came true, for example, emacs is a lite ballerina compared to current IDEs.