Ask HN: Why are Ubuntu images so big? 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? |
Incidentally, Snaps are part the reason I'm abandoning Ubuntu for any of my personal machines.
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.
Also for comparison:
- MacOS installer ~14G [0]
- Windows 11 installer ~8G [1]
- Arch installer ~800M [2]
0: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201372
also interesting to see that arch is so much smaller. Kind of surprised Win11 is 8Gb since Win10 was less than half that
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.
edit: seems like desktop
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.