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by kiwijamo 771 days ago
As a Debian user I like how Debian just includes the basics in the main package and provides optional extras if you want them. I'm not sure how other distros handle it the other way around -- if the main package includes everything the risk is naive users install packages that include functions they don't need that end up exposing security issues. The Debian approach provides a reduced attack surface out of the box and if I happen to need something more its easy to just apt search ${package_name} and see what other extensions are available and install these. I do this regularly for PHP modules for instance if some PHP code complains a certain module is not available. It may not be your cup of tea but this is the Debian approach, and it makes sense from the perspective of a defensive user like me to keep things simple.