There are 32GB USB drives generally available; even 64GB+, for that matter; 8GB and 16GB drives are other options, if they can still be found. Across the board, the bloat is unfortunately with us to stay: The macOS Sonoma installer, for example, hovers around 12GB.
I appreciate a lean installer as much as anyone would, but the reality seems to be that as soon USB capacities increase, someone will adjust their packages/installers/ISOs accordingly.
I use Ventoy on a 64GB USB currently, with likely up to half of that capacity filled with various recovery tools for multiple Operating Systems.
That leaves arguably 32GB or more available for a selection of ISOs including Debian, FreeBSD, Manjaro, Windows 10/11, and a few others, when booting via Ventoy.
My point? You could use a larger USB drive, formatted as NTFS, for example, which would avoid any possible file size limitations imposed by the Fat32 filesystem (often the default on USB drives).
I, for one, would expect 32bit libraries to be available on the full ISO, as I might use WINE, or Virtualization software, and potentially other scenarios which might require it.
The point is the “minimal” iso should really be minimal.
The one downloadable online should contain the 32lib imho.
But using buildiso should let you exclude both the libraries/applications and the repo, and I think that is what @linux-aarhus did?
On linux, use ExFAT if size limit of fat32 is a problem, not microsoft ntfs.
Mod edit:- NTFS was only an example to avoid the file size limitation of FAT32. Personally, I’d opt for a native Linux filesystem; probably EXT4.
The multilib repo - is always enabled in pacman.conf but the the lib32* packages are not strictly needed - and therefore the iso-profile’s profile.conf contains a flag to indicate if the buildiso should include packages tagged as multilib in the Packages-* files
>multilib lib32-<bla>
But this setting requires manual intervention to exclude this from the build process.
So instead of doing these two ( both with multilib="true" )
buildiso -p kde -b stable -k linux66
buildiso -p kde -b stable -k linux66 -o -f
One would have to edit the profile conf - and set multilib="false" and build
buildiso -p kde -b stable -k linux66
Then edit the profile conf reverting to multilib="true" and build
buildiso -p kde -b stable -k linux66 -o -f
You would have to check this every time you build an ISO.
Everyone can see that this is error prone in several ways - which is why the release ISO has always been build with multilib="true".
However - due to the conversation in this thread - and my own involvement where I build much more minimalist ISO for my own use - the proposed change has been implemented in a form where it can be controlled by a flag.
This brings us back to the two commands I mention above - which makes it possible to exclude lib32-* without any intervening edit of the profile.conf
buildiso -p kde -b stable -k linux66 -n
buildiso -p kde -b stable -k linux66 -o -f
Whether or not the members building the ISO will actually implement it - and make the minimal more minimal - that I won’t interfere with.
The commit specifically targeting this topic is (it requires a package rebuild - I am not in charge of that - so patience - if you are looking forward to it)
