Ask HN: Why are Ubuntu images so big?

[underscoring]

I just downloaded 23.10 and its 4.8GB. I went back and looked at the last few years releases

- 23.10 - 4.8G

- 23.04 - 4.6G

- 22.10 - 3.8G

- 22.04 - 3.4G

- 21.10 - 2.9G

- 21.04 - 2.6G

- 20.10 - 2.7G

- 20.04 - 2.5G

Maybe it's a noob question, but I can't find anyone else commenting on this. Why has Ubuntu doubled in size since mid-2020? Why does it grow by so much with every new release?

[snovymgodym]

Snaps (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap_(software)) may have something to do with it.

Incidentally, Snaps are part the reason I'm abandoning Ubuntu for any of my personal machines.

[underscoring]

can you elaborate?

[snovymgodym]

Sure.

Admittedly, there is an unsolved problem with reliably and repeatedly packaging and updating software in the Linux world. Snap, developed by Canonical, who makes Ubuntu, is one attempt at solving this problem.

From my understanding, Snap bundles all of an application's dependencies separately from the host system, and runs the application in a sandboxed environment. Updates to the application are handled automatically and executed by a daemon (background process) that runs a few times a day.

There are reasons for all of Snap's design decisions, and I'm sure they're useful in the right context. However, Canonical is all-in on Snaps these days to the point that many regular apt-get package installs on Ubuntu force you to install the Snap version of applications with no real supported way to avoid it.

In my original comment, I'm suggesting that the inflated size of Ubuntu installs could be partly driven by so much of the default software being Snaps now (which bundle all dependencies and therefore you inevitably end up with duplicated stuff on the machine).

I've found Snaps to be inconvenient on my personal Ubuntu devices, and dislike the way Canonical doesn't give you a choice not to use them, so I've moved on to different distros for my own use.

[duped]

One of the great myths is that applications share dependencies, in practice they don't really besides a handful of libraries like libc (which snaps don't package, it's provided by the core snap).

[palata]

Maybe, maybe not. I guess it depends a lot on your system and on the packages you use.

I believe that one is entitled to believe that sharing dependencies on the system is the way to go (versus bundles), and more specifically one is entitled to not like snaps themselves. In that case, it is a great idea to move away from Ubuntu and towards a system that does what one prefers.

[Too]

Would be interesting to see real world data of this.

[palata]

Not the OP. But for one, last time I checked there was a Canonical lock-in with snaps. And it was not completely open source (at least the servers were not?).

[halJordan]

It's still cool to hate packaged containers

[maksut]

It is not number of packages! 20.04 has 2977 packages and 23.10 has 1841 (from pkglist from distrowatch). After a quick eyeballing, example packages in 20.04 but NOT in 23.10: apache, g++, qemu, php, postgres, samba.

Also for comparison:

- MacOS installer ~14G [0]

- Windows 11 installer ~8G [1]

- Arch installer ~800M [2]

0: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201372

1: https://www.microsoft.com/software-download/windows11

2: https://archlinux.org/download/

[underscoring]

interesting! my first guess was that it would be the number of packages, so that's wrong.

also interesting to see that arch is so much smaller. Kind of surprised Win11 is 8Gb since Win10 was less than half that

[palata]

I would say: because nobody cares, "memory is cheap".

Same reason why software gets slower every time hardware gets faster, why everything expects a fast internet connection, or why it's impossible to buy a movie without DRMs (say if you want to have the file and add subtitles for your language):

Users don't care, they keep using/buying the non-optimized stuff. And devs are more productive (and companies make more money) by not optimizing anything.

[PaulHoule]

You can mount the USB stick and look inside, right?

[underscoring]

thats a good point

[speedgoose]

The cloud images have been more stable in size: https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/

[asicsp]

May be the newer ones are including multiple desktop environments (GNOME/XFCE/etc)?

[goodboyjojo]

my guess is they try to put everything in so the user doesn't have to. but personally i like to setup my linux based distros how i like it.

[KomoD]

Is that for the Desktop release or Server release?

edit: seems like desktop