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What is truly bloated is their network-install images, starting with a 14MB kernel and 65MB initrd, which then proceeds to pull a 2.5GB image which they unpack into RAM to run the install.
This is especially egregious when running thin VMs for lots of things, since you now require them to have at least 4GB of RAM simply to be able to launch the installer at all.
Compare this to regular Debian, which uses an 8MB kernel and a 40MB initrd for the entire installer.
Or some larger like AlmaLinux, which has a 13MB kernel and a 98MB initrd, and which also pulls a 900MB image for the installer. (Which does mean a 2GB RAM minimum, but is still almost a third of the size of Ubuntu)Not to mention pulling a 2.5GB image is kind of hard on network. I don't get it as that costs them more money.
We're mirroring the images internally, not just because their mirrors suck and would almost double the total install time when using them, but also because they only host the images for the very latest patch version - and they've multiple times made major version changes which have broken the installer between patches in 22.04 alone.