I'm responding to only Debian for convenience, not as a statement.
I’m cherry-picking Debian here because I think it’s a lot easier to talk about in this context than Fedora. I’ve heard that Debian gets picked on for this more, so I want to clarify that I want both minimized, but Debian has much more documentation behind it and is therefore easier to talk about.
So far (almost) everything I’ve heard about why the existing templates shouldn’t be further minimized falls under “use the default template” or “I want <my favorite package> in the minimal template,” (except for the part about support*).
Examples
If you have the package manager and repos then that is Debian. You can create whatever version of vanilla Debian you want with one command: # apt install <relevant-packages>
. If you want to have those default packages, then install them or use the default templates, and let’s have minimal templates that make no choices for you.
It, by definition, is useful to more people because there are only two changes: flexibility and having to use the Xen console instead of GUI/XTerm (et al). Having a few more uninstalled packages follows the current theme of, you guessed it, install it if you want it. But those users who do want a micro template then don’t have the headache of decoding which packages they can remove.
- “But it should have vim/nano/tasksel/etc”
For text editors, I can say definitively that there is nothing stopping a user from installing it himself. For others, maybe there is a legitimate reason why it wouldn’t work right if it weren’t included. But I suspect that the number for which this is true is significantly lower than proponents think. If you can install it first thing, and then use it, then there is no reason for it to be included.
There is nothing preventing you from installing this yourself.
- “‘Vital/essential’ is ambiguous’”
While not exactly on theme, this is nonetheless relevant to it, being a red herring. ‘Essential’ means what it always has, and Debian has it’s own packages accordingly labeled: just run # aptitude search '?essential'
. While I have greap respect for unman, and his contributions to the project, his argument comparing vitality to human organs was poor for one outstanding reason: you can’t install organs. If you could, his argument is still somewhat poor because talking about removing and putting body parts back is a bit gruesome. (This last sentence is intended as humor.)
Since Qubes adds complexity, there are extra packages that become necessary, but since I’m not a Xen or Qubes architecture expert, I can only speculate for example’s sake. Packages like systemd, qubes core agent, qrexec, qubesdb, and Xen stuff are likely essential, whereas the qubes-gui-agent metapackage isn’t. I hope this is clear and my lack of deeper Qubes packages understanding isn’t muddying the waters. I doubt there is any ambiguity. I simply just don’t know what the purposes of all the packages are.
The reason this is a red herring is because the question at hand is should minimal templates be minimized, not how.
Note on italics: it's not sarcasm.
I keep having to repeat this one theme in response to all the rebuttals, so I’m hoping that I’ll either get agreement or a reasoning that I can’t answer with this.
Apologies for so long a list. If I had more time I’d write something shorter.
The reason this argument stands is because minimal templates exist for those who don’t want defaults so they can install what they want. As far as I can tell, this encompasses all the reasons people use the minimal templates (ex.: reducing attack surface = “let me choose my own tradeoffs”). So it stands that the crux of a minimal template is “If there is no significant difference between having it preinstalled and installing it yourself, then there is no reason for it to be included.”
*
The support thing I can understand, but people will always try to use things they don’t understand and then complain when they don’t understand it. This can even be a good thing because at least people are learning. The solution is to just point people to the minimal templates documentation when they ask, like it is currently done.
I don’t want this to turn into a useless or counterproductive back-and-forth, so I’m leaving this to stand as my response to all future arguments that revolve around a problem that can be solved by users installing relevant packages.